Flying from Leh to Delhi
Today is one of those days when it’s very hard to believe that there still is a way to save the people and the planet. Flying back from Leh down to Delhi, I flew over some of the highest mountains on the planet, places completely uninhabitable for humans, hostile to humans, places that – according to both the traditions of local indigenous peoples and, apparently, nature herself – are taboo for humans. But even these remote places, on many of which probably no human being has ever set foot, are destroyed. From the plane, I saw just how much the high Himalayas are scarred by humanity (read: capitalism)…it was absolutely heartbreaking and terrifying.
Some background: The Himalayas have two points where their elevation breaks all records. An Eastern cluster around Mt. Everest and a Western cluster of ridiculously high mountains in Ladakh, Kashmir and neighbouring China and Pakistan. All of the handful of mountains on Earth that are taller than 8000m are located in these two clusters. Hundreds of peaks here exceed 7000m. Some of them are so massive, they tower above the clouds. Flying over them looks like you’re taking off, rather than being mid-flight, because instead of being 10.000m above the ground, the Earth’s surface is sometimes less than 3000m away.
The Western cluster of supertall mountains, a part of which I overflew today, is broader, including not only the Himalaya range, but also the Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges. It’s an area the size of Switzerland where few points are below 4000m.
At such heights, even that close to the equator , snowfall is plenty and temperatures rarely rise above freezing. Over the millennia the snow accumulated into massive glaciers. The area used to be so extensively glaciated that it was referred to as the “Third Pole” because nowhere else – apart from the actual North and South poles – would the planet be so heavily dominated by supposedly eternal snow and ice. All this frozen water is the source of Asia’s great rivers, from the Yangtze and Yellow River in China, to the Indus in Pakistan and the Ganges and Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh – four countries, which, collectively, are home to about half the global population. In other words: more than three billion people, as well as, of course , countless other creatures, depend in the water running out of the glaciers in summer.
But the glaciers are at best dying, if not gone already.
Flying over the Himalayas, one can see empty valleys. Some remnants of glaciers still cling on to most the uppermost slopes, their surface dark from all the dirt they carry. At the tip: a small stream often leads to a large lake a little bit downhill. Many huge valleys are completely free of ice. The only things that remain of the former glaciers that filled these valleys are round pebbles that have been ripped out of the mountains by the glaciers, polished over hundreds of years rubbing between tons of ice and the ground, as well as distinct bands on the walls of the valleys. Where the millions of tons of icy masses spent millennia rubbing against the walls on both sides of the valleys, they shaved off material from the mountain side, leaving a different shade on the valley’s wall up to where the flowing ice reached…ghosts of a not so long ago past.
Most of these areas are so remote, so high up and so hostile to human existence that, most likely, nobody has ever been there. The terrain is beyond difficult, with steep ridges and deep ravines, often covered by meters of snow that can hide dangerous crevices that would provide anyone daring to go there with an icy death. Add to this the altitude. Human bodies don’t function properly with the limited oxygen available at such heights. Above 4000m every movement becomes a pain, even for those who are used to the altitude. Above 6000m next to no higher form of life can exist. For the local people that inhabited the lower-lying parts of this landscape, the land of the glaciers and mountain peaks was taboo. It was not part of the human realm, but considered the land of the spirits and gods, who where not to be disturbed or else would punish those who did. But no place on Earth seems to be remote enough to be spared from the effects of fossil capitalism, where the only deities seem to be greed and profit. Burning fossil fuels has already heated the planet enough to destroy the glaciers in the Himalaya and beyond. What’s even more scary is that a billion tons of ice don’t just melt right away. These processes are delayed. So, seeing the state the glaciers are in should ring all alarm bells because it is a very clear signal of just how deep in shit we truly are. Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases right now (which we are nowhere close to) we’d already have altered the atmosphere in ways that are enough to cause severe trouble for billions of us and dozens of billions of other sentient beings that cohabit with us on this Earth.
Our planet is so beautiful and, apart from that, it’s the only one we have. Seeing how we wreak havoc on it is truly heartbreaking and terrifying.
And all of that for what? For the noble goal of making sure that everyone’s basic needs are met? For human “development” as the capitalist narrative goes? To be productive enough to allow everyone a comfortable life? No. India also shows very clearly that our system is precisely not designed to make sure that everyone’s meets are met. Most of us are miserable, sick and dirt poor – increasingly so and not just in the Global South. It’s not humanity that is destroying our planet because it has no other choice. It’s a handful of powerful individuals that destroy the very foundation of human [and other beings’] existence on this planet in order to get richer and richer and richer. Nature gives more than enough for everyone’s need, but we can no longer afford the greed of a few.
