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Paul Crutzen doesn't think we're moving fast enough with reductions in carbon emissions. The professor emeritus at Utrecht University's Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Sciences became one of the most famous geoengineering advocates for his idea of copying the Pinatubo volcano.

Its 1991 eruption sent 10m tonnes of sulphur (which became sulphur dioxide) into the atmosphere, reducing the global temperature by 0.5C the next year. Crutzen suggested a project to produce a similar effect, using balloons or artillery shells to put 1.9m tonnes of sulphur into the atmosphere to cool the Earth.

The source of the problem is 1,500 miles away, at the source of the Ganges, where melting Himalayan glaciers are raising river and sea levels.

Lohachara island, once visible from Ghoramara, a mile to the east, is already gone beneath the waves, succumbing to the ocean two years ago, leaving more than 7,000 people homeless

Over the past few years, in a construction project that will eventually reach across 2,050 miles, India has been quietly sealing itself off from Bangladesh, its much poorer neighbour. Fence sections totalling about 1,550 miles have been built since 2004, many traversing the fringes of the Sundarbans.

Today the frontier between the countries is defined by two rows of 10ft barbed-wire barriers. In New Delhi the belief is that the fence is being built to 'keep in' an anticipated flood of refugees from Bangladesh, a crowded country more prone to devastating floods than anywhere else on the planet.