Urjita Mainali, Contributing Writer On Aug. 26, a flash flood with the magnitude of a 5.2 earthquake hit the region around the Nepal-Tibet-China border, according to CNN Weather. Natural disasters have previously hit Nepal, with the region often preparing for extreme weather. Monsoon rains make travel difficult or dangerous, especially in more rural and mountainous regions as the roads fall into disrepair. It is also a seismically active region, according to BBC News, making it prone to earthquakes and landslides.  While it always made me worry for my family, news about natural disasters has never been entirely unexpected — but when I saw the first videos coming out of the massive waves of water, mud and debris, I felt that the scale of this disaster was different.  At the time of writing, the death toll has surpassed 1,290 in Nepal, and thousands remain missing.  In the days following the disaster, experts linked the deadly flash floods to a glacial collapse in the Himalayan region associated with climate change, according to The Guardian. In the region, temperatures have been recorded as warming twice as fast.  The lives impacted and lost by flood-related disasters have risen rapidly across South and Southeast Asia, a trend that is likely to continue and worsen. Nepali Prime Minister Balen Shah has called upon the international community to support efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change, citing it as a global responsibility.  Yet, the impacts of climate change are incredibly disproportionate between the Global North, responsible for the majority of carbon emissions, and the Global South, the most affected regions. Lately, I have noticed that this discrepancy exists in how the West speaks and educates about climate change as well.  Most conversation, in and outside of the classroom, posits the climate crisis as a looming threat on the horizon. The focus is on what will happen if climate change is not mitigated — flooding, worsening disasters and the impacts of AI data centers and personal AI usage, according to Cornell Chronicle and United Nations, respectively. The base of our knowledge, usually taught since elementary school, about the changing climate emphasizes our personal actions in an effort to avoid a “point of no return” – notably, one that was set in the future.  With this knowledge, it is understandable that conversation around climate change still posits the point of crisis in the future, especially in the West,