Superbug newsleak: Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit to announce "Drink Up, Delhi!" Campaign

Tired of the 'negativity', Delhi Chief Minister to chart out a bold new effort to re-brand Delhi water!

Not happy!

A highly-placed source close to Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit has informed the Dhaba that the chief minister plans to re-brand Delhi water in the response to an "unscientific" scientific study published recently in the Lancet. The study claims that Delhi drinking water has been contaminated by antibiotic-resistant 'superbugs.' According to our source, the CM thought the matter should have been put to rest by Wednesday's press conference, where she joined government scientists and Delhi Jal Board officials in claiming, "There is no superbug, no cause for worry."


"When that didn't work," says our source, "the CM felt she had no choice but to be more proactive--after all the reputation of the city is at stake...she decided to launch a bold PR campaign stressing the World Class aspects of Delhi tap water."


According to our source, before settlling on "Drink up, Delhi!" several slogans were considered for the campaign. Top contenders included:
Meri Delhi, meri nal ka pani!
DJB--cheap and best!
Incredible Delhi's Drinking Water!
DJB: Thirsty Kya? 
Delhi Jal Board: people you can trust!


Apparently, several members of the CM's inner circle suggested a more "pragmatic" approach, given the Lancet's reputation of as one of the world's most respected scientific journals. They suggested the following slogans:
Superbugs for a Supercity!
We've never met a cholera bug we couldn't treat!
We've got super gastro-intestinal specialists in New Delhi!
No evidence of increase in Drug resistance in Cholera!
Delhi Water: what doesn't kill you will make you stronger!
Those advisers were promptly fired, said our source. "The CM felt we needed a positive spin on the issue, regardless of what the 'science' says. What is 'science' anyway? Everyone knows a positive attitude can overcome any small thing like Typhoid! The CM has never regretted making bold statements, like when she claimed flyovers would help Delhi to become pollution-free by 2010 or when she repeatedly claimed Delhi would be ready for the CWG in plenty of time...it's perception that matters in politics, no?"

‘No evidence of increase in drug resistance in cholera''

The Drink Up, Delhi campaign will feature pictures of prominent Delhi residents drinking glasses of tap water and smiling. Expect hoardings to go up by the end of the month, with TV spots to follow.
 "We'd like to have Manmohan Singh drinking a glass of water in front of India Gate, Alka Pande sipping in front of the Habitat Centre, US Ambassador Roemer drinking straight from an American Embassy irrigation pipe--that sort of thing." When asked whether these figures had agreed to actually drink unfiltered Delhi Jal Board water, our source was non-committal: "The common man wants to know we care about his plight...what's in the glass is not important.  Besides, everyone knows how much money we spent making our city World Class for the CWG...they can't expect us to have piles of cash laying around to invest in things like 'public health' and clean water!"

Climate, water and the need for serious humour

Toxic Link on Traditional Delhi Water Systems
Bhagwad on the Arrogance of Skepticism
Bill Maher on what baby-making theories have to do with theories of climate change

I've written two funny posts in a row, and this one ends in a very funny video.  So it only seems fair that you put up with a few short paragraphs of serious business about climate change, weather and water.

Climate change is one of those issues that we keep coming back to, not because we want to, but because it's just so important.  As the climate changes, the earth will change in unpredictable ways.  For a place like India, where millions and millions of people are happy if they get two--to say nothing of three--meals a day, unpredictable is obviously a terrifying word, especially when it comes to things (like rain) that affect food crops. We all like to predict when our next meal is coming.

It's not surprising that climate change will lead to change in weather patterns in many parts of the world. Yes, the sun will still shine; it will just feel warmer in most places. And the rain will still fall, just not in the same way or in the same places that it used to.  (There's a lot of research on this, and I'm not up to hyperlinking it all right now.  The posts up at our climate page are full of links.) 

Nobody is really sure what all this will look like, but it seems clear that rain fed farms will be the hardest hit.  If you don't have access to irrigation, you are stuck when it doesn't rain or when it floods; it's not easy to pack up your farm and move it to a wetter--or dryer--location.  This will likely be a huge and growing problem in decades to come: nearly 80 million hectares out of India's net sown area of around 143 million hectares rely on rain water, as they have no access irrigation.  And there is clear evidence that the water table throughout north India is falling, so even irrigated farms are in danger.

Of course, water is not just a problem in rural areas.  We in Delhi suffer our own water woes.  If you want to learn more about this issue, Toxic Link is holding a program on September 15 at IIC in Delhi that looks interesting.  It's called, "Traditional Water Systems of Delhi." You can read more about it over at the Delhi Greens site.  Here's something from Toxic Link's description of the event:

"A little water is a sea to an ant.” An eco system is made up of many small parts, which could be erroneously thought of as insignificant. Within the intersection of mega scale urban planning and the impacts of climate the almost lost traditional water systems of Delhi need to be revisited urgently.

Of course, a lot of people want to believe that climate change really isn't a problem.  I'd like to rant here, but will contain myself.  Instead, I'll send you to Bhagwad's Expressions.  He looks at the tendency of some people to believe they know more than scientists about climate change just because they've read a lot of stuff on the internet or seen a lot of YouTube videos. Actually, he says it much more clearly than that--you should read it and the discussion it's generated.

Finally, let's look at two videos. The first is sent to us by Bhagwad.  If you haven't seen Bill Maher talk about climate change, you should watch this. In it, he explains what theories of baby making teach us about climate change.  Sometimes, funny people can say serious things best.

And here's a totally different way of looking at climate: Red Card.  (Thanks Minal).

The Power of Denial: Lessons from the CWG Corruption Scandal and the Climate Change Debate

Last week, Suresh Kalmadi, chair of the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee, tried to distract the country from the Commonwealth Games corruption scandal by playing the "anti-national" card. When that didn't work, he tried the next trick many politicians like to use when faced with bad news: denial.  Kalmadi repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, saying things like "We have nothing to hide...there is total transparency in OC and our conscience is clear" and "Every pie is accounted for." Claims like that sound a little like his now-famous promise that "the games won't cost the country a penny."

But even I was surprised to read that he based a large part of his defense on faked emails! Fake emails, my friends, is not a very smart strategy.  Simple, straightforward denial is almost always more effective, unless you are really desperate.  Is it any surprise that even his own party is no longer willing to defend him?

Kalmadi may be on the way out, but one has to admit the power of denial.  It doesn't usually solve problems, but it can be remarkably good at covering up the truth!  

If the press continues to do the job it has been doing, I am cautiously optimistic that the worst of the Commonwealth Games corruption will be addressed in time, though I suspect the really big fish will slip through the net as usual--in that way, politics does not resemble fishing!

In a strange way, the Commonwealth Games corruption scandal reminds me of the climate change debate, although there, I am not so optimistic. Let's look at the weather for a moment.  Things have been hot, not just in Delhi, but worldwide.  In fact, four of the first six months of 2010 were the hottest on record according to American scientists; this puts 2010 on track to be the warmest year since 1880. Along with that, Arctic sea ice is at record lows and new photos of Everest remind us that Himalayan ice is also rapidly disappearing.

One warm year is no proof of climate change--it's the long term trends that show that.  But climate deniers, like the ones who wrote the hack job that Open Magazine ran back in February, have never figured this out.  US economist Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, put it this way:

Of course, you can’t infer trends in global temperatures from one year’s experience. But ignoring that fact has long been one of the favorite tricks of climate-change deniers: they point to an unusually warm year in the past, and say “See, the planet has been cooling, not warming, since 1998!” Actually, 2005, not 1998, was the warmest year to date — but the point is that the record-breaking temperatures we’re currently experiencing have made a nonsense argument even more nonsensical; at this point it doesn’t work even on its own terms.

Unfortunately, the US senate didn't listen to Krugman, or any other rational voices for that matter, and it appears that serious action on climate change is dead in the US for the foreseeable future.  (And to think that officials were lecturing India and China on their need to do more during Copenhagen.) 

It's easy to get angry about all this, and I don't blame you if you do.  But it's probably better to do something.  If you are concerned about how the Commonwealth Games are taking money and resources from people who need it and transferring them to people who don't, go check out out ACORN International's Commonwealth Games Campaign.  If you are a student, why not work to fight the evictions at Delhi University?  And whoever you are, why not write a letter to the editor of your newspaper or your local government official?
 

If climate is your main concern now, the Indian Youth Climate Network has some good resources on their web page, and of course you can check out the sidebar of the Dhaba for more links.  For something quick and easy to do, you can sign this petition against BP that someone sent me this morning--but this is a long term issue that will require a lot more than on-line petitions!

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To read more about the CWG, go see our special CWG page.

To read more about Climate, go see our special Climate page.

Don't Worry Be Happy: Jairam Ramesh, Thabo Mbeki, and the Problem with Sketchy Science

Yes we are working on Sunday here at the Dhaba, so you know it's something important.  Before we get to the main course, please don't forget to turn in your homework for our Children's Day Challenge! Write a letter to a child about what you will do to stop climate change and you can be published right here at the Green Light Dhaba!  Details at the bottom of this post. I'd love to hear from you by sometime next weekend.

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A few weeks back, Environment minister Jairam Ramesh sent a confidential letter to the PM arguing that India should radically change it's position on climate change.  He said we should abandon our longstanding support of the G-77 group of developing nations and instead adopt important aspects of the US negotiating position. When the letter was leaked, voices from all over the political spectrum cried foul, and Congress quickly distanced itself from the idea.   

Though reasonable people have argued that Ramesh was just being pragmatic, here at the Dhaba, we didn't agree.  We argued that the problem was that his position appeared to be motivated not by a concern over climate change but by a desire to curry favor with the West in return for a permanent seat on the UN security council.  In other words it was more about power than the environment.

Mr. Ramesh appears to be at it again.  Last week, he released a report by Dr. VK Raina that questions the role of climate change in the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers.  Dr. Raina goes so far as to say, "None of our glaciers under monitoring are recording abnormal retreat."

Other scientists, including Rajendra Pachauri, one of the PM's advisers on climate change, rubbished the report, calling it "unscientific" "unsubstantiated" and "self-contradictory".  The Indian Youth Climate Network Blog ran this piece by Devinder Sharma attacking the science and motivations behind the report.

The problem with Dr. Raina's report is not that it flies in the face of most of the science we have up until now; new research sometime does that, and that is how we move forward. The problem is not even that the report appears to contain serious flaws; although these failings could be the result of politically motivated researchers, even good scientists make mistakes. That's why it's so important for research to be transparent and open.  

The problem is that this report was released by the government without first being widely reviewed by independent experts. That's the kind of thing you do when you care more about your political agenda than you do about the truth.  By officially releasing it, the government gives this research, and the questionable science behind it, a credibility and gravity that it does not deserve.  If you don't believe that, take a look at this headline!  (Note who it says is "challenging the global view on Himalayan glaciers.")

We can hope that Mr. Ramesh is just stirring the pot for the sake of...stirring the pot.  Or maybe his political philoshophy can be summed up by the title to Bobby McFerrin's famous song.  But from where I sit, the signs don't look encouraging. His letter to the PM last month--and his response to it in the press--was worrisome.  Now he is promoting sketchy science and a scientist who tells us things are not so bad after all.  Taken together, his actions appear to be consistent with an agenda that prioritizes power and short-sighted development over a commitment to long-term sustainability.

Let's be very clear: politically motivated efforts to twist or deny well-researched scientific ideas can do real harm. The affects of AIDS denialism are well documented.  For example, Thabo Mbeki did not believe that HIV caused AIDS--and he acted on those believes in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  As a result, while he was President of South Africa, his government did not respond to that epidemic with appropriate public health measures.  According to research by Harvard University, this cost over 300,000 lives.

We see the cost of climate change denial in the failure of the US to act forcefully on this issue.   Certainly, the job of environmentalists in the US is not made easier by the fact that many people there no longer believe the earth is warming, because short-term weather statistics are being manipulated for political reasons. Similarly, the Himalayan Glaciar report released by Mr. Ramesh will make it more difficult to convince people here of the urgent need for action on climate change.

Denial is so compelling, because so many people have a vested interest in business as usual.  As a result, powerful people will continue to do their best to convince you that we don't need to worry.  Environmentalists need to be open to ideas that challenge our assumptions.  But we don't need politicians who encourage us to foolishly stick our heads in the sand.  We need leaders who respect real science and rigorous debate--and who will have the bravery to take action, even when doing so goes against their own short term interests.