A2 · Elementary
7 min
climateextreme weatherglobal inequalitysouth asia
The Storm and the Poor: Climate in the Global South
La Tormenta y los Pobres: El Clima en el Sur del Mundo
This week, more than twenty people die in a single day from storms and lightning in Bihar, India. Fletcher and Octavio talk about climate, the monsoon, and why poor countries suffer the most.
Esta semana, más de veinte personas mueren en un día por tormentas y rayos en Bihar, India. Fletcher y Octavio hablan del clima, del monzón, y de por qué los países pobres sufren más.
8 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| el rayo | lightning bolt | El rayo es muy peligroso en los campos. |
| el trueno | thunder | Escucho el trueno. La tormenta está cerca. |
| la tormenta | storm | La tormenta llega por la tarde. |
| el campo | field, countryside | Los agricultores trabajan en el campo. |
| el carbón | coal | India usa mucho carbón para la electricidad. |
| el calor | heat | El calor es muy fuerte en verano. |
| el relámpago | lightning flash | Veo un relámpago en el cielo oscuro. |
| urgente | urgent | El problema del clima es urgente. |
Twenty people.
One day.
Not a war, not a flood that displaced millions.
Just a thunderstorm in northern India.
I keep coming back to that number.
En Bihar, las tormentas son muy peligrosas.
In Bihar, the storms are very dangerous.
Bihar.
For listeners who aren't placing it, that's a state in northeastern India, landlocked, one of the poorest in the country.
And this week, twenty-plus people dead from storms, rain, and lightning in under twenty-four hours.
El rayo mata mucho en India.
Lightning kills a lot in India.
It does, and the numbers are staggering when you look them up.
India records somewhere between two and three thousand lightning deaths every single year.
Every year.
That's more than almost any country on earth.
La gente trabaja en los campos.
People work in the fields.
No hay techo.
There is no roof.
Exactly.
Farmers, outdoor laborers, people who can't just step inside an office when the sky turns dark.
The vulnerability is almost entirely economic.
Bihar es pobre.
Bihar is poor.
Las casas son pequeñas.
The houses are small.
And not built to withstand the kind of electrical storms that roll through there.
No reinforced structures, patchy early warning systems, villages that get a text alert maybe minutes before the lightning hits.
No tienen información sobre la tormenta.
They don't have information about the storm.
Which brings us to why I wanted to talk about this through the lens of climate specifically.
Because this isn't bad luck.
The storms are getting worse.
Sí.
Yes.
Ahora las tormentas son más fuertes.
Now the storms are stronger.
The research on this is pretty consistent.
A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which means when a storm breaks, it breaks harder.
The Indian monsoon is intensifying.
More rain, but concentrated into shorter, more violent bursts.
Antes, la lluvia era más lenta.
Before, the rain was slower.
Ahora, no.
Now, it isn't.
Right.
And that distinction matters enormously for farmers.
You need steady rain spread over weeks to grow crops.
A violent downpour that dumps everything in two days, then nothing, that destroys a harvest.
India necesita el agua para comer.
India needs water to eat.
Nearly half the Indian workforce is in agriculture.
The monsoon isn't just weather.
It's the organizing principle of a civilization.
It dictates when you plant, when you harvest, when you get married, when you hold festivals.
El monzón es muy importante para la vida.
The monsoon is very important for life.
Thousands of years of agriculture built around its rhythms.
And now those rhythms are shifting.
The rain comes later, or earlier, or all at once.
Farmers who knew how to read the sky are finding that the sky has changed the rules.
El calor cambia la lluvia.
The heat changes the rain.
Es un problema grande.
It is a big problem.
Now, here's where this gets genuinely complicated.
Because India is not just a victim of climate change.
India is also one of the world's top three carbon emitters.
India usa mucho carbón.
India uses a lot of coal.
Mucho.
A lot.
It does.
Coal powers about seventy percent of India's electricity.
And India has been very clear in international negotiations: we're not giving that up until we have alternatives that actually work at scale.
La gente pobre necesita electricidad también.
Poor people also need electricity.
And that's a genuinely hard argument to dismiss.
A billion three hundred million people.
Hundreds of millions still in poverty.
You cannot look someone in the eye and say: stay poor, it's better for the atmosphere.
Europa y América crean el problema primero.
Europe and America create the problem first.
Historically accurate.
Britain, Germany, the United States, we pumped carbon into the atmosphere for a hundred and fifty years building industrial economies.
Now we're asking countries that are still trying to catch up to play by rules we didn't follow.
No es justo.
It isn't fair.
Las personas en Bihar no contaminan.
The people in Bihar don't pollute.
That's the core injustice of this whole thing.
The people dying in Bihar from lightning and floods contributed almost nothing to the warming that's intensifying those storms.
And yet they bear the cost.
Los países ricos tienen que pagar.
Rich countries have to pay.
Es la idea.
That is the idea.
That's the idea behind something called 'loss and damage,' which became one of the main fights at the last several COP summits.
The concept is that wealthy nations should compensate vulnerable ones for climate harms they didn't cause.
Es difícil.
It is difficult.
El dinero no llega a la gente.
The money doesn't reach the people.
A fund was actually agreed at COP27 in Egypt, which was a breakthrough.
But the gap between agreeing to a fund and money actually landing somewhere useful is vast.
It's always vast.
España también tiene problemas de clima ahora.
Spain also has climate problems now.
The Valencia floods last year.
That DANA system.
Over two hundred dead.
I remember watching that coverage and thinking, this isn't a developing country problem anymore.
This is Europe.
Sí.
Yes.
Los veranos son muy calientes ahora.
The summers are very hot now.
Madrid hitting forty-three degrees in June.
The difference is Spain has hospitals, emergency services, infrastructure.
Bihar has very little of that.
The same storm hits a different place and the death toll multiplies.
Necesitamos cambiar las cosas.
We need to change things.
Es urgente.
It is urgent.
One thing that has actually worked in India: a mobile alert system for lightning.
India rolled out a lightning prediction app, Damini, about eight years ago.
It gives thirty to forty minutes warning to your phone.
Downloads in the tens of millions.
El teléfono ayuda.
The phone helps.
Pero no todo el mundo tiene teléfono.
But not everyone has a phone.
Still, deaths from lightning in India have dropped significantly over the past decade.
Technology working, but the storms are getting worse faster than the technology is catching up.
El problema es grande.
The problem is big.
Las soluciones son pequeñas.
The solutions are small.
That might be the most honest summary I've heard.
The problem is big.
The solutions are small.
Although the app is a genuinely good idea.
I wish more of the climate conversation was that practical.
Oye, una cosa.
Hey, one thing.
Yo digo 'el rayo' y 'el trueno'.
I say 'el rayo' and 'el trueno'.
¿Sabes la diferencia?
Do you know the difference?
I was actually going to ask you about that.
In English we throw 'lightning' and 'thunder' around pretty loosely, but you've been careful to use different words.
El rayo es la luz.
The lightning is the light.
El trueno es el sonido.
The thunder is the sound.
Flash versus boom.
Light versus sound.
So 'el rayo' is what kills you and 'el trueno' is what scares you afterward.
Sí.
Yes.
Y también hay 'el relámpago'.
And there is also 'el relámpago'.
Es el rayo, pero más rápido.
It is lightning, but faster, like a flash.
Three words for the same storm.
English has two and we still mix them up.
I feel predictably embarrassed about this, and before you say anything, no, I will not be demonstrating that in Spanish.
Muy bien, Fletcher.
Very good, Fletcher.
Hoy no hay errores.
Today there are no mistakes.
Es un récord.
That is a record.