Blaming government for everything is so passe. Now, from loss at the stock markets to that boil on a delicate part of your body is all the fault of climate change. Gone are the days when we simply forgot to water the plants, or left the car windows down during a rainstorm. Now, every wilted flower and damp car seat is a sign of the impending climate apocalypse. The sanctum sanctorum of a much-heralded new temple is found to have a leaky roof? Climate change. Traffic jam? Climate change. Boss gave you the buri nazar? Climate change. Reduced mandate from the people? Climate change. Cold coffee too warm, hot coffee too cold? You guessed it – climate change. It’s the new and much more genteel version of ‘Nehru is to blame‘.
This is not to peddle global warming denial. Climate change is real. Just that culturally we are now attuned to the overuse of the term. And unlike ‘The dog ate my homework’, who won’t believe you that the girl dumped you because of your ‘carbon footprint’, not BO. When a chief priest of a temple expressed his concern about a leak during heavy rains by saying, ‘It’s very surprising that despite having numerous engineers on board, water is leaking from the roof. Nobody would’ve thought this would happen,’ he forgot to cite the root cause of the problem: no, not the lack of drainage but the climate-induced rains themselves.
