My Latest: What Is Lost 'Cannot Be Repaid'

In Nepal's Mustang region, climate "loss and damage" puts the survival of an historically Tibetan community in question.

The 12th-century Tibetan town of Kagbeni in Mustang, Nepal—the gateway to the ancient Kingdom of Lo. (Photo by the author)

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What, then, do you say to a person like Laxmi Gurung as she looks you in the eye? I had no adequate words. But maybe I should be looking to her for answers.

—What Is Lost ‘Cannot Be Repaid’ (The Nation, May 2024)

Dear friends,

I’m at an uncharacteristic loss for words, again, this morning. What can possibly be said that isn’t too little and too late? But some of us just can’t shut up—will not shut up—whether it’s about the genocide in Palestine or the eco-/genocide of accelerating climate catastrophe.

I’m not going add a lot of additional words to introduce my new piece, in The Nation’s May issue, about the ongoing climate catastrophe in the Himalayan region of Mustang, Nepal. (It’s available now to subscribers and will be available for non-subscribers next week). I spent about six weeks reporting in Nepal this past winter, in both Mustang and the Kathmandu Valley, and there’s more to come.

This is one brief dispatch from one small corner of a planet on the brink. As always when I’ve reported from the climate front lines, I center the voices of those who live there, who are bearing the brunt, though they’ve done nothing to create the disasters that threaten their homes, livelihoods, and lives.

Of course, words are never enough. People like Laxmi Gurung in Kagbeni, Nepal, need more than our sympathy, our handwringing—and more than our money, though they need that too. They need our solidarity—real solidarity—which is to say, our action. This summer, the U.S. climate justice movement is mobilizing a sustained campaign of nonviolent direct action targeting the Wall Street banks that continue to finance the global eco-/genocide. Straight at the heart of fossil capital. I'll be there. Will you join me?

-Wen