The Gift

Samden gathered his papers, stuffed them into a backpack and, with the briefest of nods to an acquaintance, skirted the quickly coalescing lines for the buffet and walked rapidly out of the lofty conference hall. He backed out his motorcycle and manoeuvred it with some difficulty through the honking masses of SUVs heading out of the hotel grounds. Climate change! They could take their climate change and stuff it, all the way to Kyoto, Bali and Copenhagen. Hot air inside and outside, it was all a farce. He gritted his teeth at the thought of having to write an editorial for the Herald, and cursed himself for volunteering in the first place.

The city's traffic absorbed him all the way home. But as soon as he walked into the relative peace of the ground-floor flat he shared with his wife and daughter, frustration overwhelmed him. He couldn't quite understand why the conference had bothered him so, in the final analysis. It wasn't the enormity of the task of dealing with climate change. He was familiar enough with the problems and the solutions, and the two-day regional meet had done a good job filling in the gaps. But nothing could mask the emptiness of the speeches from those who mattered the most – the empty, cynical exhortations by talking heads who did not even understand what climate change was, did not really care, and prided themselves on riding the 'green wave'. Yes, it was this that had maddened him.

Dinner with Tsering and his five-year-old daughter soothed Samden. His wife good-humouredly teased him, suggesting he channel his frustration into his editorial, as Dechen clamoured for his attention. He was happy to be distracted, but later he excused himself and went into their bedroom. He opened his laptop and began to type rapidly.

In my heart of hearts, I know we're not going to make it through unscathed. We will talk and talk and talk, even as carbon levels and temperatures go up, the poles dissolve, the glaciers melt, islands are submerged, and hundreds upon thousands of our co-species upon this marvel of a planet, as well as our less fortunate fellow humans, are washed away by climate change. We will talk and tinker, tinker and talk, and find that we have not done nearly enough to deal with the consequences of the carbon economy that has driven us to this point. However many conferences we confer at, publications we publish, and initiatives we initiate, we will never quite strike at the heart of what needs to be done to deflect our course from that unwittingly chosen by our ancestors.

Despite himself, he smiled. What would Aryal think of such a downer of an editorial? He visualised his grey-headed editor shaking his head, his brows knitted with concentration as he tried to make sense of his young reporter's cynicism. "It took me twenty years to get this way, Samden," he'd complain. "Where do you get it from readymade? This is what they teach in Columbia these days?"

Samden sighed, leaned back on the bed, and looked around vaguely. It wasn't just the politicians either, he reflected. If the public didn't get climate change, then why would their representatives be moved to do anything substantial? His eye fell upon a slim green volume poking out from the agendas and charts and notes spilling out of the backpack next to him. Dead trees, he reflected, flicking through the patently non-recycled, glossy supplement, 'Voices of Change'. Some writers' group had managed to get it handed out. Still, it would be a change from the desiccated analyses policymakers never read or acted on. Perhaps more accessible voices were the key to getting the message across? He began to read a piece titled, rather melodramatically, 'Valley of Tears':

It was the longest, hottest summer anyone could remember. Even the oldest grandmothers, who could remember the great earthquake of 1934, had never known such unrelenting heat. By July, the Kathmandu Valley began to seethe and boil like a cauldron. The blinding blue of the skies belied the monsoon rains, expected mid-month, and the mountains shimmied in the noon haze.

Drought? That was an easy angle.

The government had plenty on its hands. The viciousness of the summer and the delayed rains had stunted prospects for the millions of farmers in the countryside. Bad yields would mean rising prices and a desperate populace demanding to be fed on the cheap.

Livelihoods, even!

But what could you do about the weather? It was up to the gods above. Villagers across the country sought to propitiate them. Two giant toads were dressed up, dusted with vermillion and married off with a full brass band. A hundred women danced naked in the forests to placate the elemental forces. The heavens fixed their supplicants with an implacable stare, forcing them to turn away, eyes watering.

Samden read on, but began to lose interest once it began to rain, and then pour, in the story. It was The Flood all over again.

As the Valley filled with water, it emptied of life.

He sighed again. It was absurd, really. Couldn't people write convincingly about climate change without resorting to apocalypse? But who wanted to hear talk of cropping patterns and livelihoods? No wonder the spotlight was on disappearing glaciers and emerging deserts and extreme weather events. It was difficult to attribute specific events to human-caused climate change; but if you wanted to be honest, you'd never have an audience. So if people and their governments, wired to short-term probabilities, couldn't really understand climate change, how would they ever consent to sacrifice in its name? It was pointless, Samden concluded. Whatever the Maldives had to say about it, it was all up to the juggernauts of the US, the EU, China and India. If ever a compromise was worked out, it would be so watered down that they'd have to start all over again.

"Still changing the world?" Tsering stood in the doorway, arms akimbo. "Come on, enough of this climate change-shange. Let's sleep, ok?"

As expected, Aryal read the editorial Samden handed to him the next day, grunted and rewrote it completely. 'A Tough Ask' became 'A Tough Ask, but Light at End of Tunnel' – that light being the upcoming international conference to which everyone was going to trail carbon. In the following months, Samden lost interest: what was the point? The climate would change whether or not he did anything about it. Maternal health, water and sanitation, food insecurity – now here were things one could actually do something about. These were the real issues, he told himself.

But the truth was, Samden knew what the overridingly real issue was, that had the potential to alter the conditions of life so drastically as to wholly trump any achievement in any field. Observing the run-up to the conference, Samden wished he could share in the enthusiasm of the students and the local groups that were campaigning for action. They seemed to have their finger on something he'd missed. Or was it just naiveté?

One evening, picking his way through a wedding party, he was accosted by an uncle, a jolly fat man of about 50 who ran a travel agency. "Oho, Samden! Tell me what is your secret?" He wanted to know how Samden stayed as skinny as ever: "What are you now, thirty, thirty-two? I've been like this since way before that, and all the trekking I do doesn't help either!" "Ah, but uncle," smiled Samden, patting the older man's belly cheekily, "imagine what would happen if you didn't even do that walking? Eh?" His uncle shook his head and insisted, "But what is your secret?"

As he walked away, Samden was grinning. His own logic seemed impeccable, even if his uncle didn't appreciate it. What if he hadn't? How much fatter would Nima Lama be? And then it dawned on him: What if we didn't do anything at all about climate change? What then? Wouldn't things be much worse? It seemed so obvious he could hardly believe it hadn't occurred to him before, or that he'd believed someone else should shoulder the burden of doing something. The talkers would talk, but they would have to listen if they were forced to do so. Without hope, even hopeless, there was no point.

That night, as Dechen buzzed about him, Samden began to write another editorial.

What is the point of fighting climate change?

He continued, drumming his fingers on the edges of the laptop as he worked it out in his head.

Climate change is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. We may well fail, given the enormity of the task before us. But if we throw our hands up in despair now, we will most certainly fail, and we will fail more miserably than we can even imagine. Instead of temperatures rising a manageable two degrees Celsius, or even a dangerous four degrees, they may rise eight degrees through our negligence, and then where will we be? Instead of losing tens of thousands of species, we may lose a million, and then how will we remember nature, save in the terror of an oncoming superstorm or the desperation of a decade-long drought? We may fail to achieve what we dream of, but whatever we achieve will be at least that. As Sartre might put it, being is nothingness, but we have to make something of nothingness if we are to be.

He chuckled at his own pretensions, and Dechen clutched at his knee, thinking her father understood the little make-believe she was playing. A sudden thought came to him and he grew sombre.

And let us not forget that for all our ancestors bequeathed us, the chalice was poisoned after all. We are now preparing to pass it on. If we cannot bring ourselves to take the poison unto ourselves, as Lord Shiva did for all eternity, there will be nothing our descendants will be thankful to us for. Worship your ancestors, some say, but if we cannot make the changes to halt climate change, our descendants, living in a world impoverished beyond imagining, will curse us. There will be no shrines to your ashes, no pretty flowers on your graves … if you want your children to love you, love the world you will leave behind.

"Ah, Dechen," he sighed, looking into his daughter's eyes.

~ Rabi Thapa is a writer and editor based in Kathmandu.