00:00Write down one date, 2050. Around that year, something will happen to the great Himalayan rivers that has not happened
00:06in 10,000 years and what follows will shape your children's entire lives. Scientists call it peak water. The Ganga,
00:13the Indus, the Brahmaputra are fed from two sources. The monsoon which lasts four months and the ice which melts
00:19us all year. That quiet steady melt is what keeps the rivers alive through the dry months. It is why
00:25the Ganga is perennial at all. Now watch the trap. Heat rises so glaciers melt faster.
00:29Faster melt means more water in the rivers which is exactly what we are seeing. Rivers fuller than living memory.
00:35Floods multiplying. But a glacier is not infinite. One day it shrinks so far that even accelerated melting yields less
00:40water. That turning point is peak water. Before it, more water every year. After it, less every year. Irreversibly. For
00:47these basins, that turn is expected around 2050. 25 years away. So today's floods are not abundance. They are the
00:53final surge. The lamp burns brightest just before it goes out. And after 2050, rain will still come.
00:58Fiercer than before. But rain is four months. The ice that carried the other eight will be going. The new
01:04reality. Deluge in July. Thirst in March. Flood and drought in the same year. In the same river.
01:09And a river made shallow by silt floods. Worse even as it carries less. The rivers will not die. But
01:14they will cease to be perennial. Carrying only what the monsoon gives them. Not even the holiest of them is
01:19exempt.
01:19Think of what that does to agriculture built on a thousand years of the river keeping its calendar. To two
01:25billion people whose lives rest on the assumption that tomorrow's river flows like today's.
01:29Now the deeper question. We are being told 25 years in advance. The date is published. And still, we do
01:35not turn. Why? Because this is the nature of indulgence. It does not permit the future to be seen.
01:39The mind says. But there is so much water right now. And that is the stupor. Capital is draining from
01:44the account. And the man is delighted by the cash in his hand.
01:47Is there a greater blindness? The rivers have 25 years before they turn. How many years the mind needs? That
01:53part is yours to decide.
