Every month, disasters caused by extreme weather kill more people in South and Southeast Asia. In January, a landslide in Indonesia’s West Java followed heavy rain and led to dozens of deaths — including 23 Indonesian marines out on a training exercise.
The end of 2025 was punctuated by similar depressing headlines. Cyclone Ditwah killed over 600 in Sri Lanka in December; a few days earlier, Cyclone Senyar’s toll in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand had crossed 1,000.
Senyar formed in the Malacca Strait; that’s an area very atypical for such storms. The people of South and Southeast Asia are living the reality of out-of-control climate change — a problem largely caused by the…