Climate Action Summit: PM Modi says “Act Now” going against his own 2014 statement denying climate change

Prime Minister Modi addressed the Climate Action Summit passionately calling for immediate action towards climate change.

However, a statement by him a few months after he had assumed office in 2014, provides a different narrative by him.

“Climate has not changed. We have changed…our tolerance and habits have changed. If we change then God has built the system in such a way that it can balance on its own.” This was PM Narendra Modi’s statement in 2014 when he took to addressing students on Teacher’s Day.

During his address, he claimed that climate change is a result of us forgetting our Shastras.

Then he went on for the next 6 minutes repeatedly enunciating Culture, Shastra, invoking Hindu scripture, telling how Chaand is Mamu for all children in India and then he ended with a suggestion that everyone should practise inserting a thread into a needle in the moonlight!

In a country that faces power cuts on a daily basis, the idea of spending an evening in the dark is not a novelty, but PM Modi in his address somehow made it appear desirable. Here are the video and a few old tweets:

His statement at the UN also directly goes against his own actions in the country, the most recent being the BJP government’s efforts to cut down trees of Aarey forests in Mumbai.

Here are just a few facts which contradict his statements in the UN Climate Action Summit:

• In the Modi regime, India’s Environmental Performance Index Rank slipped from 155 to 177, becoming the fourth worst performing country in the world.
• Modi government had slashed forest budgets by 50% in 2014. A major law prohibiting new projects in forests without tribal consent was scrapped.
• Eight of the most polluted 12 cities are in India.
• According to a 2017 study, there are an estimated 1.24 million deaths from air pollution in India annually.

With such a dismal track record regarding the environment, how can the prime minister urge other world leaders to act to save environment?

Twitterati was quick to point out this hypocrisy of Narendra Modi. Here are a few tweets: