‘European leaders must dare to say that the time of plenty is over’

Climate change disaster is not a theme with which novelists make themselves popular. Why did you delve into it anyway?

“Calcutta is very sensitive to cyclones, some of my earliest childhood memories are tropical storms. Around 2000 I was researching for a novel about the Sundarbans ( the largest mangrove forest in the world, in India and Bangladesh, ed. ). Even then it was clear that there were major problems and that the weather patterns were going through bizarre changes. As you say, it remained difficult to do anything literary with that, because literature apparently doesn’t recognize that part of our reality. But then Hurricane Katrina hit the city of New Orleans in 2005, followed by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 in New York. I followed Katrina from Mauritius, a poor country that has a lot of experience with storms and has been well prepared for years. It was shocking to see the chaos and upheaval after Katrina in a rich country like the US. Prosperous countries generally still think they can escape, but that is an illusion.”

You interviewed Bangladeshi refugees in Italy in 2017 and noticed that climate change has been a reality for them for years. Why do you think it remains a far-from-my-bed show for the urban elites, of which you are a part?

“I think the seriousness can only sink in if we do a thought experiment. What would happen if such a severe cyclone hits a city like Mumbai (that’s what Bombay is called today, ed.), with more than 22 million inhabitants and two nuclear reactors? The consequences are too dramatic for our imagination. That would destroy one skyscraper after another, and the rapidly flying glass and steel like deadly projectiles would claim countless lives. Or consider what a longer blackout would do in a city like Phoenix, Arizona, built in the desert and far from natural water sources. That city could only be created in the 1940s due to the rise of air conditioning, today many retirees live there.”

“All of that will one day be a reality. Until now, many millions of cities have simply escaped it. Fortunately, after the publication of that book, Mumbai started to prepare more.”

Where do these illusions of invulnerability and control come from?

“There is a solid legacy of imperialism and colonialism, in which the logic of destruction is accepted as normal – the destruction of the ecosystem as well as of the weaker, non-white people who depended on that environment. Think of the centuries-long genocide on the native americans and their bison, after which their land was seized and exploited according to the needs of the newcomers.”

“In The curse of the nutmeg I investigated how Dutch mercenaries cleaned up the entire population of the island of Banda in order to get a monopoly on nutmeg. With many Euro-descendents (descendants of Europeans, ed. ) such historical experiences continue to the present day. People think they are stronger and more resilient. They have exploited great ecological destruction before and believe that, as then, only the others – the poor, the indigenous, the outsider – will suffer from disease and upheaval. Just look at the deforestation policy in Brazil.”

Don’t you give excessive weight to the past?

“British intellectuals are talking about “major demographic corrections” in the future, American billionaires are openly talking about their escape plan to Mars if it becomes unlivable here. Such ideas live and guide behavior, although not everyone expresses it that way. But it explains why the West predicted disaster for Africa at the start of the pandemic, when in fact the disaster hit Bergamo and New York. It is the reason why on the streets of New York mainly white young men walked without masks. Western apathy towards climate promises amounts to a death sentence for people of color. It is not difficult to see in it an echo of the many disrespected treaties between the American state and the United States native americans .”

Can such a feeling be substantiated? Can the accumulated prosperity of five centuries of colonialism protect Westerners?

“That too is an illusion. Obviously, the climate catastrophe will hit many people in the global South very hard. But constantly having to deal with a hostile environment also breeds a kind of resistance. Western societies currently lack that resistance. The white better middle class can also afford that. The European heat wave of 2003 claimed 70,000 lives, mostly of the helpless and isolated elderly. Asia regularly has heat waves and yet such a death toll is unheard of. Climate change could turn out very differently than we think.”

You see it blacker than black in?

“Yes, I am very pessimistic. Scientists and economists have described extensively how the poor can reasonably increase their carbon budget while the rich shrink their footprint a bit at the same time. But the reality is that western lifestyles are now becoming more rather than less carbon-intensive. Even in this energy crisis, yet an opportunity to make the switch, fossil fuels have been given a new impetus. Members of the native american Lakota communities have warned that ‘our past is your future’. And there are just too many factors holding back the move to a low-carbon economy.”

One of those factors, according to Ghosh, is the geopolitical power order itself, with the US still at the top for now. According to him, that order of power is addicted to petroleum. Whoever can extract or guard the most energy is the strongest. The US military emits five times more toxic waste than the five largest US chemical companies combined, and the material and energy consumption of its fighter jets and naval ships was deliberately excluded from the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

You wonder whether Western populations are psychologically “still capable of giving up some of their wealth and geopolitical prominence” for the planet. Is the choice really that black and white?

Geopolitics do cast a shadow over the climate debate. I don’t see any willingness on the part of Americans to accept that they may not be the greatest, most prosperous world power for much longer. Large parts of the world now live under Western sanctions. How can you enforce climate cooperation if you simultaneously use all kinds of sanctions against others? China ended its climate cooperation with the US a month ago cancelled . This is the total implosion of the institutions of international governance.”

“To be honest, I was very happy when French President Emmanuel Macron recently said that the era of abundance is over. It is important that Europeans hear this from their leaders, but few in power have the courage to do so.”

Didn’t the promise of collective impoverishment by the somewhat elitist Macron provoke enormous anger?

‘Yeah, I noticed that (laughs) , he got raging reactions. There are quite a few Europeans who rightly say that they have never been able to benefit from all that prosperity. Europeans are angry and hope for a magical solution, such as Brexit, which was also supposed to bring all salvation. I have never seen so much anger and polarization as this summer in Italy. Not in India and not in the US. Even in Sweden the extreme right is gaining ground.’

Should we resign ourselves to the idea that we will become impoverished?

“We are faced with a cultural problem: we can no longer imagine a different, smaller-scale life with fewer material demands. The marketing industry has sold us a grotesque mockery of our raison d’être. Prosperity is all about the intensive consumption of huge amounts of carbon and energy, even more than money itself.”

“But I have faith in young people. Some of them are beginning to see the problem and look for other ways. Actually, that’s our only hope. Because let’s face it, the West is already impoverished, it has already lost so much.”

How so?

“I see so many people around me in the US who are absolutely desperate, who no longer find human connection, peace or pleasure anywhere. Europe, on the other hand, has much of a theater set: on the surface everything still seems the same as before, but behind the scenes you have become completely dependent on migration. They are migrants who take care of the elderly, clean houses and do all essential manual labour. There would be no traditional Parmesan cheese production without the Sikh migrants from Punjab in Italy. The West should be more honest with itself and the world.”

But the patterns of desire and consumption are not exclusively Western, are they?

“No that is right. You even see them among the so-called climate refugees I spoke to in Italian camps. There were so many Pakistani and Bangladeshi young men, sometimes no more than boys, who had endured a life-threatening sea journey or torture in Libya. Their story often begins with a flood or failed harvests. Aspects of political persecution or discrimination are added, and finally they are convinced by the glittering photos of a friend by a car in a western city. Two generations ago, such men would move in with relatives for a few months after a flood, and then return to try to rebuild their village. Now they are leaving, because they see better alternatives on their smartphones. The West has become a victim of its own success. It has preached to emerging countries for decades that they are underdeveloped, that carbon-intensive lifestyles are superior, and more modest existences are barbaric or backward. Today everyone is part of that story. Is it any wonder that young people even sacrifice their lives for this?”

What is the end point of that pursuit of more? It appears from your book that the Dutch themselves eventually begin to exterminate the nutmeg trees captured through genocide on Banda, in an attempt to drive up the price.

“That waste is the real tragedy. On the one hand, there is all that looted colonial loot and all the efforts of so many. On the other hand, only a very small elite has been able to benefit from this for a while.”