Code Red: What it will take to make it through the summer

There is a power outage in a small town.

Wet-bulb temperature, a metric that combines air temperature and humidity to indicate whether humans can cool through sweating, has crossed a dangerous threshold.

People went into the lake to survive.

But the lake became hot, and they perished there.

Of course, this is science fiction. or is it?

And for how long?

***

When Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew was asked in 1999 what made the transformation possible in his country, he listed air conditioning as a major factor.

He stated that, as a technology, it had changed the nature of civilization by enabling continuous work in tropical regions. One of his first acts as Prime Minister, in the 1960s (he was Prime Minister from 1959 to 1990), was to install air conditioning in government buildings.

Thermal comfort is not a luxury that low-income citizens in developing countries should be entitled to when they become wealthy. It is a prerequisite for the productive, cognitive, human work that makes countries prosperous.

Singapore understood this, and did not postpone cooling as a luxury until prosperity arrived. It prospered partly because it decided that extreme heat, with all its consequences, was a problem to be solved rather than a condition to be tolerated.

We are not there yet. And it is costing us dearly.

According to the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, India could lose an estimated 247 billion potential labor hours due to extreme heat in 2024 alone.

This translates to $194 billion in potential income losses from heat-related reductions in labor capacity, much of it in agriculture and construction.

This is how we measure impact because it shows up more clearly in economics in terms of harm to institutions than human suffering. Of course, the real question facing us is even deeper: how do we, as a country of over 1.4 billion, want to prepare for a world that will likely soon exceed the 1.5 degree warming limit (above pre-industrial levels)?

***

For now, we consider cooling as a distinct benefit.

Air-conditioned offices, homes, cars and railway coaches are luxuries for very few. For example, only 30% of the coaches operated by Indian Railways are air-conditioned. In terms of seats, the difference is even greater: about 78% of all railway berths are non-air-conditioned.

We saw the launch of Vande Bharat in 2019, a gleaming, fully air-conditioned rail service priced accordingly, with sleeper fares per person starting at around ₹1,000. We saw Amrit Bharat launching in 2024. Modern but distinctly non-AC, its sleeper fares start per person ₹149.

We don’t yet have a third option: trains that are temperature-controlled and affordable.

In a country where heat kills hundreds of people every year, this pattern is repeated in urban transport, housing, offices, schools, hospitals.

The burden of increasing heat falls disproportionately on lower income groups. Informal and daily-wage workers do not receive holiday pay and pay for hot days through reduced working hours, which may mean less food on the plate or none at all.

Viewing heat not as an inherent condition of life but as a manageable variable will require some updating of our worldview. And, increasingly, a threat. Countries that are planning for this new reality will be in the best position to limit the human toll.

Of course, India is not alone in struggling to bring about change. This dilemma is visible in countries around the world.

The Guardian reported last week that an estimated 4 million homes in Britain now have air conditioning, almost half the number three years ago. Electricity costs remain a concern; As does the pressure on the grid and the carbon cost of cooling.

***

Meanwhile, the scale of the problem is changing in a way that barely requires detail at this point.

On average, the number of heatwave days in India (adding monitoring stations) has increased from 413 per year between 1981 and 1990 to about 600 per year between 2011 and 2020. These days are now experienced across wider geographies as well.

All these figures are sure to increase further.

In 2024, the country recorded the highest number of heatwave days in the season running from February to September since 2010. That year, Indians faced 366 hours more intense heat than the average for the 1990s, according to the same Lancet Countdown report on health and climate change.

Some studies indicate that by the end of the century, heat levels in parts of the Gangetic plains may exceed the level at which it becomes unsafe for humans to work outdoors.

A dystopian scenario depicted in Robinson’s book could be headed our way.

As that scenario moves out of the realm of imagination, there is a strong economic argument to be made, in the language of policymakers, for universal cooling of spaces that shape long-term human capital: classrooms, exam halls, anganwadis, hospitals, transit centres, recreation centres.

Research shows that high temperatures significantly reduce performance during the school year. A 2025 study examining the impact of temperature on school results, published by the Department of Land Economics at the University of Cambridge, suggests that a 0.64 degree increase in average temperature could reduce pass rates by 3%.

We already know this. A child is sweating in his 10th class board exam in his home room, struggling with his surroundings and not able to give his best. She will bear the burden of this through her early years; And possibly for life.

In fact, in large parts of India, extreme heat is traditionally considered too dangerous for children.

This is the reason why the timing of annual school holidays is kept the same. Some states, acknowledging the risk, have reopened schools and are still running only half-day sessions. All this is another way of saying that we are aware of the potential pitfalls, and we have organized our calendar around it rather than trying to address it.

We track whether each school has electricity, toilet, laboratory with computers. But we do not track whether the structure is thermally safe or not.

What we measure, we manage. What we cannot measure, we tolerate silently.

In a warming world, our usual approach of accepting resignations is a danger in itself.

***

What will it take to change this? Where does the effort to pacify more than 1.4 billion people begin?

The India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP), first published by the Union Environment Ministry in 2019, presents a long-term ambition. A healthy future, for many, will depend on India building a mindset that treats cooling not as an indulgence but as critical infrastructure.

It may also help to re-imagine some of the active barriers to cooling.

A useful example is slab pricing, where the cost per unit of electricity increases rapidly beyond a certain point. The logic is sound: basic electricity use should remain affordable, and heavy consumption should cost more. But as the heat increases, as the line between luxury and essential consumption blurs in some areas, cooling could be penalized by slab pricing.

For example, a well-insulated, well-designed home with a modern, efficient AC unit draws less electricity than a home with a tin roof and a power-guzzling second-hand air conditioner. This means the latter household may have to pay more per degree of cooling (assuming it has access at all).

We have not paid attention to such issues because our imagination is stuck in the world we have lived in for a long time: closed markets, imported ACs, airy houses and manageable heat. Today’s dense cement jungle, with its urban heat islands and rising temperatures, bears little resemblance to this old vision. The once-dry Indian plains are also changing: Scorching heat is increasing humidity and emerging storm systems are carrying water vapor farther than ever before.

A developed India will be one where a certain range of basic needs of every household is met. A phone. A television or computer. thermal protection.

And there are ways to do it.

The World Bank estimates that the green cooling pathway for India could generate investment opportunities worth $1.6 trillion by 2040, and create about 3.7 million jobs in sectors such as domestic manufacturing, technician training, quality control and green energy infrastructure.

Universal cooling is a good economic agenda. Can it also be green?

Click here We will need to have a conversation on that front to take a look at the trade-offs.

(Kashyap Kompela is a tech industry analyst and author of three books on AI)