In May, 16-year-old student Aman Sharma launched a petition on Change.org after being inspired by teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. Sharma noticed that each year was becoming hotter, drier, thirstier, and more polluted, prompting him to take action to pressure the government. He believes that remaining silent will have dire consequences for future survival. Sharma's petition has gathered over 170,000 signatures, and he is also calling on the environment ministry to increase the country's green cover and fulfill commitments made under the 2015 Paris climate agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Despite repeated requests for comment, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has not responded. With support from various film personalities, Sharma's goal is to gain the attention of Hollywood environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio. On Wednesday, DiCaprio shared a photo on Instagram showing women in Chennai drawing water from a nearly empty well, highlighting the daily struggles faced by many residents. Chennai has received international attention due to its reservoirs drying up, mainly due to poor monsoons in 2018, leading to water rationing. A government report from last year predicted that Chennai was one of 21 cities that would run out of groundwater by 2020, as India grapples with its worst water crisis in history, putting 600 million people at risk of severe shortages. Meanwhile, a heatwave in the north has claimed 36 lives this year, with New Delhi experiencing record-breaking temperatures. Jitendra Sharma, a well-known Instagram influencer based in Mumbai, initiated a petition this week that garnered almost 300,000 signatures by Friday. He expressed optimism that the government would declare a climate emergency, emphasizing the importance of this step and pointing to other countries that have already taken similar actions. In May, the British parliament declared a symbolic climate change "emergency" in response to a growing activist movement, particularly among young people in Europe. Though the concept of a climate emergency lacks a single definition, environmentalist Chandra Bhushan described it as prioritizing climate change in policy and planning decisions. Bhushan from the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi explained that the Indian government will need to acknowledge the crisis at hand and establish a plan of action. He emphasized that despite the government's current stance on climate emergency, it is inevitable that they will have to address it in the future.