Human Writes: Time for Malaysians to raise heat on the climate crisis

Children get a dose of oxygen from a Red Cross volunteer at a village in Jambi. The blazes have been spewing toxic smoke across South-East Asia, forcing the closure of schools and airports, and prompting Jakarta to deploy thousands of personnel to tackle the fires. Photo: AFP/Tri Iswanto

A shocking video went viral on social media recently, showing a sky drenched in a dark blood-red hue in the middle of the day. This ominous, apocalyptic-looking scene was taken in the Jambi province of Sumatra, Indonesia, in late-September 2019.

For locals of Mauro Jambi, there was no second-guessing the cause: the haze. Nearby fires had created such a thick blanket of smoke particles that they acted as a filter to the sunlight, resulting in everything turning red.