IN A world already fraying at the seams with endless wars, deepening divisions, and mounting anxieties, something far more ancient and ominous seems to be stirring — something that does not come draped in ideology or diplomacy. Nature, the most silent of all forces, seems to be shouting now. And her voice is one of flames, floods, quakes, and storms.
In just the span of a few harrowing days, humanity was offered a bitter reminder of its fragility. From the grey skies of New York, choked by smoke drifting thousands of kilometres from Canada’s unprecedented wildfires, to the scorched hillsides of Greece where entire towns fled from an inferno, it seems the Earth is speaking in a language we still refuse to learn.
While we witnessed horrifying footage from Gaza, where those waiting for food were met with bullets and bombs, we also saw conflict simmering once again along the Thailand-Cambodia border. But these are human-made tragedies, birthed from egos, power lust, and historical wounds. What do we do when nature becomes the aggressor? Who do we negotiate with when it is the Earth itself that retaliates?
An 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s Far East — a rupture so powerful that it sent tsunami warnings rippling across the Pacific. Waves struck Hokkaido, Japan, as sirens blared and evacuation orders echoed through coastal towns. Similar alerts swept across Taiwan, Hawaii, Chile, and Ecuador. The United States Geological Survey initially measured the quake at 8.0, but within hours revised it to 8.8 — an act that mirrored how quickly our understanding of disasters can change, and how inadequate even our best systems often are.
It is almost ritualistic now — the way breaking news spreads across the globe after every such disaster, with social media flooded by hashtags and breaking tickers. Yet, behind these numbers and statistics lie tremors far more profound: the shaking of human arrogance.
For centuries, mankind believed itself to be the master of this planet. In our laboratories and legislatures, we drew imaginary lines between ourselves and everything else. Nature, we believed, could be tamed, mined, bent, bought. We traded rainforests for palm oil, oceans for oil rigs, rivers for dams, and air for industry. Yet, like a bank account constantly over-drafted, nature’s balance sheet is now demanding repayment.
And the invoice is global.
In Canada, thousands fled as wildfire smoke turned the sky an apocalyptic orange. That same smoke did not respect borders. It travelled, uninvited, into American cities. New York, home to towering skyscrapers and economic ambition, found itself under an air pollution emergency. It was not the fallout of war or a pandemic, but trees — millions of them — burning in silent protest thousands of miles away.
In Greece, fires engulfed not just forests but the very idea of stability. Flames licked the edges of Athens, and entire regions were evacuated as gusty winds whipped sparks into infernos. Firefighters battled not just the flames but the hopelessness that comes when disasters outpace even the bravest among us. The Mediterranean heat, once romanticised by poets and tourists, has now become unbearable. These are not the summer vacations of memory. These are the consequences of denial.
This is not about a single country or region any more. Chile, Ecuador, the Solomon Islands, Taiwan and even Russia’s remote Sakhalin region — each of these places has felt the tremors, the tides, the trauma. In Hawaii, residents were told to flee low-lying areas as a tsunami loomed. In Japan, the earthquake brought back haunting memories of Fukushima and 2011. All over the Pacific Rim, the very ground beneath our feet is reminding us how temporary our civilizations really are.
And yet, for countries like Bangladesh, none of this feels particularly new.
Floods, cyclones, droughts — these are seasonal guests here. The difference, however, is that we have adapted. Our losses have diminished not because nature has become kinder, but because we have learnt, sometimes through brutal lessons, to live with it. Our cyclone shelters, early warning systems, and grassroots preparedness strategies may seem unsophisticated to the West, but they save lives. Developed countries, once confident in their insulation from such chaos, are now catching up with an unpleasant reality. That nature does not discriminate by GDP.
Indeed, there is a cruel irony at play. The very nations that sprinted toward industrialisation — pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, chasing profits with no regard for sustainability — are now finding their shiny cities vulnerable to water, fire, and wind. It’s not just poetic justice. It is ecological consequence.
And the most unsettling part? These disasters are not anomalies. They are the new normal.
The United Nations Environment Programme and IPCC reports have repeatedly warned that extreme weather events will become more frequent, more intense, and more unpredictable. We are watching that prophecy unfold in real-time. And yet, in boardrooms and parliaments, the urgency still feels optional.
Philosophers and prophets have long warned of this day. From indigenous wisdom to religious texts, there has always been a shared understanding: that to harm the Earth is to harm ourselves.
What is most alarming is not that these disasters are happening — but that they are no longer shocking. Once, a massive quake or wildfire would grip headlines for weeks. Now, they are part of the background noise of our era. Fires in Canada? Again. Floods in Germany? Of course. Heatwaves in India? Routine. The numbness is setting in. And that numbness may be our final undoing.
Technology, for all its brilliance, seems impotent in the face of this wrath. Japan, one of the most disaster-ready nations in the world, still had to issue last-minute tsunami warnings. Hawaii, a state with sophisticated emergency systems, scrambled to evacuate people within hours. These are not failures of systems alone — they are failures of imagination. We did not imagine the Earth could change this fast, or that our timelines for mitigation would expire so suddenly.
Even within the developed world, adaptation systems are failing. Flooded subway tunnels, melting highways, collapsing power grids — these are not features of dystopian fiction. They are reports from last summer. It is a sobering reminder that wealth and innovation do not always translate into resilience. Not when you build on fragile ecological ground.
Political leaders still frame climate change as a future concern, a topic for summits and non-binding declarations. But the climate is not negotiating. It is reacting. And its reaction is exponential.
This is not about vengeance. Nature has no ego, no vendetta. It simply responds. When we burn forests, it dries the air. When we dam rivers, the land thirsts elsewhere. When we choke the skies, the heat builds. Every action has a reaction —n ot in some moralistic sense, but in the hard, unsentimental language of physics and biology.
Yet, the philosophical lesson is inescapable.
We are guests here. And guests who overstay their welcome, who destroy the house they were invited into, eventually find themselves out in the cold — or the fire. The climate crisis is not only a scientific or political problem. It is an ethical one. A spiritual one. A generational one.
The solutions are known, but the will remains missing. We must pivot urgently to renewable energy — solar, wind, hydro — not just as a technological choice but as a moral imperative. We must rethink how we build cities, grow food, travel, and consume. We must replace growth-at-all-costs with sustainability-at-any-cost. Because the cost of doing nothing is becoming unaffordable.
And we must listen. Not just to scientists and activists, but to the planet itself. The earthquakes, fires, and floods are not isolated events. They are the earth’s language. A language of consequence. A language we have ignored for too long.
What comes next depends on whether we treat this moment as a turning point — or just another headline to scroll past. We can retreat into denial, distracted by short-term politics and profits, or we can rise with the urgency that this era demands.
Because nature does not take sides. It does not care whether we are rich or poor, global north or south, believer or sceptic. But it always keeps the score.
And if we still refuse to change, it will write our legacy in ash, water, and stone.
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HM Nazmul Alam is an academic, journalist and political analyst.