Satish Kumar: Creating a Sense of the Sacred

   A wise and beautiful soul. 

May the wisdom of Satish Kumar 

inform and inspire us all. 

🙏 Molly

Photo by Molly

Wisdom Quotes From 

Satish Kumar

There is at the moment in the world a battle going on between those who are pursuing materialistic paths ― globalizers of economic growth and those hell-bent on this 'big is better' idea ― on the one hand, and on the other hand those who are dedicated to spiritual renewal, more small-scale development, more human scale, more sustainability, more crafts and arts. Where human beings are not just sold to companies and money and those kinds of things. Where human beings have a sacred path.

The force and the strength for peace will come from people. And that will happen when people start to realize that all the diversity and differences we see of nationalities, of religions, of cultures, of languages, are all beautiful diversities, for they are only on the surface. And deep down we share the same humanity, the global humanity.

We live under the power of Modern Consciousness, which means that we are obsessed with progress. Wherever you are is not good enough. We always want to achieve something, rather than experience something. The opposite of this is Spiritual Consciousness. By that I mean you find enchantment in every action you do, rather in just the results of your action. Spiritual Consciousness is not a particular religion but a way of being.

Look at what realists have done for us. They have led us to war and climate change, poverty on an unimaginable scale, and wholesale ecological destruction. Half of humanity goes to bed hungry because of all the realistic leaders in the world. I tell people who call me 'unrealistic' to show me what their realism has done. Realism is an outdated, overplayed and wholly exaggerated concept.

At the moment, for example, maybe ten percent of money in the world is related to goods and services. Ninety percent of money is just moving around the world, chasing money. So, money has become the ruler. And we have become the servant. 

We are not slaves of the market. Our human life has a greater meaning than making money, making profit, and working for the market or for multinational corporations. 

In addition to world conflicts, the most challenging problem we face today is hunger, deprivation and social injustice. Because we're ruled by separate self-interest, we go on accumulating personal wealth, ignoring the well being of the others.

The scientific world, the materialistic world, the world of commerce, the world of business, the world of individualism, the world of capitalism, world of communism - all these worlds are the old story now. Where we think we exploit nature, we exploit people. Market rules, profit rules, money rules. We work for name, fame, power, money, profit. That's the old story. 

Speed is one of the great curses of modern civilization, obsession with speed leads to quantitative approach; we come to believe that more is better. This is very materialistic, we have to realize that it is the quality of life, quality of relationships, quality of food, medicine, education and everything else which matters. 

Someone, somewhere, needs to take courage to break the cycle of violence. Forgiveness is superior to justice. Being kind and compassionate to those who are good to you is easy. True forgiveness and compassion come only when one is able to forgive even those who have committed barbaric acts. 

We must realize that violence is not confined to physical violence. Fear is violence, caste discrimination is violence, exploitation of others, however subtle, is violence, segregation is violence, thinking ill of others and condemning others are violence. In order to reduce individual acts of physical violence, we must work to eliminate violence at all levels, mental, verbal, personal, and social, including violence to animals, plants, and all other forms of life.

Fire cannot be put out with more fire.

Economy without ecology means managing the human nature relationship without knowing the delicate balance between humankind and the natural world.

We depend on the gifts of nature, but these gifts must be received with gratitude and not exploited or abused.

What we call 'economic growth' is in fact a growth in waste and a decline in the health of natural habitat.

Earth is a living entity. And if it's a living organism, then we have to have a reverence for all life. Food should be local, organic rather than grown with chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides. 

Without the land, the rivers, the oceans, the forests, the sunshine, the minerals and thousands of natural resources we would have no economy whatsoever. 

Our relationship with Nature... the best way of forging this relationship... be a pilgrim and not a tourist on Planet Earth.

This was Mahatma Gandhi’s idea, moving from ownership to relationship —

seeing that land does not belong to us. We belong to the land. We are not the owners of the land. We are the friends of the land, like friends of the earth. The fundamental shift is in this consciousness that land does not belong to us, we belong to the land. 

In fact, the environmental crisis is related to the crisis of aesthetics, crisis of social cohesion and the crisis of spiritual values. 

All the big problems of the world today are routed in the philosophy of separateness and dualism. 

If you can kill animals, the same attitude can kill human beings. The mentality is the same which exploits nature and which creates wars.

If we had adhered to the concept of connectedness, then we would not have created nuclear weapons, huge armies and global warming. 

The way to healthy living is to shift from quantitative economic growth to quality of life, food, water and air - to shift from craving to contentment and from greed to gratitude.  

Wars and conflicts begin in the mind, then they are expressed in words and then executed through physical action, so personal transformation is intricately connected with the social and political transformation.

Instead of seeking success we should look for fulfillment. And fulfillment is giving total attention to the process of living.

The great work of social transformation begins with the first small step of stopping, calming, relaxing, reflecting and acting in a beneficial way. 

Through yoga, meditation and other spiritual practices, we can learn the ways of personal equanimity. We can also learn how to use language in beneficial ways.

Whatever lessens suffering in yourself and others, that is right. Whatever increases suffering, that is wrong. The answer is within you. When you are free of pride and prejudice, when you are calm and attentive, a light will shine within you. Through meditation and through being mindful you will find your own knowledge of rightness. You will be your own light.  

We need to learn to live in the here and now; this moment is the best moment. Live it fully.

We human beings are spiritual beings. We have soul. We have spirit. We have mind. We have consciousness. We want fulfillment, we want happiness, we want satisfaction, we want joy. We want imagination. We want art, culture, music.

Human happiness, true prosperity and joyful living can only emerge from a life of elegant simplicity, embedded in the arts and crafts. 

We have to shift our attitude of ownership of nature to relationship with nature. The moment you change from ownership to relationship, you create a sense of the sacred.

If individuals start to walk on the path of spirit and feel a sense of the sacred connectedness, then social, economic and political problems will also begin to get resolved. 

Happiness is possible only when we are kind to others and contented within. 

Your children are not your children. They are lives longing for itself. They come here with their own destiny. Give them your love. They will find their own way. 

Large numbers of young people are waking up. And they are saying, "We are not here just to work for multinational corporations and make money for them. We are here to live. We have to find the meaning of life.

The old story is a story of measurement. And the New Story is to bring measurement and meaning together. You cannot measure meaning. 

I want to see a New Story education, which is not only about intellectual knowledge — not only about measurement — not only about academic achievement. It is also about heart, feelings, emotions, relationship, love, compassion, generosity, beauty. All these values are part of the heart. 

We are dependent on each other. Therefore, replenishing the soil, replenishing society and being part of one continuum — that's the new story. 

Sometimes I come across a tree which seems like Buddha or Jesus: loving, compassionate, still, unambitious, enlightened, in eternal meditation, giving pleasure to a pilgrim, shade to a cow, berries to a bird, beauty to its surroundings, health to its neighbors, branches for the fire, leaves for the soil, asking nothing in return, in total harmony with the wind and the rain. How much can I learn from a tree? The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra, the tree is my poem and my prayer. 

Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth; Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust; Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace; Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.

https://highprofiles.info/interview/satish-kumar/

Robert Hunziker: Do We Still Have Time?

I highly recommend the work of Robert Hunziker

to everyone.  — Molly  

Houses are partially submerged in muddy water along a river in Nepal's Nuwakot district Wednesday. Prabin Ranabhat / AFP via Getty Images 

Do We Still Have Time?

By Robert Hunziker

“We still have time” has been superseded by “How much worse can it get.”

The world has been turned upside down by a destructive, out-of-control global climate system. “Unprecedented” is found in every corner of the planet. There are no safe harbors, whilst disillusionment and anger build amongst 8.3 billion people. Indeed, climate deniers are at risk of being run out of town on a rail.

Along the way, oil, gas, coal producers quietly collect billions of dollars on the back of massive CO2 emissions bursting into the atmosphere. Oil, gas, coal are the primary sources of CO2 emissions (a record high 38GtCO2 in 2025) that cause global heat and climate-related disasters. It’s not at all surprising that anecdotal evidence points to a growing swell of public anger over failure to politically address climate change.

Nevertheless, as long as 8.3 billion inhabitants of the planet remain docile, while some may be angry, accepting fossil fuel poison of the atmosphere, with extreme heat, then they’ll simply have to realize it’s a brutal fact of life and learn to live with it. On the other hand, if they refuse, that’s an altogether different story; it’s messy!

Pockets of dissent: “This heat is political. It is where climate change driven by corporate greed and political failure collides with people’s rights, lives, and livelihoods,” according to Marta Schaaf, Program Director for Climate, ESJ and Corporate Accountability at Amnesty International.

Schaaf’s thesis “political failure collides with people’s rights” can only be resolved one of two ways: (1) change politics to align with people’s rights (2) people’s lives are trampled to smithereens. Take your choice. At this nerve-rattling stage of climate change there is no middle ground.

Scientists Speak Out

The world’s leading climate scientists are speaking out to address a host of issues that have been largely ignored by the oligarch-led political class that’s inexhaustibly funded by Citizens United* to wit:

(1) Why are wildfire infernos hitting Europe and North America so hard? Extreme, high-intensity wildfire infernos have more than doubled globally since 2000. (A Look at Two Decades of Wildfires Globally, YaleEnvironment360)

(2) How is it possible that 30% of global land is trapped in ongoing drought conditions versus only 10%-to-12% in the year 2000, triple drought conditions within only one generation? (The New Normal: 2025 Data Reveals a Fundamental Shift in Global Drought, DowntoEarth). In total, according to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, drylands now make up 40.6% of all land on Earth. Dryland refers to arid, semi-arid, or dry sub-humid areas where water is scarce

(3) Why are the world’s oceans over-heating year-by-year, non-stop, to ridiculous levels threatening marine life? According to the Met Office (London), year-end 2025 ocean heat content (OHC) continued to set new yearly records, every year consecutively for nine years. (Ocean Heat Content Sets Another Record in 2025, University Corporation of Atmospheric Research, UCAR). “Marine Mammals are Dying in Record Numbers Along the California Coast,” LA Times, Oct. 3, 2025

Global sea surface temperatures (SST) were the highest ever recorded for the month of July 2026, according to both NOAA and Copernicus.

(4) Why have the 10 hottest years in recorded history of humanity all occurred over the last decade? (This is How Scientists Measure Global Temperature, NASA)

(5) In the face of a rip-snorting climate system that breaks every known scientific barrier, what does the future hold, and what can be done about a climate system that terrorizes humanity?

Asia’s Leading Climate Scientist

Ben Horton, Dean of the School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong, and a leading coastal scientist specializing in sea-level change, is widely considered Asia’s top climate expert. He was recently interviewed by South China Morning Post, July 10, 2026.

Sample quote: “There’s this phrase that right now ‘we are experiencing the worst weather of our lifetimes.’ But for our children, this year is the best weather of their lifetimes because adapting to the climate of 2026 is pointless. The climate of 2027 and 2028 and 2029 and 2030 is going to be worse.”

The world has been grappling with a barrage of disasters as the climate system becomes more unstable. Dr. Horton mentions predictions made by climate scientists as far back as the 1990s now playing out, e.g., Hong Kong is having record-breaking heat, the highest the city has ever experienced. Shanghai had record-breaking flooding. The U.S. has the warmest July since record-keeping started. European cities have all had record-breaking temperatures, record-breaking heat waves, record-breaking wildfires, record-breaking drought.

Years ago, it was stated, “that if greenhouse gases were continued to be put into the atmosphere, it would raise global temperatures on land and in the ocean, which, in turn, would cause extremes that hurt people throughout the world.”

Dr. Horton has been involved in ‘cutting edge’ experiments of “climate change attribution,” or how much any individual event is caused by climate change. Ten years ago, Horton did pioneer studies that looked at tropical cyclones and the influence of climate change. “Now, we see events that would have been impossible without climate change.”

“We Cannot Adapt Our Way Out of This”

There’s been a fundamental shift in the climate system, and longing for the friendly stable climate era of the past is out of the question. “Based upon physics, we’re not going to go back to the stable climates of 10, 20, 30 years ago.”

According to Horton, chatter about “adaptation” assumes we’ll see a stable system. But in the real world of today “adapting to the climate of 2026 is pointless because the climate of 2027 and 2028 and 2029 and 2030 is going to be worse… Going forward, unless we address this problem, it will only get worse to a point when adaptation is futile… we cannot adapt our way out of this.”

Horton solution: “The only answer is to change our energy mix and move from petroleum which is driving this problem and move to renewable energy. The issue of whether it’s too big of a problem to handle is exactly what vested interest in fossil fuels want people to believe. It’s not!”

A Small Minority Holds Society Hostage to CO2

Fortunately, society knows more about the natural world and how the earth works than at any time in history. We know what happens when we increase greenhouse gases. We also know the solutions. We have alternatives to consider. “But the frustration is that we’re all held back by a very, very small number of people.” (Horton)

Worst Case Scenario

The worst case, assuming we don’t take immediate action: “Paleoclimate history has shown that relatively small forcing factors can have big consequences. It’s all about planetary boundaries, according to Dr. Horton: “That we as a civilization for the past 8,000 years have grown from nomadic to developing the first cities to a huge amazing technological planet living in cities, but we live within a very small planetary boundary. The problem is when we go beyond that boundary and then stay beyond, civilizations don’t exist.”

Additionally, the climate change dilemma cannot ignore the astronomical population explosion post WWII, tripling from 2.5B to 8.3B within only a couple of generations, putting a lid on nature’s capabilities: “There are think tanks that claim Earth can only support maybe three billion people.”

We’re overshooting Earth’s capabilities which requires a change in socio-economic behavior from focus on infinite growth to husbanding finite resources.

What to do?

Horton’s viewpoint: “Net Zero is crucial for survivability of civilization.”

Yet, in some quarters of climate science Net Zero is thought to be nothing more than a dangerous Trojan Horse that leads a naïve society around by the nose.

Horton’s way forward: In the short term, it’s all about education and awareness. Individuals need to learn how to personally protect themselves from dangerous heat.

Horton’s medium term, we must employ ‘green’ cities with cooling water pools and green vegetation and creation of wind corridors, all-natural cooling, reflective paint on buildings. This has been pioneered at City University of Hong Kong. It reflects 90% of the sun’s heat. This should be implemented everywhere.

The Central Problem

*At the heart of the global warming problem, specifically in America, special interest money is dictating policy to the benefit of too few people. Citizens United Makes this possible: “Citizens United has reshaped American campaign finance at every level of government since 2010. The decision tossed aside a century of tight regulation over corporate political spending and threw open the floodgates for the unlimited super PAC spending and undisclosed dark money that dominate the U.S. political system today. It’s had an immediate and dramatic effect. Reported independent expenditures of outside groups exploded by more than 28-fold from 2008 to 2024 (from $144 million to $4.21 billion). Unreported money also skyrocketed.” (Center for American Progress) One billionaire can outspend millions of people for control of their political future.

“Public Citizen reports that as of August 2024, 842 local governments, 22 states, and Washington, D.C., have called for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. A state statutory change, which is a much lighter lift than a federal constitutional amendment, would likely enjoy even higher levels of support… Americans from across the political spectrum overwhelmingly oppose Citizens United and would dearly like to rid the U.S. political system of corporate and dark money. Voters and the state legislators they elect have the power to do it,” Ibid.

Meanwhile, excessive CO2 emissions hold onto Citizens United for dear life.

P.S. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed July 4th, 2025, subsidizes the fossil fuel industry by $3,500,000,000 annually. (United States Senate Committee on the Budget, 02/26/2026)

For more from Robert Hunziker,

please go here:

https://countercurrents.org/author/robert-hunziker/

Wendell Berry: Shall We Do Without Hope?

 In loving memory of Wendell Berry.

💜Molly

Photo by Molly

Shall we do without hope? Some days

there will be none. But now

to the dry and dead woods floor

they come again, the first

flowers of the year, the assembly

of the faithful, the beautiful,

wholly given to being.

And in this long season

of machines and mechanical will

there have been small human acts

of compassion, acts of care, work

flowerlike in selfless loveliness.

Leaving hope to the dark

and to a better day,

receive these beauties freely

given, and give thanks

— Wendell Berry

From the book Leavings

This Is Not a Natural Calamity: it Is Being Done To Us Knowingly

A couple on Moutchic beach in Lacanau, southwestern France, as this summer’s wildfires raged. Photograph: Maximilien Lamy/AFP/Getty Images

Global heating is an outrage, not a tragedy. We deserve the facts about the climate crisis – I choose the Guardian because it’s one of the few places left to share them honestly.

By Tim Winton

Mon 24 Aug 2026

Well, there’s no getting around it now. What many of us once feared has become a reality.

The dangerous conditions climate scientists long warned of have become our common, if deeply unwelcome, experience, and season by season, our acquaintance with disorder and extremities deepens. In both hemispheres, wildfires rage right into our cities and incinerate entire neighbourhoods. Marine heatwaves are bleaching corals and cooking seagrasses on a global scale. This northern summer has brought temperatures most Europeans associate with the Australian desert. Heat events in Europe have paralysed whole countries, destroyed infrastructure and killed citizens in their thousands.

Such is life at barely 1.5C of heating since pre-industrial times. We keep telling ourselves this is the new normal. But the awful truth is, we’re on track for nearly twice this. That’s tough to digest.

In 2024, I published a novel, Juice, about a world that has lurched beyond even the horror zone of 3C of heating. Many readers told me the book was terrifying. Some felt it was prophetic. And while I appreciate having galvanised a few readers and helped them imagine the consequences of what’s still being done in our names, I hope to God they’re wrong about the book’s visionary aspect. Because the world of Juice is a nightmare. It’s what I fervently hope we will not pass on to our descendants.

My book was published into a strange cultural malaise from which we have not yet recovered. It feels like a debilitating communal illness whose symptoms include febrile delirium, visceral rage and a kind of nihilistic lassitude. But among the afflicted, you sense a terrible thirst and hear a babble of confusion, and also many plaintive cries of yearning. What sufferers thirst for is honest information. What they are addled by is the tide of bullshit that besets them. What they yearn for is solidarity and common purpose.

There are those who have come to think of global heating as an inevitable fact, a tragedy, if you will. And there are some who have been convinced it isn’t real, not a fact at all. These sufferers have been poorly served, for instead of being ministered to humanely and conscientiously, they have been at the mercy of quacks and carpetbaggers. What we are all experiencing is not a mystery ailment. Neither is it inevitable. And it’s sure as hell no tragedy – it’s an outrage. Only those who have been coached into crippling delusion can continue to deny the very heat that torments them; they are victims of gross malpractice.

There’s nothing accidental or inadvertent about what we’re all suffering through together. We’ve had enough time now and have sufficient expertise to understand that this is not a natural calamity. This is something that is being done to us. Knowingly. Which makes it a crime.

A narrow class of people is profiting from our anguish. They know they’re setting our world on fire. They persist because they love neither the Earth nor its people. What they care about is money. Not just enough to get by on. Not even enough to become grotesquely rich with. They want the kind of money that bends others to their will. They seek power, buy it, co-opt it, leverage it and always thirst for more of it. As far as they’re concerned, the rest of us can go to hell – so long as we bend the knee and keep paying them as we stagger towards the flames.

This is why reporting on the state of our climate is so inadequate. Too often, coverage is evasive, recklessly shallow or simply dishonest. The oligarchs who own the news and direct the algorithms of social media are committed to keeping it that way. They give us bread and circuses and bank on our remaining distracted and tractable. They are betting against our children’s futures.

This is why factual reporting on the trajectory of our heating world is more vital now than ever before. We deserve to be told the truth. We need to hear the good news and the bad news alike because honest information is central to humanity’s chances of securing a safe and decent existence for our children. The truth is what fortifies us and brings us together to defend ourselves and our planet.

I read the Guardian and write for it because it’s one of the few honest brokers left in the mainstream media ecosystem. Over many years it has distinguished itself by bringing courageous, forensic reporting on climate to counter this welter of lies and confusion. There are no pie-faced billionaires dictating its editorial line. No fossil fuel corporations are allowed to launder their reputations in the Guardian’s advertising platforms. This masthead continues to speak truth to power and to empower the rest of us who deserve to know there is hard news to absorb and good news to bear us up together.

This year’s climate support campaign highlights the Guardian’s unrivalled coverage of the climate emergency, including the ideas and initiatives that can help tackle it. Please consider supporting this work today.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2026/aug/24/this-is-not-a-natural-calamity-it-is-being-done-to-us-knowingly

Human Caused Climate Change and Super El Niño: How One Ocean Can Change the World

I will endlessly be a tireless passionate voice of truth related to the extreme human caused climate crisis and the urgency that we humans act individually collectively in every way possible to try to preserve a habitable planet! — Molly  

Our oceans are running a fever. Global ocean surface temperatures have officially reached their highest level on record.

On August 22, the average sea surface temperature across the global ocean reached 70°F (21.1°C), according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service. This narrowly surpasses the previous record set just months ago in March 2024.

Why is this so alarming?

Timing is everything. Global ocean temperatures usually peak in March or April, following the Southern Hemisphere's summer. Hitting a new peak in August is highly unusual and shows that our oceans are absorbing a staggering amount of excess energy.

What is driving this?

A strengthening El Niño: Unusually warm water in the Pacific is shifting weather patterns and releasing massive amounts of heat into the atmosphere.

Human-caused Climate Change: El Niño is acting on a baseline that is already artificially high. Human-produced greenhouse gases trap heat, and the ocean absorbs more than 90% of that excess energy.

The Ripple Effect:

Shifting a global average by even a fraction of a degree has massive consequences. Warmer oceans directly lead to:

Accelerated sea-level rise

Intense marine heat waves and mass coral bleaching

Disrupted fisheries and shifting marine populations

Reduced oxygen levels for marine life

With the World Meteorological Organization expecting El Niño to strengthen in the coming months, we are bracing for major shifts in global rainfall and above-normal temperatures worldwide.

A Super El Niño Is Coming in 2026

Super El Niño: How One Ocean Can Change the World

Original post from The Beautiful Planet

EXCELLENT — Adam Jones: Climate Change Is Not the Future. Nepal Is Happening Now.

Excellent! 100% spot on! Heartbreakingly, tragically true. And so important to know, absorb, and speak the truth about. Again and again and again! Those whose utter greed and stupidity compels them to continue to deny the human causes behind these profound and heart wrenching climate disasters are absolutely complicit with the horror and death and destruction increasingly brought on in the wake of our warming world. The debate, doubt, denial, distraction, and dangerous disinformation related to the human causes behind these climate catastrophes must end! I am so over climate deniers! We humans must wake up and act to do everything humanly possible to save ourselves and all life on Earth. Climate Justice NOW!! — Molly  

By Adam Jones

August 27, 2026

A mountain just failed.

That is the part of the disaster unfolding in Nepal and Tibet that I think people need to understand.

Not simply “there was a flood”.

Not simply “a glacier melted”.

A vast mass of ice and rock high in the Himalayas broke loose, fell more than a kilometre vertically and set off a chain reaction powerful enough to send water, mud, boulders and debris tearing through valleys more than 100 kilometres downstream.

At least 165 people are already dead.

Nearly 1,500 are missing.

At least 34 Australians are among them.

And before anybody turns this into another stupid argument about whether one individual disaster can be “proved” to have been caused by climate change, understand what the scientists are actually saying.

They are not saying climate change single-handedly pushed some giant red button and caused this exact glacier to collapse at this exact moment.

They are saying something considerably more important.

We are changing the conditions under which mountains remain stable.

Warm a high mountain system and you don't merely make the air a little warmer.

You melt glaciers.

You thaw frozen ground.

You remove ice that can help support steep slopes.

You change freeze-thaw cycles.

You put more meltwater through cracks and fractured rock.

You change snow cover, lakes and rivers.

And eventually something that had been sitting above a valley for centuries or millennia may no longer behave the way it used to.

That is climate change.

It is not just temperature.

It is destabilisation.

And the Himalayas are already changing frighteningly quickly. The latest major assessment of the Hindu Kush Himalaya found that the rate of glacier loss has roughly doubled since 2000.

This matters far beyond Nepal.

The ice and snow of this region form part of an enormous planetary water system supporting ecosystems, agriculture, economies and the lives of more than two billion people downstream.

Lose enough of that ice and the problem is not simply that the mountains look different.

First you can get more meltwater, expanding glacial lakes, avalanches, landslides and catastrophic floods.

Eventually you lose part of the natural water storage system itself.

Too much water.

Then too little.

And in between, increasing instability.

There is another part of this that should make people angry.

Nepal has contributed a microscopic share of the greenhouse gases humanity has dumped into the atmosphere.

Yet countries like Nepal are being forced to spend scarce money adapting to a planetary experiment largely created elsewhere.

That is what climate injustice actually looks like.

And yes, 34 Australians being missing makes this disaster suddenly feel closer to Australians.

But we should interrogate that instinct too.

A Nepali child swept away by a flood is not less dead because their passport is different from ours.

A Tibetan family losing its home matters exactly as much as an Australian family losing theirs.

The atmosphere does not recognise borders.

Glaciers do not recognise borders.

Rivers do not recognise borders.

The climate system certainly does not recognise borders.

We invented those.

Nature didn't.

So when you look at the images coming out of Nepal and Tibet, don't just see another terrible disaster somewhere far away.

See a warning about the century we are entering.

Human civilisation developed during an unusually stable period of Earth's history. Our farms, reservoirs, roads, cities, borders, power stations and assumptions about where it is safe to live were built around that stability.

We are now altering it extraordinarily quickly.

And when people say we need to act on climate change, this is what they are talking about.

Not saving some abstract planet in the year 2100.

The planet will survive us.

The question is what kind of biosphere, hydrological system, coastline, climate and civilisation will survive the experiment we are conducting on it.

Nepal is not the future.

Nepal is happening now.