Distinct

Well, do you know.. Do you know Antarctica once had tropical rainforest, Saharas contained extensive vegetation, lakes and river systems. Major parts of the USA were covered in ice sheets, while the Himalayas were submerged under the ocean. 

Yes, the mighty Himalayas, the climatic gateway of the continent of Asia, were once lying under Sea level. It is said that the Indian tectonic plate separated from the African tectonic plate and moved rapidly northward towards the Eurasian tectonic plate and collided with it. Continued compression from the collision caused enormous amounts of crust to fold, fault and rise, producing much of the Himalayan and Tibetan Plateau landscape. 

Apart from being called the climatic gateway of Asia because it greatly influences the climate of Asian continent, the Himalayas are also one of the youngest mountain range in the world because it is still growing. I mean the Indian tectonic plate continues to collide with the Eurasian plate at around 1 cm every year, allowing the Himalayas to grow by at most 1 mm every year. This makes the Himalayan, Hindukush region and the Tibetan Plateau vulnerable and susceptible not just climatically but also geologically, environmentally, and hydrologically.

I belong to the climatically and torrentially rich terrain of the subcontinent of India which in ways more than we can count on is responsible for the Himalayas, the climatic gateway of Asia. As of August 26th, 2026, when the southern end of India, the state of Kerala, was taking part in its annual harvest festival of Onam, there in the northern trails of the Himalayas, on the Tibetan side and much closer to the country of Nepal, a catastrophic flash flood was unfolding. A high-altitude rock-and-glacier collapse, which recorded a seismic activity equivalent to a magnitude 5.2 earthquake, sent a massive surge of mud, rock and water downstream through the Gyirong–Rasuwa corridor, devastating settlements, roads, bridges and hydropower infrastructure. The flood struck with extraordinary speed, leaving little time for people to react. By early September, the disaster had claimed at least 1,380 lives across Nepal and Tibet, with approximately 5,500 people still missing; on the Tibetan side alone, authorities reported 43 deaths and 519 missing. 

This climatic cataclysm in the Himalayas is not an isolated event if we consider the recent occurrences around the world. To name a few, Indonesian Volcanic Eruptions affecting approximately 3 lakhs 40 thousand people, the ongoing Japan floods affecting around 5000 people, the Turkey Wildfire affecting around 1000 people, the European Heatwave affecting around 35 thousand people, the China tropical storms and floods affecting approximately 6 lakhs people, the Canada thunderstorms affecting 65 thousand people, the Philippines floods affecting approximately 74 lakhs 67 thousand people, the Borneo Wildfires in Indonesia destroying 2 lakhs hectors of land, the Indian floods and landslides affecting more than 19 lakhs 44 thousand people, Pakistan floods and the recent Afghan floods affecting around 3000 people.

And when the UN Environment Programme released its assessment report on September 3rd, the warning seemed to arrive almost as an echo of what had already unfolded in the Himalayas a few days earlier. This UN Environment Programme assessment warned that the world is now set to cross the 1.5°C warming threshold which was estimated a few months ago under the light of events which followed after the observed phenomenon of El Nino. This exceedance is likely to occur within the next few years, and even the most ambitious pathways imply a period of “overshoot” before temperatures could potentially be brought back down. The significance is not merely the number itself, but what follows from it: greater climatic instability, intensifying extremes, pressure on food and water systems, ecosystem disruption and a growing exposure to events that existing infrastructure and communities were never designed to withstand. And so, placed beside the Himalayan catastrophe, the September 3rd warning reads less like a distant prediction and more like a continuation of the same conversation, a reminder that what appears today as an isolated climatic disaster may become a recurring manifestation of a much larger instability, potentially leading to the total uninhabitability of Earth.

The anomaly that is Planet Earth.. 

Like every other planet in our Solar System, Earth has evolved under the influence of the sole star in its solar system, the Sun. And I am coming straight to the point here: does the sustenance of life on this planet, and if life is possible elsewhere in this Solar System, depend only on the energy supplied by the Sun? I would say no, because Earth itself, the only known planet to support life is not constituted entirely by what comes from the Sun. Around 71% of Earth's surface is covered by water, while the remaining 29% is land, but neither its oceans nor its landmasses can simply be attributed to solar influence. The Sun's radiation is fundamental to Earth's climate, weather and hydrological cycle, while the solar wind interacts with and influences our upper atmosphere and magnetosphere. Yet Earth also possesses its own internal sources of energy, its mantle, metallic core, magnetic field, geological activity and chemical composition, all of which are independent of the Sun as physical constituents of the planet. When we speak of Earth's water, we are also not speaking merely of surface water shaped by solar energy; substantial quantities of water and hydrogen are stored within Earth's crust and mantle, incorporated into minerals, with their isotopic signatures—including predominantly ¹H (protium), with a small amount of ²H (deuterium, D) and trace ³H (tritium)- hydrogen isotopic waters providing clues to the history and origin of Earth's own water supplied from elsewhere other than the Sun. These mentioned internal processes, together with gravity, atmospheric conditions and geological activity, have helped shape and maintain the planet we inhabit. 

Therefore, it is safe to say that Earth, like the other planets of our Solar System, exists not merely as a passive recipient of energy from the Sun, but as a planetary system with its own accumulated matter, internal energy and evolutionary history. The Sun may be considered fundamental, but it is certainly not the sole constituent of Earth's existence as a planet nor the life which could sustain on it. 

The evolution of the wonder of life on Earth.. 

I would say when the Sun, Jupiter and its own Moon came together in our own Earth's endeavour, life became a consequence of this greater coincidence and us, just benefactors. Whether life arrived through a process entirely terrestrial or whether some of its building blocks travelled through space, I stand neutral on Panspermia but inferentially, meteors traverse amino blocks. In that perspective, every living matter is genetically mutated and evolved infestation given the right ecosystem, humans inclusive. Perhaps our distinction is not that we were chosen to exist, but that we became capable of understanding that we exist. And with that understanding comes a responsibility that extends beyond our own survival.

As I already stated the Earth carries its own matter, its own internal energy, its geological processes and its own history which is a critical factor supporting life. And yes, the Sun sustains much of the energy upon which surface life depends, humanity has become an active participant in shaping the conditions under which that life continues. We have built cities, altered landscapes, redirected rivers, extracted resources and transformed ecosystems at a scale no previous species has achieved. That ability is both our greatest achievement and perhaps our greatest liability. We can protect life, but we can also create conditions in which life becomes increasingly vulnerable.

#Distinct

Yes, there is a distinction and you can't keep on crevicing the latter in the name of development and progress without partaking in the impact. What we would rather need is a blatant hypothetical relocation. Tackle the climatically vulnerable first and then ask the larger questions of development, infrastructure and economic ambition. If vulnerability is already visible, then the first responsibility cannot be to move ahead or progress forward without considering the weight of catastrophe and its destruction in terms of life. Because, we are only as resourceful and efficient as what is already available on Earth not hypothetically available to extract from elsewhere. So, I believe that our first responsibility should be to anticipate where the impact will fall and move protection, resources and people accordingly. Because any given day, what is distant from Earth is only a conceptual potential or a faraway possibility, nothing else.

When the visuals from the recent flash floods were circulating in the Internet, it was hard to ignore the disturbing petiteness of everything living in front of the downstream flow of the debris. Against the scale of a mountain, a river or a collapsing glacier, the individual appears almost insignificant. And let me remind you once again, these petiteness, the living individuals are exactly what we are supposed to protect. When the Rasuwagadhi border building collapsed, there were people running towards the collapsed structure seeking only shelter, not knowing the actual scale of what is about to engulf them along with the shelter they sought.  They were not negotiating with the climate, nor were they attempting to extract something from nature at that moment. They were simply attempting to return to the place where they believed they were safe.

The green coloured engineering marvel constructed within the river basin, quite ironic symbolism to describe a small house which is constructed in par with the relatively recent building construction standards, isn't it ? I would say Faith is an easy choice for these people, yes I would have to bring up Faith in this context because these people were not aiming large scale development or industry expansion when they set up their simple and mostly uncemented horizontal structures, hoping to be sheltered within the river basin of the downstream. Would Science ever be an affordable option for them? When the other unsafe horizontal structures collapsed, claiming lives, the left alone houses along with their survivors lost their entire lifetime earnings to the downstream. What appears from a distance to be a question of technological advancement can, from within the affected community, be a question of affordability. Science may know the risk, engineering may understand the vulnerability and satellites may observe the changing landscape, but knowledge has little meaning to a community that cannot afford the protection it recommends because in effect they are staying away from accelerating the anthropogenic climatic impacts and hardly ever contributing to the global emissions.

The concept of climatic justice..

This is also where the question of climatic justice becomes unavoidable. I won't ignore the distinction which surfaces in every incident, as these.. Distinctions between those who contribute to the problem and those who get exposed to its consequences are not distributed equally. But one thing is sure, those who were totally unbothered about resources or profit gains cant be made direct pawns of the ecosystem vulnerabilities. Because when life itself is a consequence of Coincidential positioning of stellar attributes why would us humans be the benefactors for life when we have every right to be the beneficiaries? Yes, in a place where life is clearly granted and you are the sole beneficiaries, you are actually the ones who have to pay and procure it? Funny, isn't it? And even absurd is that those who happen to inhabit the most vulnerable geographical locations are increasingly being asked to absorb consequences that extend far beyond their individual contribution. Accounting to less than 0.1% of global emissions, Nepal is advancing to seek climatic justice and compensation instead of disaster aid for this flash flood incident. Pity on them for seeking justice isn't it, because who is going to pay for that whilst everyone else they are about to point out is paying their own dues? Well, the stats of global emissions is as follows.. China — 32%, USA — 13%, India — 8%. These developed nations being the major beneficiaries of the ecosystem assimilation, would they be willing to pay the price and take up the responsibility ?

Our collective responsibility..

I would say, what this situation demands is a clear case of 'conflict of interest', a clarity of distinctions, a settlement of discrepancies between basic necessities and additional resources. Because given the intertwining of modes of available resource utilisation, it has become evidently hard to distinguish when the collective consciousness converts to personal gains, when exposed to immense potential of the available resources without a clear borderline. And one cannot allow geography to become a sentence imposed upon those who happened to be born in a vulnerable region. Nor can development become an excuse to continuously place human settlements in the path of known environmental risks while leaving the consequences to the people with the fewest resources to recover.

Humanity's contribution to sustaining life, therefore, cannot be measured merely by how efficiently we extract from the planet or how technologically advanced we become. It must also be measured by how effectively we protect the vulnerable, restore what we have disturbed and use our accumulated knowledge to prevent predictable suffering. If science can identify an approaching risk, engineering can provide a solution and resources can enable relocation, then failing to act becomes more than an unfortunate consequence; it becomes a choice. And trust me it has to be taken personal, and clearly beyond the CSR initiatives of companies which are also the first in first serve consumers of what could have been fairly distributed resources in the first place because if theirs is a 10% to 15% give back schemes for what they take, your personal contribution could cape up to 40% to 45% cumulatively. Because alarmingly enough, as we progress forward we are also in a phase where solutions have to be found for cultivated problems rather than the existing ones. 

Last but not least we have learnt about extinctions, collapsed civilisations, and now we are witnessing disasters. This planet has survived immense changes long before humanity arrived and it will probably survive whatever we eventually become. The question is whether humanity will preserve the conditions that allow us, the humanity itself to remain part of that story. 

Our intelligence gave us the ability to reshape our environment; perhaps maturity is recognising that this ability does not give us ownership of it. May our reality not become the adversary, may our ambition not become the calamity our posterity remembers us by.

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