Srinagar, June 22 -- Introduction - The Breach We Cannot Ignore

For climate science, 1.5 degrees Celsius was never a number - it was a threshold - a thin red line drawn not only by satellites and sensors, but by decades of cautionary tales from scientists, farmers, fishers, and forest-dwellers who have long lived with the insidious onrush of a warming world. Now, in a dire new prediction by the World Meteorological Organization and the UK Met Office, that red line is perilously close to being crossed. There is a 70% possibility of the global temperatures momentarily crossing the 1.5degC threshold in the next five years. No longer is this some future eventuality - it is the climate reality at India's doorstep, and pummelling the delicate ec...