One Planet, One Crisis
- Tom Vermolen
- Jul 28
- 8 min read
Updated: Aug 2
By Atrayee Basu August 3, 2025
1. Texas: The City That Couldn’t Sleep
The air in Austin, Texas, hung heavily like a thick blanket soaked in gasoline. Even at midnight, the thermometer outside Javier’s apartment read 98°F (37°C). Sleep had become
a luxury. Nights were no longer cool respites from the day’s furnace but extensions of its
fury.
Javier, a paramedic, wiped sweat from his brow as he sat on the steps of the ER (Emergency Room) ambulance bay. It was June 2025, and Texas was enduring its third consecutive week of extreme heat. The governor had called it a “historic heat dome,” but the locals were tired of euphemisms.
Inside the ER, heatstroke cases poured in—elderly patients with failing hearts, children with
seizures, outdoor workers collapsing mid-shift. Power grids groaned under the weight of air
conditioners, and rolling blackouts had begun.
“Every summer feels worse than the last,” Javier muttered, sipping lukewarm water.
He wasn’t wrong. Climate scientists had warned that the jet stream was weakening, stalling
weather systems and locking heat domes in place. What used to be a passing heatwave had
become a stationary pressure cooker.
Then came the flood. In early July 2025, remnants of tropical moisture collided with the
overheated land, triggering the catastrophic Central Texas flood. The Guadalupe River surged from 2 meters to nearly 9 meters—its second-highest peak on record. Entire communities were devastated.
These extremes—deadly heat followed by torrential rain—were no coincidence. Warmer air
holds more moisture, leading to sudden deluges when it rains. The 2023 heat dome that
broiled Texas was made 150 times more likely due to climate change.
Texas continues to resist coordinated climate policy. Floodplain buyouts, smart infrastruc-
ture, and statewide adaptation plans remain underfunded or ignored.
2. Europe: A Continent on Fire
Across the Atlantic, in Marseille, France, Adèle was sweating through another restless night. France, Italy, and Spain had shattered temperature records—again. Southern Europe was becoming a new Sahara.
Her 76-year-old grandmother, once a vineyard worker, sat fanning herself with an old news-
paper. “This land was meant for lavender, not fires,” she said bitterly.
Wildfires had scorched thousands of hectares of southern France. The vineyards were wilting. Olive yields had dropped. Tourism had cratered—not because people stopped visiting, but because they could not bear the heat. Urban infrastructure groaned. Trains melted on tracks. School holidays started early due to uninhabitable classrooms. The elderly died in silence, many without air conditioning.
In the Netherlands, a country historically defined by its battle against water, a new enemy is emerging: heat. In cities like Maastricht, daily temperature records have shown a clear upward trend over the past century. Once rare occurrences, 35°C+ days are now appearing with greater frequency, even in northern Europe’s temperate zones. This warming trend poses health risks, especially for the elderly and those without access to cooling. At the same time, the Netherlands faces growing challenges from sea-level rise. Much of the country lies below sea level, protected by an intricate system of dikes, pumps, and storm surge barriers. But rising ocean levels and more intense rainfall events are putting that system under strain. Dutch engineers are now leading global adaptation strategies with innovations like “Room for the River,” which allows floodplains to absorb excess water. However, the continued emissions threaten to outpace even the most advanced defenses if warming exceeds 1.5°C.
Adèle checked her weather app: 43°C predicted for tomorrow. “This isn’t summer,” she texted her cousin in Germany. “It’s punishment.” Europe is warming at twice the global average. Even in Germany and the Netherlands, once considered “safe,” heat deaths are rising. Climate refugees within Europe are now a possibility. Despite the European Green Deal, critics warn that carbon budgets are not aligned with 1.5°C targets.
3. India: The Waters Come
India, home to over 1.4 billion people, is increasingly at the crossroads of multiple climate
disasters. In recent years, the country has experienced unprecedented heatwaves, erratic
monsoons, flash floods, and rising sea levels—all intensifying under global warming. The
impacts are felt not only in cities but in rural villages, agricultural belts, and mountainous
regions alike. India has faced extreme weather on multiple fronts. In 2022, a historic spring heatwave in northwest India and Pakistan destroyed 15–30% of wheat yields. In 2025, monsoon storms in Assam and West Bengal forced mass displacements, especially in rural, low-income districts.
The 2022 spring heatwave was among the most severe on record. It arrived early—by March—and lingered well into May, baking the northern and central states with temperatures exceeding 47°C. In Delhi, the maximum temperature reached 49.2°C in May, the highest ever recorded for that month. Scientific attribution studies found that this extreme event was made 30 times more likely due to human-induced climate change. The scorching heat devastated wheat crops across Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh, slashing national yields by 10–15% and forcing India to impose a short-term ban on wheat exports—an alarming move in a time of global food insecurity.
The Indo-Gangetic plains—India’s breadbasket—face a double-edged crisis. On one side is
excessive rainfall and groundwater depletion; on the other is rising heat stress. Agricultural
laborers, especially women, now report having to wake at 4 a.m. to finish fieldwork before the unbearable midday heat sets in. Studies show that India has already lost over 267 billion
potential labor hours between 2001 and 2020 due to heat exposure.
But heat isn’t the only threat. The monsoon, once a relatively predictable seasonal phenomenon, has grown more erratic. In 2023 and 2024, states like Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Sikkim suffered deadly landslides and glacial lake outburst floods, killing hundreds. Simultaneously, parts of Rajasthan and Maharashtra reported long dry spells followed by cloudbursts that caused flash floods. Cities like Mumbai and Chennai have become examples of “too much water, too quickly,” overwhelming drainage systems and displacing tens of thousands.
In the low-lying town of Cooch Behar in West Bengal, twelve-year-old Arif clutched his little
sister’s hand as they watched the Torsa River swallow their home. The monsoon had arrived
with ferocity unseen in decades. The floods weren’t just high—they were sudden, deadly, and unrelenting. Roads disappeared in minutes. Schools turned into refugee shelters. Crops were washed away.
The Indian Ocean is warming, increasing evaporation and atmospheric moisture. The monsoon was no longer a gentle seasonal rhythm—it was an erratic, violent beast.
Coastal regions, too, are under siege. In Odisha and West Bengal, saltwater intrusion is ruining rice paddies. The Sundarbans mangroves on the Indian side are retreating rapidly—a loss not only of biodiversity but also cultural heritage and natural storm protection. Cyclones like Amphan (2020), Yaas (2021), and Mocha (2023) illustrate the escalating power of Bay of Bengal storms in a warming climate.
India’s energy profile complicates the narrative. On the one hand, it has become a leader in renewable energy deployment—ranking among the top five globally in solar and wind capacity. On the other, coal still powers more than 70% of its electricity. During the 2022 and 2024 heatwaves, electricity demand peaked so high that the government reactivated idle coal plants to avoid blackouts, highlighting the tension between short-term energy security
and long-term sustainability.
Yet, there are reasons for cautious optimism. India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change includes missions on solar energy, sustainable agriculture, and water conservation.
Programs like Jal Shakti (for groundwater) and the PM-KUSUM scheme (solar pumps for
farmers) are building local resilience. But experts warn that unless adaptation is matched
with aggressive mitigation—and supported by international climate finance—the scale of
India’s vulnerability could soon overwhelm its systems.
4. Bangladesh: The Sinking Delta
Not far downstream, in Kurigram, Bangladesh, Meena stood waist-deep in water, trying to
salvage kitchen utensils. Her hut had been no match for the Brahmaputra’s wrath.
Bangladesh, home to over 160 million people, sits on one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable deltas. Over 20% of its land could be underwater by 2050 due to sea-level rise and monsoon flooding. It is facing an escalating series of environmental shocks—floods, cyclones, rising seas, and salinization.
According to 2023 projections, extreme rainfall events in northeastern Bangladesh are set to
increase by up to 100mm per day by the end of the century under high-emission scenarios. Storm surge projections indicate an increase from 3.5 m to beyond 5.4 m by the end of the
century.
In the southwest, rising sea levels and the intrusion of saline water are destroying freshwater aquifers and arable land. Coastal rice yields have dropped sharply, and freshwater fish populations—once vital to protein intake—are collapsing. The famed Sundarbans mangrove forest, a UNESCO World Heritage site and crucial natural buffer, is under siege from saltwater intrusion and cyclonic erosion. These mangroves, which once absorbed storm energy and stored immense amounts of carbon, are now fragmenting at an alarming rate.
Despite these challenges, Bangladesh is emerging as a global leader in climate adaptation.
The government has pioneered community-based flood warning systems, elevated housing and climate-resilient infrastructure, and managed retreat zones. It has also established the Climate Change Trust Fund—one of the first of its kind in the developing world. Yet, massive gaps remain. As of 2025, fewer than 10% of climate adaptation projects in Bangladesh are fully funded. Without rapid international financial support and emissions cuts by wealthier nations, the country’s resilience may not hold against the coming waves.
5. China: When the Sky Breaks
In Zhengzhou, China, 58-year-old Liu Wen remembered the 2021 flood, and the 2025 storm
was worse. Metro tunnels became rivers. Cars floated like toys. The Yellow River jumped
its banks with almost no warning.
The East Asian monsoon had intensified—driven by warmer oceans, disrupted airflows, and vanishing snowpacks. Zhengzhou received over 200 mm of rainfall in a single hour—far beyond historic averages.
China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, finds itself increasingly vulnerable to the very climate extremes it helped accelerate. In 2021, the city of Zhengzhou was overwhelmed by a sudden deluge, with more than 200 mm of rainfall in a single hour—submerging metro tunnels, stranding thousands, and claiming dozens of lives. The 2025 storm was even worse, highlighting the deadly mismatch between rapid urbanization and climate resilience. As cities expand vertically and infrastructure strains under growing populations, drainage systems, green space, and heat mitigation often lag behind.
At the national level, China has pledged to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve
carbon neutrality by 2060. It leads the world in renewable energy investment, accounting for nearly half of global solar and wind capacity growth since 2022. Yet paradoxically, it continues to approve new coal-fired power plants—undermining global efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C. Analysts argue that unless China phases out coal completely by 2040, it
will be nearly impossible to stay within a safe climate threshold.
Simultaneously, climate-induced threats to agriculture and water security are mounting. Droughts in the Yangtze River basin in 2022 disrupted hydropower and crop cycles, while typhoons on the east coast have intensified. The government has introduced “sponge cities”
to absorb rainfall and mitigate flooding, but scaling such solutions to thousands of urban areas remains a monumental challenge.
China’s choices will shape not just its own future, but that of the planet.
6. One Planet, One Crisis
Javier, Adèle, Arif, Meena, and Liu Wen are not isolated cases. They are symptoms of a global fever—triggered by decades of greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and unbridled industrialization.
Their stories echo a common truth: climate change is not a future threat—it is a lived reality,
intensifying across continents. Each flood, fire, and heatwave is part of a global pattern shaped by decades of fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, and unsustainable growth.
The planet is warming, and the most vulnerable suffer first and worst. The crisis also reveals our interconnectedness. Emissions in one region shape disasters in another. Responses must be equally unified. Across the globe, communities are responding—with solar panels in villages, mangrove replanting along coasts, early warning systems in floodplains. But resilience alone is not enough. Without steep emissions cuts, equitable adaptation funding, and a just transition, resilience becomes a slow retreat. This is not only a test of science or economics—it is a test of humanity’s collective will.
We must pull the plug on fossil fuels — once and for all.
Justice should be proclaimed immediately.
Stand tall beneath the banner of solidarity.
As Arif’s school report warned, “The water doesn’t wait.” Neither should we.
Sources & References
Francis & Vavrus (2015). Geophysical Research Letters.
IPCC AR6 WGII (2022)
Nature (2021). Zhengzhou case study
World Bank (2021). Bangladesh Climate Report
IITM (2022). Rainfall and Monsoon Trends
Euronews Green (2025)
Texas Tribune & Houston Chronicle (July 2025)
Migration Policy Institute (2023)
CarbonBrief & Guardian (2023–2025)
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