'We cannot absolve govts of climate responsibilities; they hold the power'

Author Amitav Ghosh talks about his latest book, Wild Fictions, the need for urgent action on climate, and collective agency at the grassroots

- IVINDER GILL

Wild fictions that are not really wild. Is it unfortunate that it is easy to be prescient on climate in present times, as you have been on more than one occasion?

It is, indeed, a bitter irony that it has become so easy to be 'prescient' on climate change. The warnings, the predictions, they have been there for decades, even centuries, if one knows where to look. But the inertia of systems, the stranglehold of vested interests, the seductive allure of short-term gains—these have proven far more powerful than reason.

Despite events like the LA fires, affecting the Global North, we find little tangible action on the climate front. And, as you mention in Wild Fictions about both western and poor nations refusing to take responsibility, and you suggest solutions in people's movements, like in The Living Mountain. But then, shouldn't climate change actually be a people's movement, where every individual takes drastic action by themselves, instead of putting the onus on others, and irrespective of the geopolitical tussles of Global North and South? How do you weigh in?