I need to reset my thermostat

Our nation is going through, supposedly, one of the worst heat waves in history. The challenge this year, it seems, is that it happened much earlier. I am not sure if temperatures are higher than last year, but the heat wave has come earlier than previous years. 

Traveling and talking to friends across the nation, every community talks about how this year is worse than the last. Bangalore, Vellore which we experienced, Nagpur and Delhi, friends talking about it. (But then, I hear it every year). 

But the hope is that this too will pass, at least in some parts of our nation. But this would have left its destruction, with a few lives lost, crops failing, personal economy challenges for rural agrarian life. These will be just a few numbers that will appear in the media for a few days, and then be forgotten.  

The thing I love most these days is the car AC, with its auto mechanism. It has a built‑in thermostat and adjusts the flow of cool air to maintain the temperature at what I want. Our bedroom AC does not have it, and we take turns at night to switch it off and on. (Yes, we are the privileged ones, of the less than 8% of Indians who have ACs.) The problem is our personal thermostats differ. And so, when one person thinks it is cool enough, the other person decides it is too warm. This is based on our personal hot or cold preferences. Our personal preference thermostats! We do not fight over it but laugh over it. Though I get my preference mostly 😊.

 

At a broader scale, the deeper problem is the same. When you zoom out, it is the inner thermostat of beliefs that quietly shapes how people (me too) act in the world. It’s this mix of personal desires, fear, identity, power, and profit that often distorts our collective choices.

 

The anti–climate action lobby, backed by a handful of powerful oligarchs and fossil fuel interests, works steadily to weaken or delay environmental policies that might threaten their profits. Through climate denial, manufactured skepticism, and economic alarmism, they push for continued subsidies and resist renewable alternatives, even as global CO₂ levels keep rising. But on the other side, there are groups who champion new energy solutions with their own motives, driven less by earth restoration and more by the promise of quick financial gain. 

Both camps, in different ways, are supported by larger power structures that benefit from maintaining influence and control. The result is a tug of war where extreme positions dominate, nuance disappears, and long‑term planetary wellbeing gets overshadowed by short‑term interests. And we end up falling into one of these camps. 

Beneath all of this lies the same human pattern: belief systems hardened into identity, and identity hardened into policy. And the climate, indifferent to our inner thermostats, continues to respond to what we do  -  not what we claim to believe.

Recently, talking to a nephew of mine who is a rubber planter was interesting. He said, I am not a well‑educated person - in terms of this “climate change and science.” But one thing I know: our rubber yield has dropped by 60% in the last 5 years. It rains when it should not, and the rubber sap gets diluted. It does not rain when it should, and the trees do not mature. Whatever it is -  ARC (Actual Rubber Content — the percentage of real, solid rubber in latex after all water and additives are removed) has dropped by 60%. The truth from the where the rubber meets the road. 

 

And then he said, we have handed over part of our land to "pineapple growers" which gives us money, but the land will be destroyed. Nothing else can grow on that land again. But then we need the money. 

Leaving climate change and economy aside, there is a question I am grappling with. 

 

How are my personal thermostats of beliefs and behaviors set? Generally my personal benefits, which include me and my own (family, and the ones I love), but may have a negative bearing on the larger community outside is usually the ones that set my thermostat. 

 

There was a time and I try even today, to live with the perspective of the larger picture I am part of -  trying to stay clear of the oligarchs trying to influence my thermostats. Trying to understand what is good for the world and community around me. But then over time, the thermostat pressures me to keep changing the internal setting. At times, thermostat changes its internal setting even without my noticing. 

 

I blame it on the culture – that is what is expected of me – I am not to blame! But then the Good book reminds me “Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.”

Maybe my thermostat needs a reset every now and then, instead of blaming the culture and context!