A Season of Suffering Across Continents

The planet is burning in July 2025 and not figuratively speaking. The climate crisis is not a 2050 or 2100 scenario anymore٫ this can be seen in the heatwave that Europe has experienced and in the dried crops across Latin America and Africa.

It is a disaster that is occurring, and it is already interfering with lives, paralyzing economies and taking thousands of lives away. More than 1,800 people across Europe, alone, have been died, weather related deaths this summer. Thousands have been driven to hunger due to drought related conditions. Climate change is too real to leave it as a problem to future generations. It is already influencing migration pattern, creating conflict over scarce resources, and it is bringing to the very limits the fabric of international cooperation. The era of belated policies and imprecise net zero commitments has gone. What is required at this point is decisive, timely action based on climate justice and solidarity.

Drought and Despair

Erratic rainfalls and harsh drought have made farming disastrous in the likes of the Sahel, Central America and the marginal parts of South Asia. Experts at the United Nations are now very concerned that food insecurity in no less than 25 states is out of control due to climatic related disturbances as the main cause. Farm harvests are dying. Water is disappearing. Families walk hundreds of miles in seeking sustenance.

There are places where parents in desperate attempts to feed their numbers are increasing weddings of daughters at younger ages. This is not only a humanitarian crisis but also a leadership problem in the world. Investments in things to make the climate resilient as opposed to climate resilience themselves have so far been seriously inadequate despite scientists and climate activists repeatedly warning that climate resilience was very important lest a multitude is wasted. Developed countries pledged to provide the developing countries with climate finance of one hundred billion per annum. The pledge, with many others, is yet to be achieved.

The world is not getting less vulnerable, but the most vulnerable people in the world are getting affected out of proportion.

The most vulnerable people in the world continue to face the most severe impacts. Climate change has already turned into a global inequality multiplier, and it is unlikely to change unless justice becomes an important principle in the climate policy.

Europe Burns

The heatwave taking the present-day Europe is the harshest in the history. Daily highs of 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) are facing countries such as Spain, Italy and Greece causing massive blackouts, crop failure and even fires that have burnt through thousands of hectares of forest. City infrastructure, which is created in terms of moderate climates, is unable to cope with it. There are disruptions in the public transportation.

The cases of heatstroke flood hospitals. The air conditioning tempers with power grids. And it is important to understand that Europe is not the only end of the melting iceberg. This is the same case being repeated in the US, China, India, and some portions of Australia. It is not a simply hot summer. Unless we take unprecedented action, it is the new normal. Nevertheless, quite a few governments are still lagging. There are plans of urban heat resilience, but they are paper based. The building codes are yet to be updated to reflect the ability to withstand extreme heats. And climate adaptation can still be optional, even when the budgets are tight.

Bleached Reefs, Broken Ecosystems

Although the human cost of climate change is usually sensationalized, the loss of ecosystems remains to be unnoticed in suffering quietly. The current worldwide coral bleaching is the most severe coral bleaching ever experienced in the history of the world with 84 percent of the reefs in the world affected. The increasing ocean temperatures and acidification are killing such underwater ecosystems, which are home to more than a quarter of the marine species. It is not only an ecological catastrophe, but economic and social as well, when the coral reefs are destroyed. Reef systems support millions of people around the globe in terms of food, tourism, and protection of coasts.

In small island countries, the loss to them is like the loss of land farms or freshwater, only that there is no reserve. Natural life support systems within our planet in form of reefs, glaciers, rainforests are failing under the pressure posed by human activity. Every loss happens like a domino effect and the planet can lose its resistance to regulate the climate and store carbon as well as energy to sustain life.

What Needs to Change?

First, the concept of climate resilience must be integrated into national planning to the same degree as economic policy or defence strategy. The countries should invest in infrastructure which is heat, drought and flood resistant. This implies the development of climate resistant habitation, green retrofitting of urban areas, and the increase in clean water supply.

Second, the global north, without any benefit of charity should pay and more than what it pledged under climate finance as a reparative justice. The two contributors have no option but to take care of those who are at the receiving end of their emissions.

Third, the subsidies to fossil fuels should immediately stop. Such budget allocations must be diverted to renewable energy, accident preparedness and scientific research on the adaptation plans.

Fourth we will have to create empowerment of local communities and more so the Indigenous population which have always had a sustainable relationship with the land and water. Their expertise plays a key role in the development of viable climate action plans that are fair to all. Last, the media, politicians and the populations should cease defining climate change as a future threat. The language of prevention must change to the language of mitigation and survival.

A Time for Courage, Not Complacency

Climate crisis is not going to happen, it is here. That was blatantly proved by the summer of 2025. And there is a way out even though there is no silver bullet. It takes the gut of leaders, the muzzling of the citizens and the will to defend not only profit but people and the planet. We may stand up to this challenge or keep on blindly groping our way into an age of warmth, hunger, and destruction. It is up to us whether to choose it. Yes, but not very long.