00:00Listen to one piece of arithmetic.
00:02Nepal's share of the world's greenhouse gases, one-tenth of one percent.
00:07A Nepali puts about half a ton of carbon into the air in a year.
00:10An American, about 14.
00:12In the Gulf, 20 plus.
00:14An Indian, about 2.
00:16The people this flood killed had burned almost nothing at all.
00:19And those who burned the most were nowhere near the water.
00:22This has a name, climate injustice.
00:25And the injustice runs deeper still, carry the logic to its end.
00:28What is the carbon footprint of an animal?
00:31Zero.
00:31Of a forest?
00:33Less than zero.
00:34It absorbs carbon.
00:35And who stands first in line for extinction?
00:37Exactly them.
00:39The smaller your share of the burning, the larger your share of the suffering.
00:42That is the cruelest mathematics of this crisis.
00:45And the region that will suffer most is South Asia.
00:49Whether the smoke rises from San Francisco or Berlin,
00:53so the anger is natural.
00:55Why should we die for other people's consumption?
00:57A fair question.
00:58Completely fair.
00:59Now go to its root.
01:00At the root lies one error.
01:01The belief that there are other people.
01:03Nature keeps no register of nationality.
01:05A carbon molecule carries no passport.
01:08Wherever coronavirus came from, the whole world died.
01:11The rising ocean will not say, let me spare Mumbai.
01:14The culprit is Chicago.
01:15Which is why, to save Kedharnath, one must speak in London.
01:19Because that is where the emissions come from.
01:21It sounds counterintuitive.
01:23It is also the only way.
01:25Raise the alarm wherever the smoke rises.
01:27Nor can India hold itself apart and count only what it is owed.
01:31Per a person we emit little.
01:33But our numbers are so vast that in total emissions,
01:36we now stand among the top three on earth.
01:39And the deepest cruelty?
01:41The many who drown do not resent the few who profit.
01:43They queue up to become them.
01:44We are worshipping our exploiters.
01:47The trillionaire with the largest footprint of all is our role model.
01:50And we admire him precisely for the scale of his claim on the earth.
01:54Having made that same claim the purpose of our own lives.
01:57Yet here is the hidden power.
01:59If the two billion consumers of this subcontinent
02:01reconsidered their purchases with wisdom,
02:04supply lines would buckle in half the capitals of the developed world.
02:07We are poor, but we are many.
02:09That is our leverage if we wake up.
02:11Nature's ledger has no column for nationality.
02:14Mankind is a single body.
02:16And when one limb burns, the fever belongs to the whole.
