This is the daily reality that many climate debates ignore

For billions of people in the polluted and less-developed parts of the world, a new beginning may signify a day when they wake up and simply smell clean air; a morning when the commute to work does not involve dodging piles of garbage littered on the roads, and the water drawn for the family comes from a river where industrial waste is not dumped with impunity.

As we approach 2026, my prayer is that we embrace a vision of environmental stewardship rooted in reality rather than hysteria — a vision that prioritizes clean rivers, land free of pollutants, and air cleared of smog, ensuring God’s creation remains as beautiful and just as He intended.

The tale of two worlds

During the 1990s, the contrast between the developing world and the West was stark. Asia and other regions had not yet caught up with the economic progress that defined Europe and North America. The last two decades, however, have brought exponential economic growth.

While this lifted millions out of abject poverty, it was accompanied by rapid, unplanned, and unstructured urban expansion. The result is a pollution crisis of staggering proportions in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Dhaka, Jakarta, Lahore, and Manila.

This is not the abstract computerized climate-change scenarios debated in air-conditioned conference rooms in Geneva or New York. This is tangible, visible pollution. It is the grey haze that burns your eyes and the stench of open drains that assaults your senses, something I experienced moments ago as I picked up my child from her school.

While the West has largely eliminated these issues, the Global South struggles. A look at the global waste index reveals that the highest levels of solid, liquid, and air pollution are concentrated in Africa, Asia, and South America.

This should not be surprising. There is a direct correlation between a nation's wealth and its environmental quality. High-income countries possess the ability to absorb damage and fund the technologies required to clean their surroundings. When a society struggles to put food on the table, environmental preservation becomes a luxury it cannot afford.

A recent global assessment estimates that 7.9 million deaths in 2023 were linked to air pollution, making dirty air the second leading risk factor for death worldwide. About 86% of those deaths are tied to non-communicable diseases like heart disease, stroke, lung disease, diabetes, and dementia.

More than 90% of those deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, where people face both outdoor pollution from traffic and industry and indoor pollution from cooking over wood, dung, or coal stoves. Death rates in South Asia and much of Africa can be eight to ten times higher than in high-income countries. This is the daily reality that many climate debates ignore. While activists in wealthy capitals call for bans on fossil fuels, poor families still cook in smoke-filled rooms and walk to work along streets lined with uncollected trash.

Christians who care about human life cannot look away from this. To tackle pollution, we require robust economic growth. We need the financial capacity to allocate funds for cleanup, to implement less polluting industrial technologies, and to offer waste-to-energy solutions.

We face a bizarre situation where the diversion of thought and funds toward trivial and unproven hypotheses about global warming has disrupted the attention and action needed to solve actual pollution problems. The global fixation on Carbon Dioxide—a colorless, odorless gas essential for plant life — has sucked the oxygen out of the room for real environmentalism.

Take my city as a prime example. Our lakes are foaming with toxic chemicals, garbage lines the streets, and the Air Quality Index (AQI) can spike to hazardous levels on any given day due to dust from unmaintained roads. These roads are infamous for potholes as large as small lunar craters. It is a public health hazard that affects millions daily.

Yet, despite this reality, the city administration pushes electric vehicle (EV) public transport buses as part of a larger "climate action" agenda. This is a classic case of misplaced priorities. The administration allocates vast sums to subsidize EVs to lower a theoretical global temperature by a fraction of a degree a century from now, the consequences of which for human health and life would be trivial, while the very citizens paying for these buses are choking on dust and watching their local water bodies die.

Imagine if a fraction of that sum were used to reduce dust pollution, clean the lakes where fish and migratory birds are falling dead, and pave roads so that one's nostrils are not blocked by particulate matter. We are fighting an imaginary climate crisis while ignoring the real pollution crisis that is killing our neighbors.

Pray that this coming year will be a turning point for the many who live in life-disrupting pollution. Advocate for environmental policies that allow the poor to rise out of poverty, thereby giving them the capacity to care for their local environments — the ones that actually affect their health. Champion the use of reliable energy sources that clear the air inside the homes of the most vulnerable.

Pray for a revival of the heart — for a removal of the “heart of stone” that drives the widespread corruption behind the climate-alarmist agenda — so that our resources can be used to clean the rivers, the lands, and the air.