he environmental degradation of our planet is the most pressing existential threat to humanity today. The causes of this degradation—overconsumption, reckless exploitation of natural resources, deforestation, pollution and unchecked industrialisation—are deeply intertwined with the very frameworks of modern progress.

As the earth continues to succumb to these pressures, it is becoming increasingly clear that the paradigms of growth and development that have guided human societies for centuries are incompatible with the survival of the natural world. The urgency to rethink our relationship with nature has never been more crucial.

Scholars like Sumit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Amitav Ghosh have made significant contributions to understanding the profound consequences of human interaction with the environment. Their work also signals a broad intellectual shift in the search for alternative forms of progress—ones that do not destroy the delicate ecological balance upon which life depends.

Historically, existential threats to humanity were often framed in terms of military conflict or geopolitical competition. The 20th Century, particularly the Cold War era, was marked by the division of the world into adversarial blocs, with the looming threat of nuclear annihilation casting a long shadow over human existence. The fear of obliteration through war—such as the Cuban missile crisis—highlighted the vulnerability of global civilisation to human conflict. Since the mid-20th Century, a new threat has emerged. It is far more insidious and no less dire. It is environmental destruction.

The Los Angeles wildfires, for instance, are not isolated incidents but part of a pattern of ecological crises exacerbated by climate change. The frequency and intensity of wildfires, storms, floods and heatwaves have increased in tandem with global warming, pointing to the catastrophic consequences of unchecked industrial growth, fossil fuel consumption and environmental mismanagement. These disasters illustrate the scale of the threat to humanity’s very survival and the deep vulnerability of both developed and developing........

© The News on Sunday