SEPTEMBER 26 — The haze is back. The acrid smell of burning peat hangs in the air, skies are tinged an apocalyptic orange, and the familiar rhythm of life in Sarawak — and indeed, across Malaysia — has been disrupted. Schools close, offices slow down, and the economic machinery grinds to a halt. But this time, as we reach for our face masks, we are running out of scapegoats.

For decades, the narrative was convenient and comfortable. We blamed the smallholders. We pointed fingers at the slash-and-burn farmers in Kalimantan and Sumatra, painting them as the ecological villains of the piece. It was a tidy story: irresponsible agriculture versus responsible citizens. But the current evidence no longer supports that convenient fiction.

The fires are raging, yes. But they are raging in a landscape that has been fundamentally altered by a changing climate. The peatlands are drier than ever, the dry season is longer and more unforgiving, and the once-predictable monsoon patterns are now erratic. You cannot blame a farmer for a fire that is exacerbated by extreme drought — a drought that has its origins not in a farmer’s torch, but in the overheated machinery of our global civilisation.

Let us not kid ourselves. The smoke drifting over Borneo is not a local problem; it is a global snapshot. The EU is battling unprecedented summer infernos that consume entire towns. The US West Coast is a tinderbox, with wildfire seasons that no longer end. Australia’s bushfires have become so catastrophic that they now generate their own weather systems. We are all living in the same burning house; it is just that in this part of the world, the fire next door is blowing smoke directly into our lungs.

The economic implications of the haze are staggering. Beyond the immediate disruption to schools and offices, there is the uncalculated cost of lost productivity, the burden on healthcare systems treating respiratory illnesses, and the damage to tourism and aviation. But these are merely symptoms. The disease is our collective inertia.

We have been ignoring the evidence presented by world climate scientists for too long. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been issuing increasingly desperate warnings for three decades. Yet, we treat these reports as academic curiosities rather than survival manuals. We make promises at international summits, only to watch emissions rise. We set targets for 2050, while the fires burn in 2026.

This brings us to the upcoming COP31 in Turkey. If ever there was a moment to pivot from rhetoric to reality, this is it. The conference cannot simply be another carnival of pledges that will be broken by the next electoral cycle. COP31 must be the moment we accept that “appropriate measures” are not incremental tweaks to our energy policies, but a wholesale transformation of our economic system.

For the Asean region, this means we must stop viewing climate action as a “Western agenda.” The haze is our daily reminder that climate change is local. We must demand that our governments prioritise renewable energy not just for the sake of the global environment, but for the sake of our children’s ability to attend school without wearing an N95 mask. We must push for aggressive peatland restoration and moratoriums on deforestation that are actually enforced, not just announced.

But equally, we must hold the developed nations accountable. Climate justice demands that those who have emitted the most for the longest time provide the finance and technology for developing nations to leapfrog the fossil fuel era.

We are at a precipice. The haze is not just an environmental event; it is a psychological one. It induces a sense of hopelessness, a feeling that the problem is too big for any of us to solve. But despair is a luxury we cannot afford. The only antidote to the anxiety of the haze is action.

Let COP31 be the reckoning. Let it be the forum where we finally admit that the farmers are not the enemy; the enemy is our own inability to change. The world should take action, but more importantly, we should take action. Because if we wait for someone else to clear the air, we will all suffocate waiting. The time for pointing fingers is over. The time for rolling up our sleeves is now.  

* Professor Datuk Dr Ahmad Ibrahim is affiliated with the Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy Studies at UCSI University and is an Adjunct Professor at the Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies, Universiti Malaya. He can be reached at ahmadibrahim@ucsiuniversity.edu.my.  

** This is the personal opinion of the writers or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.