Jakarta
The tropical cyclone Seroja that swept through East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara and neighboring country East Timor on Sunday, triggering massive flooding and landslides that killed at least 113 people, is more proof that the climate crisis is here. The horrifying magnitude of the disaster, as reflected in viral videos on social media, may have shocked many, but we should not claim we did not see it coming. In January, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) announced that Indonesia experienced a rising number of hydrometeorological disasters from 2015 to 2020, six of the hottest years on record according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). In 2015, the country saw 1,664 hydrometeorological disasters. The figure then increased to more than double in 2019, with 3,810 disasters. It did drop to 3,023 last year, but that does not mean the threat of nature...