Here's an opinion piece in the Indian Express that says exactly what I find myself thinking every Monday as I post my weekly Business As Usual update...
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The world is suffocating, but we still go to work. Still scroll. Still order takeout. The disaster is not sudden. It is not a flood sweeping entire towns away in an instant, not a meteor splitting the sky. It is slower, more insidious — measured in degrees of warming, in statistics we glance at but do not absorb.
India, the fifth most polluted country in the world, breathes in poison daily. Delhi set a new pollution record in November 2024, registering air quality so hazardous that schools shut down, flights were grounded, and entire neighbourhoods disappeared behind toxic haze.
And yet, life continued. Offices remained open, cars clogged highways, street vendors coughed into their palms and adjusted their masks. We adapted, as we always do.
In Los Angeles, the world burns in a different way. The hillsides, dry from relentless droughts, ignite with terrifying ease. The fires creep closer each year, smoke blotting out the sun, turning the sky a sickly orange. People evacuate, but many stay, accustomed now to the seasonal infernos. They wear masks, not just for a pandemic but to filter the ash from the air. The news cycles through footage of mansions ablaze, of highways lined with red embers, but soon moves on. Insurance claims are filed. The city rebuilds.
We used to mark time by the seasons. Now, we mark it by disasters. The summer the fires reached the city limits. The winter when the power grids failed. The monsoon that drowned the subways.
The sky turns orange, and we take photos of it. We caption it: Eerie but beautiful. We order groceries, the courier arriving in the haze, their mask the only barrier between lungs and poison. We rate the delivery five stars.
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There's a lot more in this powerful piece, and I hope you'll read the whole thing.
FULL OP-ED ➡️ https://archive.ph/jFl4G
DIRECT LINK [paywall] ➡️ https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/middle-climate-apocalypse-we-really-care-9890542/
