Thanks to the rather heavy summer showers that lashed the State in the past week, issues like climate change have now assumed a greater significance in the everyday lives of people.

It is as though these issues have suddenly become more tangible rather than just matters discussed in high brow international conferences.

For days, the main topic of discussion whenever people got together was that they had never before experienced such heavy rain in the thick of March. Cold climate became quite a hot issue. The unseasonal rain, accompanied by vicious lightning and thunder, which led to massive loss of crop, property and lives, have made the common man sit up and wonder: ‘So, this is what climate change is all about!’