Every few months, the same question is tossed into public debates: Is climate change exaggerated? Some raise it out of doubt, others as provocation. But beneath both lies a deeper problem. The challenge today is not absence of proof, the evidence is overwhelming. The real issue is the refusal to acknowledge. What can facts do against a mind that has chosen not to see?
And the facts are stark. Research papers, news headlines, even personal experience testify that the Earth is shifting faster than scientists once projected. By the end of 2025, global temperatures were expected to rise about 1.3 ± 0.4 °C above pre-industrial levels. That ceiling is already in sight. The warning signs are relentless: droughts in Australia, fires in California, floods in China and India, storms battering Mexico, and unseasonal extremes in Europe and the United States. What once seemed exceptional now forms a predictable pattern.
A Global Pattern of Upheaval
Take the past year alone. California endured wildfires in January, a month when forests once rested damp and green. Record heat blanketed New York and Boston through the summer. England's southeast, normally mild, touched 32 degrees Celcius, an event once expected only once in millennia, now made routine by human activity.
Australia's landscapes, stripped of moisture, burned through spring. Chinese and Indian cities were drowned by torrential rain. Mexico absorbed cyclone after cyclone, each more intense than the last. Meanwhile, the United States lost land silently to swelling seas. These are not scattered misfortunes. Together, they mark the signature of a planet under stress everywhere at once.
India at the Epicentre
If this feels distant, India offers the local mirror. In 2024, the country logged over 500 heatwave days; 2025 brought another punishing summer. Reports counted more than 44,000 heat stroke cases this year. Four months of searing heat gave way to May rains heavy enough to break decades-long records, followed by devastating floods in the north.
Extremes are no longer exceptions. Dry spells stretch longer; when rain comes, it crashes down with destructive force. Asia is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, and India reflects this pattern. While the planet has warmed around 1.5 °C since pre-industrial times, northern India frequently records spikes of 5-8 °C above seasonal norms.
The consequences ripple through daily life. Hospitals run out of beds. Schools suspend classes. Outdoor workers collapse on the job. Power grids break down. Food chains snap. And the poorest, without cooling, without reserves and without safety nets, bear the harshest
punishment. This is no longer a distant threat. It is inside our homes, dictating how we live, work, and survive.
Why Do We Refuse to See?
The strange paradox is not lack of data but lack of attention. Silence is collective. Families avoid the topic, campaigns ignore it, media gives it a token glance before moving to spectacle. Denial spreads not from ignorance but from choice.
That denial has consequences. When the public treats climate as peripheral, governments follow suit. Targets are postponed, polluters cushioned, token gestures passed off as policy. Each year the space for action narrows. Repetition dulls shock: every new record summer dismissed as "just another hot year." Disaster itself begins to feel routine.
The Fragile Promise of Growth
Beneath the silence lies an illusion: that economic growth can continue regardless. But no economy stands without stable soil, water, and weather. Agriculture collapses first; when harvests fail, incomes vanish, factories slow, and services shrink. Insurance claims rise, prices climb, migration spreads.
Cities are not safe. Mumbai faces the creeping sea, Delhi suffocates in unbearable heat, and other metros prepare for storms that can undo decades of infrastructure in days. Growth that ignores ecology is not growth at all, it is acceleration toward collapse.
Hope or Complacency?
Some say humanity always adapts. But nature is unmoved by optimism. Ice melts at 0 °C, not 50. Belief does not rewrite physics. To insist that we will "manage somehow" is not resilience: it is recklessness disguised as hope.
The facts are not pessimistic; they are precise. Instruments do not lie. Satellites do not exaggerate. Each year of delay deepens the hole, making future solutions costlier and less effective.
Honesty as the First Step
At its core, this crisis is not scientific but of the human mind. The data is there; the consequences are visible. What is missing is honesty. Denial does not arise from ignorance but from attachment: to comfort, convenience, habit. We look away because the truth unsettles our way of life. But evasion is not innocence. It is complicity.
Unless honesty is valued as much as ambition, we will raise generations fluent in facts yet untouched by truth. Climate denial is not just a policy lapse; it is a moral one.
Earth will not wait for us to awaken. It does not negotiate. Storms do not pause for elections. Heatwaves do not consult calendars. The only question that remains is: when truth knocks, will we open the door, or wait until it breaks it down, leaving us no shelter at all?
(Acharya Prashant, a philosopher and teacher of global wisdom literature, is the founder of the PrashantAdvait Foundation and a bestselling author who brings timeless wisdom to urgent modern questions.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
