After the worst regional flooding in a century, the main task in India’s Kerala state, which saw some 250 percent more monsoon rain than normal last week, is rescuing the tens of thousands who are stranded. That hasn’t stopped people there, as elsewhere, from also reflecting on weather extremes and other tangible signs of too heavy a human footprint.

As rains eased this weekend, one man posted an image of a bridge piled with plastic bottles and other waste. He wrote: “A friend from Kerala said, as the water recedes, this is how bridges look ... ‘the river has thrown back at us what we have been putting into it for years.’ ”

Some of India’s schoolchildren have thrown it back, too. Last month one group collected more than 20,000 plastic wrappers and mailed them to food packagers. It's one small piece of a pushback that also includes plastic bans and bottle buyback initiatives in some states.

The kids have role models: Last year a young Mumbai lawyer completed a two-year project to remove more than 11 million pounds of mostly plastic trash from a beach there. And it isn’t by accident that some of them are setting up to be drivers of change. (Others remain unempowered, though poverty rates have plunged.) Three years ago a ruling by India’s Supreme Court required its 1.3 million schools and more than 650 universities to teach about the environment and sustainability. 

Bijal Vachharajani writes children’s books from an Indian perspective. The topics of the books run from seasonal eating – which can help counter food insecurity – to climate issues. “[Children] believe in change,” she told an interviewer recently. “They are extremely enthusiastic about working on the environment.”

Now to our five stories for today.