Climate Change: India’s Commitments

Increasing economic growth and development across the globe since the Industrial Revolution, starting in the mid-eighteenth century, has led to rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions into the earth’s atmosphere, preventing heat from being transmitted back to space in the right proportion. These GHGs include methane, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, fluorinated gases, and ozone in the troposphere (the atmosphere up to 15 kilometres from the earth’s surface). However, ozone molecules in the stratosphere (the atmosphere above the troposphere up to 50 kilometres) are beneficial since they absorb part of the incoming ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sunlight. Water vapours, though emitted naturally, also act like a greenhouse gas. GHGs allow heat from the sun to enter and absorb it, but they are somewhat opaque in transmitting this heat back to space. The process is similar to a greenhouse, which lets heat from sunlight in but not out at the same rate. Contrary to the bad reputation GHGs have earned, the earth would freeze if all the heat were transmitted back to space in their absence. It is the excess of GHGs accumulating since the late eighteenth century that has caused a major climate change crisis. 

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