Houses lie partially submerged in muddy water along a riverside after flash floods at Trishuli Bazar in Nepal’s Nuwakot district on August 26, 2026. Photo by Prabin RANABHAT / AFP via Getty Images)I’m currently on a reporting trip and working on a few other stories, but I need to say something about the glacial collapse and subsequent catastrophic flooding in Nepal and Tibet that has killed more than 500 people, with potentially 12,000 more still missing.About five summers ago, I wrote a story called ‘What Can I Do? Anything.’ It was essentially a call to action for people staring at climate devastation and wondering what they could possibly do about it. The gist was: If ever there was a time to join the fight against fossil fuels and for a livable climate, now is it. Here’s how you can get involved, and how you can actually be effective.If you’re watching this disaster unfold with rage and feeling absolutely helpless, it could be a good time to return to that story. It doesn’t offer an easy answer for dealing with horror on this scale, but it does offer some concrete paths toward climate action that focuses on systems change, and a case against giving up.It also begins in the same mountain system where this week’s disaster occurred, with the story of young woman whose life had already been reshaped by glacial flooding, a crisis driven primarily by fossil fuels, deforestation and animal agriculture.HEATED has been diligently covering the systemic, corporate, and political actors delaying climate action since 2019. Stay updated and angry: Subscribe today.I still remember the moral clarity of what Jaweria Baig told me. Describing the injustice of her situation, she said those of us living in wealthy, high-emitting countries—Americans in particular—needed to get off our asses and fight alongside the people bearing the worst consequences of a crisis they did almost nothing to create.I won’t recap the whole piece, but I want to emphasize one other relevant detail: Catastrophic glacial floods currently threaten millions across the Hindu Kush Himalaya—a vast region across 8 different countries sometimes called the ‘Third Pole’ for how much glacier ice, snow, and permafrost it holds. As the planet warms, the entire region’s frozen mountain slopes are becoming less stable, making glacier collapses—and the catastrophic floods they can unleash—far more likely. Glacial-lake outburst floods alone expose an estimated 9.3 million people across High Mountain Asia—more than in any other region on Earth. There, the risk from those floods is projected to triple by the end of the century.Most of the countries that make up this region have done extremely little to contribute to the climate change melting their mountains. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan have together contributed only about 2 percent of the world’s warming since 1851. Nepal itself accounts for roughly 0.14 percent. Yet their mountain communities are being forced to bear some of the climate crisis’s most terrifying and deadly consequences.Approximately 240 million people live in mountains and hills of the Hindu Kush Himalaya. For them, climate change is not really an issue they can choose whether to care about. If this disaster has convinced you that caring about climate change is no longer optional, start with that 2021 piece. But overall, the answer is still the same as it was five years ago. What can you do? Anything. (But mostly, pry our political system out of the fossil fuel industry’s hands).Subscribe nowFurther readingHow to help after Nepal and Tibet’s catastrophic floodsHow to demand urgent climate finance for Nepal from the World Bank, COP31 leaders, and the UNGlacier collapse that caused Nepal floods is most likely linked to thawing permafrost, scientists sayThe world’s wealthiest 10% caused two thirds of global warming since 1990Half of world’s CO2 emissions come from just 32 fossil fuel firms, study showsIt’s time to prosecute climate crimes—with laws that already existClimate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate DeathsSubscribe nowOne more thing. I’ve been seeing this Substack on the Nepal floods from John Birmingham being widely circulated on here, particularly this bit: That imagery of the Himalayan tsunami smashing into the multi-story building in Nepal was horrifying, but then murder always is, isn’t it? That’s what happened at that border crossing: mass murder. The perpetrators were the boards and CEOs of fossil fuel companies who have known for decades what they were doing, have known the consequences of it, and carried on with reckless indifference to those consequences. They murdered the hundreds, maybe a thousand or more, who were swept away in Nepal, as surely as they murdered thousands in Europe this summer and will take the lives of tens of millions more in the coming decades. Too strong, too much, too soon, or is it all too late?I’ve got nothing bad to say about the piece or the sentiment. But I just want to tack on an addendum that, it is, in fact, never too late. From that 2021 story:Some people may read this and believe it is pointless. That we are too late. That none of it matters. The fossil fuel industry knows this is not true. Their fear of a determined, pissed off public is why they promoted campaigns of climate denial and ‘individual responsibility’ in the first place. They knew if people were unsure about the problem, they’d waste time fighting about it instead of mobilizing to fix it. They knew if people were confused about the solution, they’d waste time trying to change themselves and each other instead of the system.However worse the climate crisis gets now depends on how quickly society transforms. How quickly society transforms depends on how many people demand it. The most harmful lie being spread about climate change today is not that it is fake. It’s that nothing you can do can help save the world.Subscribe now