Climate Change and You: Camels, Captains and Animal-Free Cheese

Dear Reader,

Last week, I spent a few days in Rajasthan with camel herders. I was traveling for a ground report for aMintLong Story, trying to understand the reasons behind a steady decline in the camel population in India. Looks like camels may end up as zoo exhibits in a decade or two.

I will always remember those three days spent with theRaikas(the traditional herders from Rajasthan) for the insights on livestock management practices of a semi-nomadic tribe, and their changing relations with a desert ecology encompassing forests and pastures-which they are losing access to. TheRaikasshare a deep emotional bond with these majestic animals and, sadly, this could be the last generation of herders.

That would be a great loss, because camels are also an insurance against climate uncertainties. These animals feed on desert vegetation (and do not require farm land to grow soy and corn which are used to manufacture animal feed). They can better cope with rising temperatures. Their milk has many nutritional benefits — it can be used for diabetes management and for lactose-intolerant and autistic children. Yet the market for camel milk is limited.

Also read | India's climate crisis: Early heatwaves, Himalayan glaciers melting and a biodiversity collapse

This is a story where, economics and ecology, religious beliefs (which led to a law banning slaughter and transport to conserve camels, but had the opposite effect), and the pulls of tourism intersect with the loss and longing of the Raikas.

State of the Climate

March 2025 was the second-warmest globally after March last year, with average surface air temperatures 1.6 degree Celsius above the pre-industrial period, as per the Copernicus Climate Change Service (3CS). The average temperature in Europe was 2.4-degrees above the 1991-2020 average, making it the warmest March for the continent. Further, Arctic Sea ice reached its lowest monthly extent for March in the 47-year satellite record, 6% below average. In the Antarctic region too, sea ice concentrations were below average in most ocean sectors.

Meanwhile, parts of India are seeing unusually high daytime temperatures, warm nights and heatwaves. On 8 April, Delhi recorded a maximum day temperature of 41 degree, 5.9 degrees above normal. Kandla in Gujarat recorded a maximum temperature of 45.6 degrees on 10 April. The met office has forecast a fresh heatwave spell beginning 15 April over parts of North-west India and Gujarat. The heatwave arrived early this year and the worst is yet to come.

The news in brief

• The four-month monsoon season beginning June is expected to see above-normal rains, the met department has forecast. That would be a relief after a scorching summer and music to government’s inflation managers.
• A growing number of comedians are using humour to raise awareness about climate change, offering laughter and hope to the anxious.
• 63 countries, including India, agreed to a carbon tax on global shipping, aiming to reduce emissions.
• The Centre is planning to fast-track environment clearance for new businesses.
• With China already a leader in clean-tech, India should rethink alliances to make the most of the Trump shake-up, argues climate and energy expert Leena Srivastava.

Climate Change Tracker

By the end of this century, a 3-degree Celsius warmer world can shave 40% off the global economy, says a study published in Environmental Research Letters. The latest prognosis is a contrast to existing research which predicted that an extreme warming of 4-degrees may result in milder negative impacts to the global economy, ranging between 7-23%.

According to the authors, future climate change will raise the risk of weather shocks occurring simultaneously across countries and more persistently over time. This will disrupt the networks producing and delivering goods, compromise trade and limit the extent to which countries can help each other.

Also read | Climate Change and You: Sunny Side Up, or Down?

Explaining the research in lay terms, the lead author of the study wrote that the optimal global warming (the most that the world can afford), balancing short-term costs with long-term benefits, is 1.7 degrees — a number consistent with the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious target.

Know Your Jargon

Alternative Proteins

In our kitchens where conventional diets are high on calorie-dense cereals like rice and wheat (coupled with growing consumption of ultra-processed junk food laden with empty calories), proteins are hogging the limelight. Consumer brands have jumped in, offering a wide range of products, from whey to high-protein milk and curd.

The importance of proteins in a diet cannot be ignored. They are building blocks for muscles and bones, and are needed for many vital bodily functions. But animal-origin proteins like meat and dairy also pose a problem: they are resource intensive (one has to grow soy and corn to feed livestock to produce dairy and meat), contribute to green-house gas emissions and are often products of a cruel industrial process.

Alternative proteins or alt-proteins are developed from non-animal and plant-based protein sources or cultivated from animal cells. These aim to replace conventional meat, dairy and egg products. Alt-proteins can be grouped into three broad categories. Plant-based protein sources like soy and chickpeas which are used to mimic the taste and texture of real meat. Secondly, precision fermentation technologies are used to manufacture, say, a milk protein which can be used to produce ice-cream or cheese, without raising dairy cattle or using even a single animal cell. Thirdly, cultivated meats can be produced from animal stem cells grown in bio-reactors.

Currently, most alt-proteins are much more expensive to produce when compared with conventional farm-grown sources. But they offer a window to the future, which appears part-utopian and part-dystopian. If you are interested, look up the book by George Monbiot, titledRegenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet.

Prime Number

415

As per a new report by the International Energy Agency, data centres used 415 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2024, or about 1.5% of the global consumption in 2024.  Further, consumption by data centres is likely to more than double to 945 TWh by 2030. That’s more than Japan’s current annual consumption. 

Also read | Under pressure: How Donald Trump's attacks on US climate agencies affect India

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a significant driver of this growth, alongside growing demand for other digital services. A typical AI-focused data centre consumes as much electricity as 100,000 households, and the largest ones under construction can consume 20 times as much, the report says.

In 2024, United States accounted for the largest share of global data centre electricity consumption at 45%, followed by China and Europe. Globally, data centre electricity consumption has grown by around 12% per year since 2017, over four times the rate of total electricity consumption.  Bibek, who co-writes this newsletter, discussed AI’s growing energy needs in a previous edition of Climate Change and You.

Movie of the Month

The 2016 film Captain Fantastic is a comic essay on parenting and the choices we make. Is it possible to escape the trappings of consumerism and raise children inside a remote forest, away from modern civilization? Is it possible to tread lightly and extract fewer resources from the planet?

The film is both hilarious and poignant, and pushes one to rethink our daily choices: how to celebrate a birthday or where to stop by for a quick bite. Sure, it’s not just about living in harmony with nature, but also a scathing critique of the modern education system, the industrial food complex, runaway consumerism and senseless social norms.

That’s all, for now. Bibek will be back with the next issue, in a fortnight