Fire and Ice: Soot, Solidarity, and Survival on the Roof of the World

Though soot may seem to be “relatively harmless, a minor irritant, a small price to pay for the fire’s warmth and light,” environment writer Mingle shows us otherwise in this fascinating work. He details the detrimental effects of black carbon on health and the environment and its contributions to climate change, focusing in particular on Kumik, a village “in the sparsely populated, arid mountain reaches of northwest India.” Villagers there light wood or dung fires to cook with and to heat their homes, doing so out of necessity in the absence of gas or electricity. Their stoves are a significant air pollutant and respiratory hazard. Snowfall in Kumik has also declined in recent decades, and locals “often [run] out of water by mid-August, sometimes sooner, in the critical weeks before the harvest.” Pollution, global warming, and water shortages are not unrelated. All this matters, Mingle contends, because something similar has been happening in places such as California’s Central Valley, a major agricultural region whose water happens to be among the most highly polluted in the U.S. The parallels are remarkable, and readers who might not have given much thought about a remote Indian village will understand its contemporary relevance. [em](Mar.) [/em]