environment – A New Beginning

Are We Stealing the Future to Pay for the Present?

Reflections on Christopher Marquis’s The Profiteers, the meaning of progress, and the choices we must make.

I recently came across The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs by Christopher Marquis. I found it interesting, disturbing and deeply thought-provoking. One sentence by environmentalist Paul Hawken, which captures the book’s central concern, stayed with me: “At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product.”

I have been thinking about what this really means for the future of humanity. We celebrate economic growth, rising corporate profits, booming markets and increasing consumption as evidence of progress. And much of it is progress. Economic growth has lifted millions out of poverty, created opportunities and improved the quality of human life.

But I cannot help asking a more uncomfortable question. What if, in our increasingly aggressive pursuit of the present, we are shortchanging the future?

When a company makes profits while leaving behind a polluted river, who really pays the price? When we exhaust natural resources faster than they can regenerate, are we creating wealth or merely liquidating an inheritance? When we sacrifice employee development, environmental responsibility or long-term investment to improve quarterly results, are we creating sustainable value or simply moving tomorrow’s costs off today’s balance sheet?

The costs do not disappear. They merely change hands, often ending up with people who had little say in creating them.

Christopher Marquis’s book examines this troubling imbalance between private gain and public cost. Consider Jack Welch, the legendary CEO of General Electric. Under his leadership, GE’s market value rose dramatically, and he became an icon of managerial excellence. Yet the controversy over GE’s refusal to clean up polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, discharged into the Hudson River raised a profoundly uncomfortable question: Could extraordinary corporate performance coexist with a failure to accept responsibility for the damage left behind?

Welch’s later observation that shareholder value is a result, not a strategy, is particularly relevant here. It reminds us that business performance must rest on something more substantial than a rising share price. The larger issue, in my view, is not whether businesses should make profits. Of course they should. It is whether we have begun to confuse the means with the end.

Profit is necessary. But what kind of profit, created at whose expense, and with what consequences for the future?

This question becomes even more urgent as artificial intelligence transforms work, climate change intensifies, and economic power becomes increasingly concentrated. We could be entering an era of extraordinary human progress. Equally, we could be creating a world in which productivity rises while human security, opportunity and dignity fail to keep pace. The future will depend, in part, on which of these possibilities we choose to pursue.

So, what perspective shift do I believe is necessary? I find myself returning to four ideas.

1. We must learn to measure progress differently. I do not believe GDP is irrelevant. My sense is it is incomplete. An economy can grow while its rivers become more polluted, its citizens become more anxious, its education system produces graduates without employable capabilities, and its natural resources steadily diminish.

Should we not measure progress alongside the health of our environment, the quality of our education, the dignity of our work, the distribution of opportunity and the resilience of our communities? I would like us to ask not merely how much wealth we have created, but how much genuine human well-being that wealth has produced.

2. We must redefine what we expect from business. I have nothing against capitalism or the pursuit of profit. My concern is with a model that rewards the immediate gain while allowing the long-term damage to be borne by society. I would like corporate boards, investors and business leaders to ask four questions: Is the business profitable? Is it creating genuine value? Are its costs being honestly accounted for? And will the way it operates remain beneficial and viable ten or twenty years from now?

I believe executive incentives should reflect these longer-term considerations, and that environmental and social responsibilities must be supported by transparent reporting, independent scrutiny and meaningful accountability. A business should not be considered successful merely because it has made its shareholders richer. Its success should also be judged by the health of the ecosystem in which it operates.

3. We must invest in human capabilities, not merely extract human productivity. This concerns me particularly in an age of AI. I have been examining and writing about this aspect of late. We celebrate automation, efficiency and the promise of doing more with less. But I wonder whether we are paying sufficient attention to the people whose lives and livelihoods will be transformed in the process. If technology creates unprecedented wealth but concentrates the benefits among a small minority, can we honestly call that progress for humanity?

I would like us to place far greater emphasis on lifelong learning, reskilling, accessible education and the development of distinctly human capabilities: critical thinking, creativity, empathy, judgement and the ability to work meaningfully with others. The real promise of technology should be to expand human possibilities, not merely to reduce the cost of employing human beings.

4. We must move from exploiting the future to regenerating it. My sense is that this is the most fundamental shift of all. For too long, we have treated nature as a warehouse of resources, people as factors of production and time as something to be compressed in the pursuit of returns.

I would like us to think differently. Can businesses restore the natural resources they consume? Can agriculture improve the health of the soil rather than exhaust it? Can cities become more liveable as they grow? Can economic activity create better opportunities for the next generation rather than leave it with depleted resources, fragile institutions and an enormous environmental bill?

This requires more than individual goodwill. It requires policy, investment, innovation and a willingness to accept that some of the most valuable returns may take years to materialise. But it also requires a change in how we think about our place in the world. We are not the owners of an unlimited inheritance. We are temporary custodians of a world that existed before us and, if we act wisely, will continue long after us.

So, where does this leave me?

I recognise that these are difficult questions. Governments must create jobs. Businesses must remain competitive. Families need rising incomes. Developing economies cannot be expected to abandon growth when millions still aspire to a better life. The answer, therefore, cannot be to stop growing. It must be to reconsider what we grow, how we grow, and who benefits from that growth. Nor can we place the entire responsibility on individual consumers. Systemic problems require systemic solutions. But citizens, investors, employees and business leaders can all influence the incentives that shape our collective future.

I keep returning to one simple distinction. There is a difference between borrowing from the future to build something worthwhile and consuming the foundations on which that future depends. The first creates possibilities. The second destroys them. Perhaps the most important question we should ask of our economic and corporate achievements is not simply, “What have we gained?” It is, “What have we left behind?”

Because if our prosperity today depends on making tomorrow poorer, we may eventually discover that what we called growth was, in part, a form of liquidation. And the tragedy would be that we knew the price all along but chose not to include it in the accounts.

The future is not ours to sell. It is ours to shape, protect and pass on.

What do you think? Are we measuring progress correctly, or have we become so focused on the returns of the present that we are losing sight of the possibilities of the future?

In musing……… Shakti Ghosal

References

[1] Christopher Marquis, The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs (PublicAffairs, 2024). The book’s themes and the GE–Hudson River controversy are discussed in the Business Science Daily chapter-by-chapter summary.

[2] Jack Welch, comments on shareholder value, reported in the Financial Times in March 2009 and subsequently elaborated in an interview with BusinessWeek. See CBS News: Does Jack Welch Think Shareholder Value Is a Dumb Idea?.

From Amboseli to Rabindra Sarobar: The Art of Standing Still

There are moments when a familiar place suddenly reveals a secret.

Two evenings ago, we went to Rabindra Sarobar for our usual evening walk. The main lake was as familiar as ever. But somewhere beyond it, we discovered a smaller water body that we had somehow never noticed quite like this before.

It was almost entirely covered with water lilies, hyacinths and lotus plants. There was nothing manicured about it. Nothing curated for the eye.It was nature in its slightly unruly form.And perhaps that was precisely its charm.

The evening light had begun to soften everything. The water reflected the fading sky. The floating leaves formed patterns that seemed almost deliberate. The dense vegetation created the feeling of a little ecosystem existing quietly within the city.

We stopped. And then we saw them. A Bronze-winged Jacana and her tiny chick. The mother moved across the floating vegetation with remarkable ease. The chick followed, scurrying awkwardly behind her, disappearing momentarily among the leaves and then emerging again.

We watched. And suddenly, Rabindra Sarobar transported us back to Amboseli.

Only a month earlier, while visiting Amboseli National Park in Kenya, we had encountered a Jacana there. The bird is often called the Jesus bird, because its extraordinarily long toes allow it to distribute its weight across floating vegetation, giving it the almost mystical appearance of walking on water.

We had marveled at it then. And now, thousands of kilometers away, we were watching the same extraordinary act again. There was something deeply humbling about that coincidence. Two completely different worlds. One a vast African wilderness. The other a lake tucked into an urban landscape in Kolkata. Yet the same bird. The same instinct. The same choreography of mother and child.

Nature has a way of reminding us that the boundaries we draw on maps mean very little to life itself. The Jacana did not care whether it was Amboseli or Rabindra Sarobar. It simply walked. The mother walked. The chick followed.
The water moved beneath them.

The evening slowly disappeared. And we stood there, watching. Perhaps that is the real luxury of growing older—not necessarily having more time, but learning to notice the time we have. To pause beside a lake. To watch a tiny bird crossing floating leaves. To recognise that what appears ordinary may, on closer observation, contain an entire universe.

We are constantly surrounded by such moments. But most of them pass unnoticed because we are moving too fast. Perhaps life does not demand that we always do more. Perhaps, occasionally, it asks something much simpler of us.

Stand still.
Look closely.
And allow yourself to be astonished.

Because one can never cease to wonder at the marvels of life— if only one is prepared to stand and stare.

In musing….. Shakti Ghosal

WHAT IF….

... we have forgotten to slow down?

I came to Langkawi expecting to see another beautiful place. I found that the sea was beautiful. So was the Rainforest, so were the beaches.

But after a while, I stopped looking at the beauty and began noticing something else.

The pace. The trees did not seem to be in a hurry to grow. The waves did not seem anxious about reaching the shore. The clouds moved without consulting a clock. Even the boats seemed to understand that there was nowhere more important to be.

And as I watched, I wondered when we had forgotten this simple rhythm. We hurry to work. Hurry to meetings. Hurry to finish. Hurry to achieve. And then, having spent years rushing towards the future, we discover that the present has quietly passed us by.

Perhaps the problem is not that we don’t have enough time. Perhaps we have forgotten how to inhabit the time we have. Standing by the sea, I found myself asking: What if slowing down is not falling behind? What if it is actually a way of moving forward—with greater awareness of where we are going?

Perhaps we don’t always need another destination. Sometimes we simply need to stop long enough to notice the journey.

I closed my notebook and watched the waves return to the shore. They had been doing it for thousands of years. Unhurried. Unconcerned. And somehow, always on time.

— Rudra Bose, the Last Writer of Kolkata

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How Close Is the Future?

Two newspaper stories caught my attention today.

The first was from Nepal: devastating floods, homes swept away, lives lost, roads and bridges disappearing beneath an angry torrent of water.

The second was almost deceptively ordinary. Across parts of Europe and Japan, persistent heatwaves are becoming so severe that something once unthinkable is changing: formal office wear is giving way to shorts, T-shirts and sneakers. What was once considered casual is becoming necessary simply to cope with the heat.

At first, the two stories seem to have little in common. One is about water. The other is about heat. But perhaps they are telling us the same story. The climate is changing. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the boundaries of what we consider “normal” are changing with it.

When I wrote 2056: The Year of Water and Fire, I deliberately placed the catastrophic events some thirty years into the future. Even while writing it, I wondered whether I was being too dramatic—or perhaps, paradoxically, not dramatic enough.

Today, I find myself wondering something else. Could the future I imagined be closer than I thought? We tend to imagine climate catastrophe as something spectacular and distant: a great cyclone, a flooded city, an apocalyptic landscape sometime in the middle of the century. But perhaps climate change does not announce itself that way. Perhaps it arrives quietly. A few more unbearable nights. A flood where there wasn’t one before. A river changing its course. A crop failing. A species disappearing. An office worker deciding that trousers are simply too hot to wear. And then, one day, much like that frog in the slowly heating water, we realise that something we considered extraordinary has quietly become normal.

That is what unsettles me most. The danger is not merely that the planet is becoming warmer or that extreme weather is becoming more destructive. It is that to survive, we need to gradually become accustomed to the extraordinary. We need to adapt our clothes, our buildings. And we need to adapt our working hours, our expectations. And perhaps, without realising it, we have begun to adapt our definition of what constitutes a crisis.

In 2056, I imagined a Sundarbans battered by rising waters and increasingly violent storms. Yet the story is not ultimately about destruction. It is about resilience—of people, of technology, and perhaps most importantly, of nature itself. But resilience should never become an excuse for complacency. The fact that human beings can adapt does not mean that we should keep testing the limits of that adaptation.

The future is not a date on a calendar. It is being assembled quietly, day by day, in the choices we make—and in the warnings we choose to notice. Perhaps the most frightening question is no longer “What will the world look like in 2056?” Perhaps it is: “How much of 2056 have we already begun to live?”

In musing….. Shakti Ghosal

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What If ……….

We Have Misunderstood Our Place in the World?

I spent the morning watching the animals move across the Kenyan savannah. There were wildebeest everywhere. Zebras moved among them almost casually. An elephant and its cub stood beneath a tree. In the distance, the landscape seemed to stretch endlessly, without walls, roads or buildings to interrupt it. For a while, I simply watched.

There was something strangely humbling about seeing so many creatures occupy the same landscape without any apparent need to possess it. They did not own the land. They did not draw boundaries across it. They did not put up signs announcing that a particular piece of earth belonged to them. They simply lived there.

And then a thought occurred to me. What if we have misunderstood our place in the world?

For centuries, we have measured human progress by our ability to control nature. We cut down forests and called it development. We dammed rivers and called it progress. We covered open land with concrete and called it urbanisation. We moved mountains, redirected water, altered landscapes and exterminated species after species, making them disappear. And while doing so, we often congratulated ourselves on our ingenuity and intelligence.

But somewhere along the way, we perhaps began to confuse our ability to control something with the right to own it. The savannah seemed to offer me a different philosophy. The animals did not appear to be conquering the land. They were part of it. The elephant did not need to dominate the tree beneath which it stood. The zebra did not need to fence off its patch of grass. The wildebeest did not need a title deed to the earth beneath its feet. They belonged to the landscape without claiming it. Perhaps that is what we have forgotten. We speak endlessly about what we will leave behind. Be it buildings, businesses, fortunes, roads or institutions. We would strive to leave our names on plaques and our photographs on walls. But perhaps there is another kind of legacy…….

The Zebra did not need to fence off its grass….

What we choose not to destroy. The forest we would leave standing. The river and the waterbody we would allow to remain clean. The animal(s) whose habitat we would protect. The open space we chose not to convert into concrete. The silence we did not fill.

Standing there in Kenya, I began to wonder whether civilisation should really be measured by how much of nature we can bend to our will. Or how much of nature we chose to leave as it is. Perhaps the more difficult measure is how much power we possess—and how much restraint we exercise. Because restraint requires something that conquest does not. It requires us to recognise that we are not the center of everything. The realisation that the earth existed before us, the wild existed before our cities, our borders and our ambitions. And, if we are wise enough, much of it will continue to exist after we are gone.

Perhaps we are not the owners of this world after all. Perhaps we are merely its temporary custodians. We arrived without asking permission. We will leave without taking anything with us. Between those two moments lies the brief privilege of being of who we are and our presence here.

We remain privileged to have been here…….

And so I find myself asking a different question. Not simply, what will we build while we are here? But, what will remain because we were here? I closed my notebook. The animals continued moving across the savannah. They had not heard my question. Perhaps they did not need to. They seemed to know the answer already.

— Rudra Bose, the Last Writer of Kolkata

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The House That Time Forgot

During our recent safari trip in Kenya, a visit to a Masai village was part of the itinerary. We went with curiosity, but also with the expectations of people accustomed to a very different world.

The Masai Mara is extraordinary not merely because animals still roam freely across its vast savannah, but because the Masai have, for generations, lived alongside that ecosystem without attempting to conquer it. They tend cattle, depend on them for milk and sustenance, and have retained traditions that seem to belong to another age. Yet, paradoxically, they appear to understand something that our supposedly advanced civilisation often forgets: Nature is not a resource to be consumed; it is a system to be lived within.

The village itself was fascinating. A circular settlement, protected from predators by a dense perimeter of thorny shrubs, with homes around the outside and cattle occupying the central space. The houses were constructed from soil and cow dung. The village, we were told, eventually moves when termites begin destroying the structures. There was no attempt to make the place look modern for visitors. It was what it was. And then came the most revealing part of our visit.

A Masai elder invited us into his home. We entered through a tiny doorway into a dark, compact space. There was a fireplace for cooking, some firewood, a few simple utensils and a single light bulb powered by a solar panel provided for the village. There were small cots for the children. His bedroom had two tiny windows for ventilation and, remarkably, a little peephole through which one could see the outside world. He jokingly called it his television. I smiled at the simplicity of the joke. But it stayed with me. For us, television means hundreds of channels, streaming platforms and a world delivered instantly into our homes. For him, television was a small opening in a wall through which he could watch life unfold.

Then we heard a frail voice from behind a closed door. It was his elderly mother. She had to be kept inside because, having lost her sense of direction, she would wander away and not know how to return. We left the house quietly. Seven people lived in a space smaller than a room in many of our apartments. There was little comfort, almost no privacy and virtually none of the conveniences we consider essential to modern life. And yet, something troubled me about the easy conclusion that this was simply a primitive way of living.

The Masai knew about our world. Their children went to school, spoke English and understood modern technology. But they rejected coal because in their own words, it would harm the environment. Perhaps, just perhaps, they were not living in the past. Perhaps they were reminding us of something we had left behind. Progress has given us comfort, convenience and extraordinary choice. But has it given us wisdom?

Standing inside that small Masai home, I wondered whether civilisation should be measured only by how much we accumulate—or by how little we need to live responsibly. The Masai may have much less than us. But perhaps, in one important respect, they have understood much more about life and living.

In musing….. Shakti Ghosal

Acknowledgement: Masai Home photos (2) by my friend and fellow traveller Partha Banerjee.

When the River Said “Not Yet”

There are some days when nature does not merely show you its beauty. It allows you, for a fleeting moment, to witness its very soul. Today was one such day in the Masai Mara.

We began before sunrise with a hot air balloon ride over the vast Mara savannahs—an experience I shall write about separately. But the real drama of the day was waiting for us at the Mara River, inside the Mara Triangle.

We watched, almost spellbound, as hundreds of wildebeests came thundering down the slopes, accompanied by a sprinkling of zebras. They moved like an army on the march. Then, without hesitation, they plunged into the river.

There was nothing graceful about it.They swam helter-skelter through the churning waters, climbed desperately up the opposite bank and disappeared into the grasslands beyond. It was raw, chaotic and magnificent—the eternal migration driven by nothing more complicated than the instinct to survive.

And then came another chapter.

A large group of zebras and wildebeests gathered on the riverbank. Almost in equal numbers, they stood looking towards the water. We waited. One zebra finally took the plunge.But within moments, something extraordinary happened. It turned around and raced back.

Almost as though it had issued a silent warning, the entire group retreated towards higher ground. We were puzzled. Why had they abandoned the crossing?

Then we saw it. In the water, almost perfectly motionless, waswhat at first looked like a long, half-submerged rock. It was a crocodile. Only its eyes and snout were visible above the surface. Patient. Silent. Waiting.

The zebra had seen what we had not. And suddenly, the entire scene seemed to acquire a deeper meaning.

In the wilderness, survival does not always belong to the strongest or the fastest. Sometimes it belongs to the one who notices danger a few seconds before everyone else. There was no speech. No command. No leader standing before the herd. Just instinct.

And perhaps that is one of nature’s most profound lessons. We humans spend so much of our lives rushing forward—crossing rivers of uncertainty simply because everyone else appears to be doing so. Yet sometimes wisdom lies not in moving ahead, but in recognising when the river is telling us to wait.

The crocodile waited. The zebra noticed. The herd retreated.And nature, once again, had staged a lesson without saying a word.

The rest of the day was no less spectacular: a lion and lioness, two magnificent cheetahs, hyenas, elephants, giraffes and vast numbers of hippopotamuses filling the waters of the Mara.

For a few privileged hours, we were not merely spectators on a game drive.We were witnesses to the theatre of life itself.And some performances stay with you for a lifetime.

In musing……… Shakti Ghosal

Amboselli: Where the Wild still writes it’s Own story….

There are some journeys where you return with photographs. And then there are journeys where you return with a changed sense of perspective. Yesterday was one of those days.

We spent an entire day driving through Amboseli National Park, and for hours the landscape seemed to reinvent itself. One moment, there were vast open plains stretching towards the horizon. Then came a wetland, a cluster of acacia trees, a dusty track disappearing into the distance, or a herd of elephants appearing almost magically against the landscape.

Amboseli is often described as the “home of the African elephant”. It is easy to understand why. We saw elephants in different groups, some quietly grazing, some walking purposefully across the plains, and others simply standing there with that extraordinary, almost contemplative presence that elephants seem to possess.

There were hundreds of zebras and wildebeests, moving across the grasslands in groups that seemed almost endless. Gazelles appeared in the distance, alert and graceful. Giraffes rose above the vegetation like living sentinels. Baboons went about their business with an irreverence that was almost human.

And then there were the birds. Some were familiar, others completely new to my eyes. Their colours, shapes and calls added another dimension to the landscape. I came to know that Amboseli is, in fact, an important birding destination, with more than 400 recorded bird species.

What makes this place particularly remarkable is that it is not simply a collection of animals. It is an ecosystem, delicately interconnected through water, grass, wetlands, migration and seasons. We came to know that the seemingly dry landscape also has wetlands and springs fed by water originating from the slopes and underground systems associated with Mount Kilimanjaro. That water sustains an astonishing abundance of life.

And somewhere in the distance, when the clouds allow it, stands Kilimanjaro—Africa’s highest mountain—watching silently over the entire drama.

That contrast stayed with me. A mountain that appears timeless. Animals that seemed to live entirely in the present. And we, the human beings, who spend much of their lives worrying about tomorrow.

For me that seemed to be one of the quiet lessons of yesterday’s safari. The zebra does not know it is part of a magnificent ecosystem. The elephant does not pause to admire the landscape. The giraffe does not contemplate the sunset.They simply live in the here and now. We, on the other hand, are constantly rushing through life while trying to capture it.

Yesterday, sitting in a safari vehicle and watching one landscape after another unfold, I found myself wondering whether wilderness is really about seeing animals. Perhaps it is about seeing ourselves differently.

Amboseli did not need to tell us that life is precious. It simply demonstrated it—silently, continuously, and without asking for our attention. I only had to be quiet enough to notice.

In musing….. Shakti Ghosal

Nature Never Reads Our Rulebook

A newspaper report I read the other day literally stopped me in my tracks. It spoke about an unexpected consequence of the geopolitical tensions around the Strait of Hormuz. As ships remain berthed for prolonged periods, marine scientists are warning of an increased risk of invasive organisms hitching a ride across oceans, disrupting ecosystems thousands of kilometres away. At first glance, it appeared to be a story about shipping and marine biology. But as I read further, I realised it was really a story about something much larger.

Nature rarely responds in straight lines. A political conflict can become an environmental risk. A delay in maritime traffic could alter the movement of microscopic life. Human decisions in one corner of the world quietly reshape ecosystems in another.

While writing 2056: The Year of Water and Fire, I had found myself returning repeatedly to this thought. We often imagine climate change as a sequence of visible catastrophes—cyclones, floods, rising seas. Yet the more profound transformations are often quieter. Species migrate. Rivers redraw themselves. New ecological relationships emerge. Life adapts in ways we neither anticipate nor fully understand. Toward the end of the story, after a devastating cyclone had rewritten the geography of the Sundarbans, the first instinct of the survivors was despair. But when the dronobots began mapping the devastation, they uncovered something unexpected. Amid the destruction, nature was already experimenting. Islands were shifting. Mangroves were finding new footholds. Wildlife was adapting. The ecosystem, scarred but alive, was quietly reorganising itself for a different climate. It was neither revenge nor redemption, it was recalibration.

That thought had stayed with me because it challenges one of our deepest assumptions. We often speak of “saving nature,” as though it were a fragile object waiting for human intervention. History suggests something more humbling. Nature has an extraordinary capacity to reinvent itself. It is we who struggle to keep pace with the consequences of that reinvention.

Perhaps the real lesson is this. The future will not unfold as a neat extension of the present. It will emerge through countless interactions we barely notice today—between politics and ecology, technology and biology, human ambition and planetary resilience.

In 2056, Nayanjol, the sentient boat, eventually becomes more than a machine. He becomes a guardian who understands that survival does not lie in resisting nature, but in learning to listen to it.

Maybe that is the question our own times are quietly asking. Not whether nature will adapt. But whether we will.

In musing….. Shakti Ghosal

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The Future Doesn’t Arrive All at Once

When I wrote 2056: The Year of the Water and Fire, I imagined a Bengal where climate change was no longer an environmental issue. It had become a way of life.

This newspaper report made me pause.

It says that Kolkata now loses around 80 hours of sleep every year because of rising night-time temperatures. Think about that for a moment. Climate change is no longer confined to distant glaciers, rising seas or violent cyclones. It is quietly entering our bedrooms, stealing our sleep, affecting our health, our emotions, and perhaps even the way we think.

The future, I have often felt, rarely announces itself dramatically. It arrives in small, almost unnoticed ways.

A warmer night.
A little less sleep.
A little less patience.
A little more fatigue.

Until one day, we realise that what we once called unusual has quietly become normal.

In 2056: The Year of the Water and Fire, I explored what might happen when rising waters, stronger storms and changing climates begin to reshape not just our landscape, but our choices, our communities and our humanity.

Perhaps the greatest lesson is this:

Climate change is no longer about saving the planet. It is about preserving the quality of human life on it.

The Earth will endure.

The question is whether we will learn to adapt before adaptation is forced upon us.

#ClimateChange #GlobalWarming #Kolkata #2056TheYearOfWaterAndFire #TheLastWriterOfKolkata #SpeculativeFiction #FutureOfHumanity #Sustainability #ThoughtsThatMatter

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