Nepal, the glaciers and the illusion that we are ‘saving the planet’

The disaster in the Himalayas brought global warming, fossil fuels and the responsibility of the oil industry back to the forefront. But it also highlighted the difference between explaining a specific event, political accountability and protecting the people who live inside the danger zone.

On August 26, a catastrophic flow of ice, rocks and debris struck the mountainous Nepal–China border, causing floods and damage to infrastructure. By September 5, 2026, the death toll in Nepal had reached at least 1,344, with 4,887 people still missing, including 583 foreign nationals. That same day, a Chinese worker was pulled alive from a tunnel at the Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower project, ten days after the disaster — the third survivor found alive in underground facilities. The toll remains provisional while search and rescue operations continue. Reuters, September 5, 2026

The scale of the tragedy demands explanations. But it also demands that we distinguish three things: what triggered this particular collapse, how global warming is changing mountain hazards, and why a chain of natural phenomena finds so many people and so much critical infrastructure exposed.

These questions are connected, but they do not have identical answers. Climate change is not a word that automatically explains every detail of a disaster. Nor, conversely, does the need to investigate a specific event leave the scientific knowledge about today’s warming suspended in doubt.

Human activity has caused the modern rise in global temperature, with the burning of coal, oil and natural gas being a central mechanism. This is not a hypothesis that has to be proved again from the beginning after every flood. It is a conclusion supported by multiple independent lines of research. NASA — Causes of climate change

Greenpeace, fossil fuels and the oil industry

Already on August 27, the day after the disaster, Greenpeace South Asia directly raised the question of responsibility on the part of the fossil-fuel industry. It contrasted the profits of international oil companies with the human and economic cost borne by affected communities, and called for a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels and for major polluters to contribute to covering the losses.

The same statement, however, explicitly acknowledged that it was too early to determine the exact role of global warming in this particular event. It also called for investment in adaptation and resilience, alongside urgent relief. It would not be accurate to attribute to Greenpeace either a definitive scientific verdict or indifference to protecting local residents. Greenpeace South Asia, August 27, 2026

This is precisely where a distinction often gets lost in public debate. One thing is the documented contribution of fossil fuels to warming and the political demand that their producers bear part of the cost; another is proving that a particular slope collapsed because of that warming. The first does not automatically prove the second. Uncertainty about the second does not invalidate the first.

Even the numbers need their full meaning. The Carbon Majors database, cited by Greenpeace, links 32 companies to more than half of global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels and cement in 2024. It does not say that those 32 companies caused half of historical global warming or this particular disaster. The figures include both operational emissions and those from the burning of the products the companies sell. And the top ten companies in the ranking were wholly or majority state-owned: the issue concerns an international system of production and consumption, not only Western oil companies. Carbon Majors — 2024 Data Update

The substantive question, therefore, is broader: how do we limit warming, distribute responsibility and at the same time change the things that make our societies vulnerable?

The climate has always changed — but that is not enough as an explanation

Earth has known much warmer and much colder periods. Glaciers expanded and retreated long before industry appeared. Natural variability is neither an invention nor a footnote in the history of the planet.

But it does not follow from this that every change has the same cause, the same speed or the same consequences. NASA points out that the current rate of warming is roughly ten times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age. The comparison concerns specific time scales, not a claim that abrupt upheavals never occurred in Earth’s history. NASA — Evidence

For our societies, this difference is exactly what matters. It is one thing for conditions to change over millennia and another for the infrastructure, crops and water systems on which daily life depends to be tested within just a few generations.

Geological history reminds us that we do not inhabit a static world. It does not absolve us of responsibility for the change we are causing today.

If everything stopped tomorrow

Let us run a thought experiment. Tomorrow, the burning of fossil fuels stops worldwide and, so that we do not turn the discussion into a scenario of energy collapse, let us assume that the necessary alternatives have already been secured.

That would be a massive intervention in the principal mechanism of global warming. It would not, however, mean eliminating all emissions: methane from livestock, nitrous oxide from fertilizer use, emissions from deforestation and those produced by the chemical process of cement production, among others, would remain. NASA — Greenhouse gases and human activities

A critical clarification is needed here. The fact that carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere does not mean that temperature is doomed to keep rising indefinitely even if we reduce net CO₂ emissions to zero. The scientific assessment is that warming caused by CO₂ could then roughly stabilize, with real uncertainties remaining. The overall trajectory of temperature also depends on what happens to the other drivers of warming. Study on zero emissions and climate stabilization

Stabilization, however, is not the same as returning to the past. Oceans and large ice sheets respond slowly; sea level can continue rising for centuries. Emission reductions made today decisively affect how large that long-term rise will be. Nature Climate Change — Long-term sea-level rise

Decarbonization can prevent additional harm. It is not a time machine, and it does not replace the need to protect people from changes that are already unfolding.

What do we mean when we say “save the planet”?

The phrase is understandable as a call to action. It becomes less useful when it hides what exactly is at stake.

Earth as a celestial body is not threatened with disappearance by climate change. People, species, ecosystems and the conditions that sustain their lives are threatened. The fact that the planet will continue to exist offers no comfort to a community losing its water or to a species facing extinction.

Our societies were organized around specific expectations: how often a river floods, when the rains come, how much water is available in summer, which crops can survive in a given place. We have never lived without disasters. But we built infrastructure and economies on the assumption that certain limits would remain roughly recognizable.

And we often confused the ability to transform the environment with the ability to ignore how it works.

A disaster is not only the natural phenomenon

A flood is not explained only by the amount of rain. It matters whether streams have been blocked, whether there are places for water to spread safely, where homes are located, how infrastructure is maintained and whether warnings reach those who need them in time.

Likewise, wildfire risk is shaped by vegetation, weather conditions, where settlements are built, how houses are constructed and whether safe evacuation is possible. In extreme heat, shade, greenery, housing quality and access to a cool space can make the difference between discomfort and mortal danger.

Human-caused warming is already increasing several of these risks, without affecting every phenomenon and every region in the same way. NASA — Effects of climate change

But there is also a social dimension that must not disappear behind the collective “we.” Not everyone decides where a road or a dam will be built. Not everyone can leave a dangerous home, nor does everyone bear the same responsibility for emissions and land use. Adaptation requires public planning and resources, not merely advice about individual prudence.

California had already lived through it

In the winter of 1861–62, successive severe storms caused extensive flooding in California. Rivers overflowed, levees failed and large areas ended up under water. USGS — California’s history of major storms and floods

Then came the devastating drought of 1863–64, which hit livestock farming particularly hard. Within just a few years, the same region was tested by both an excess and a shortage of water. National Park Service — The drought of 1863–64

This historical precedent does not negate today’s climate change. It reminds us that even without today’s additional warming, natural variability could overturn economies built on fragile certainties.

A few decades later, Jack London would confront a different side of the problem in California: exhausted agricultural land. On his ranch he experimented with crop rotation, green manure, organic fertilizers and cover crops, trying to restore the productivity of the soil. Jack London State Historic Park — Beauty Ranch

In his 1913 novel The Valley of the Moon, we can read the literary kinship of that search: the characters are looking for land, but also for a way of life that can be sustained on it. We do not need to turn the novel retrospectively into a modern ecological programme in order to recognize its question.

How do you use the land without destroying what you expect it to give you?

From London to Steinbeck

In To a God Unknown, John Steinbeck gives the relationship with the land an almost metaphysical intensity. The tree, the rock and the spring become points of faith and dependence. Drought tests not only human survival but also the conviction that people can keep the world under their control.

In The Grapes of Wrath, in 1939, environmental pressure meets the banks, the loss of land and the exploitation of migrant workers. The novel is connected to Steinbeck’s reporting from California farm-worker camps. National Endowment for the Arts — The journalistic origins of the work

The Dust Bowl, on the Great Plains of North America, was not simply a prolonged drought. The expansion of cultivation onto vulnerable soils and the abandonment of soil-conservation practices contributed to erosion. The economic crisis made survival more difficult for farming households. National Drought Mitigation Center — Dust Bowl

Literature does not replace climatology. It can, however, illuminate something that a record of meteorological measurements cannot describe on its own: how the loss of soil becomes the loss of home, work, community and dignity.

What we can say about the Himalayas

In high mountains, changes in ice and frozen ground can alter slope stability and the behaviour of water. Permafrost — ground or rock that remains at 0°C or below for at least two consecutive years — is not the same thing as a glacier. Its thaw can destabilize slopes and increase the risks of landslides and debris flows, with consequences far below in the valleys. ICIMOD — Frozen ground and mountain hazards

These warnings do not come only from Western organizations. In a Chinese Academy of Sciences publication in March 2025, Yao Tandong described accelerating melt in the Tibetan Plateau region and the risks to communities, infrastructure and major projects. This was a pre-existing regional risk assessment — not a finding about the August 2026 collapse. Chinese Academy of Sciences, March 24, 2025

For the event itself, glaciologist Bethan Davies describes a sequence involving the collapse of rock and ice, transport of debris, temporary river blockages and flooding. In her August 27 analysis, she notes that the seismic signal appears to have been generated by the landslide rather than to have caused it, and that the exact mechanism requires further investigation. She considers glacier retreat as a possible factor in instability, without presenting the full causal chain as settled. Bethan Davies — Analysis of the disaster

This knowledge explains why global warming is an essential parameter in the investigation. It justifies neither the claim that climatic influence has been ruled out nor the presentation of a possible contribution as the sole and proven cause. We do not have two solid camps, “certain Chinese” and “cautious international scientists.” We have different formulations, different levels of evidence and questions that remain open.

Answering them requires evidence about the condition of the slope and the ice, temperatures, water and the evolution of the event. A separate investigation is also needed into the siting of projects, risk assessments and warning systems. These questions need to be asked, not treated as already answered in advance.

Care in wording is not evasion. It is what allows us to distinguish knowledge from reasonable hypothesis, and responsibility from general denunciation.

ICIMOD, based in Nepal, raised an entirely practical issue on August 27: cross-border data sharing, early warning and preparedness before disaster strikes. Water and debris do not stop at borders. Nor can the protection of communities be organized as though they do. ICIMOD — Statement by the Director General

The real question

Reducing emissions and changing the way we inhabit the Earth are not competing priorities. We need both.

A low-emissions economy can still deforest, deplete aquifers, destroy soils and build in dangerous places. And the best urban planning cannot replace the need to limit warming that continually increases pressure on societies and ecosystems.

If we reduce the problem exclusively to fuels, we leave crucial choices about land, water and the protection of people out of the discussion. If we use those choices to downplay the need for decarbonization, we make the opposite mistake.

Oil companies and other major fossil-fuel producers do not leave the frame simply because a landslide requires investigation. But governments, financiers and infrastructure planners must remain in the same frame. Responsibility for emissions and responsibility for exposing people to risk do not cancel each other out — and each requires its own evidence.

The question, then, is not simply whether “the planet can be saved.” It is which conditions of life we preserve, for whom and at what cost.

We will not abolish natural variability or every disaster. But we can stop adding risks and organizing our lives as though natural limits were a technical inconvenience that sooner or later would be bypassed.

Earth has time. The people and ecosystems that are losing the conditions for survival today do not have the same luxury.

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