One of the most decorated skaters in Olympic history, Bonnie Blair comments that winning doesn’t always mean being first; winning means we’re doing better than we’ve done before. By its very definition, winning is the ultimate victory, but according to Blair, winning means being better each time, that we should focus on our personal growth and each time we get better at something, that is akin to a win.

I saw this slideshow on MSN a few days back and given what we know about climate change, this is fascinating and is a must-see. Please have a look so we can do something so that in our lifetime, the earth is still a place that we can gift to our children and their children.

Another interesting article I read this week in the Straits Times was about India’s predicted urban boom. According to the article, India is projected to see an explosion in its urban population in the coming decades, but its cities already cannot cope, and climate change will make living conditions harsher still. My hometown of Mumbai, one of India’s biggest metropolis, grew by some eight million people in the past 30 years, the rough equivalent of the whole of New York City, to a population of 20 million, and is forecast to add another seven million by 2035. And like other Indian megacities, Mumbai’s housing, transport, water and waste management infrastructure has not kept pace, with around 40 per cent of people living in slums, which often have no regular water, power supply or proper sanitation. As the world’s population approaches eight billion, most of them in the developing world, it is a situation replicated globally. Those living on the outskirts of Mumbai commute for hours to work, with many hanging out of doors on packed trains, and others travelling by car or motorbike on clogged, pothole-filled roads that flood during the monsoon.

The United Nations projects that India’s population will rise from its current 1.4 billion to overtake China’s and peak at 1.7 billion in the 2060s, before dropping back to 1.5 billion by the start of the next century. By 2040, 270 million more people will live in Indian cities, according to the International Energy Agency, driving carbon emissions higher from power generation and transport, and from the production of steel and concrete to house them. Overcrowding, shoddy infrastructure and severe air, water and noise pollution are part of everyday life in India’s megacities. About 70 per cent of the billions of litres of sewage produced in urban centres every day goes untreated, a government report said in 2021. Every winter, the capital New Delhi, home to 20 million people, is cloaked in toxic air pollution that, according to one Lancet study, caused almost 17,500 premature deaths in 2019.

On that sombre note, take care people and stay safe.