The way humans refuse to reflect is most ironic. Everyone immediately blamed the heavens for the events of November 2025, when massive floods swept across Sumatra (Indonesia), submerged southern Thailand, and turned Malaysian roads into rivers. It was as if humans were passive victims swept away by something beyond their control, and rain was the sole factor. This elegant narrative is perpetuated to shield us from guilt and responsibility, making us reluctant to acknowledge that these ‘natural’ disasters have actually been engineered by human choices and negligence over a long period of time. The greatest tragedy lies in the audacity to ignore the damage we have wrought upon ourselves, not the water falling from the sky.
What happened at the end of November was not just extreme weather. Reuters stated that heavy rains were the main cause of flooding and landslides, which are estimated to have killed at least 129 people in Southeast Asia before and after 25 November 2025. However, blaming the rain as the sole cause is like blaming a match when your entire house is on fire, even though you were the one who spilled the petrol (Reuters, 2025). The rain is not the problem. Rain is a common climatic event. What is unusual is how vulnerable our countries are to something that should have been anticipated.
For years, Green Theory has reminded us that environmental damage is the result of development and political and economic practices that prioritize growth over sustainability. Theoretically, disasters are political rather than natural occurrences. According to this viewpoint, structural power disparities and policy decisions that favor capital accumulation are the main causes of society’s susceptibility to natural disasters. And what happened in November 2025 shows that current politics prioritizes short-term profits, land exploitation, and dependence on destructive industries over maintaining the ecological balance that enables human life.
For example, flooding in Sumatra is caused by the loss of millions of hectares of forest over the past twenty years. The loss of forests has eliminated the absorption and soil retention systems that previously functioned as a ‘natural brake’ on water flow. FAO data shows that Indonesia’s deforestation rate has been one of the fastest in the world for years and that the damage has not disappeared without a trace (FAO, 2023). When the roots are gone, the soil and water lose their bond. Disaster becomes inevitable when the rains fall.
The same pattern was found in cases in Thailand and Malaysia. Development that destroyed hillsides, settlements that crept up into landslide-prone areas, and concretization that eliminated absorption spaces have made these areas an inevitable ecological hazard. There were no truly ‘sudden’ floods and landslides that struck southern Thailand in the same week reported by AP News (AP News, 2025). What remained suddenly was our realization that the rain was testing the consequences of years of neglect.
Ironically, politicians, mainstream media, and most of the public are more comfortable blaming the heavens. Although terms such as ‘extreme rainfall,’ ‘climate anomalies,’ and ‘unpredictable weather’ are meteorologically accurate, they are also ethically and politically misleading. Blaming the weather is an elegant way to avoid more uncomfortable questions: who cut down the forests? Who issued the plantation and mining permits? Who built cities without drainage systems? Who turned a blind eye to disorderly spatial planning? And who chose not to learn from the same tragedies of last year, the year before, and the year before that?
Green Theory emphasizes that states and markets often collaborate to cause environmental/ecological damage while covering up their political activities with stories of ‘unpredictable nature.’ The disaster that occurred in November 2025 provided an important lesson that these stories are not only misleading but also dangerous. To avoid responsibility, attention is shifted from human actors to an abstract entity called ‘the weather.’ It transforms meteorological chaos into structural chaos. Thus, the sky becomes the most convenient scapegoat for all parties who benefit from the current situation.
We often forget that rain has been with us throughout human history. It is not the sky that has changed; rather, it is the earth beneath our feet that has been altered, divided, and sold without consideration for its ecological limits. The IPCC has repeatedly warned that although climate change increases rainfall in certain areas, its effects are highly dependent on land use, ecosystem health, and human-controlled environmental carrying capacity (IPCC, 2023). In other words, rain may be natural, but its disasters are not.
According to a UNEP report, modern disaster risk consists of a combination of hazards and vulnerability, and it is vulnerability that is most often created by humans (UNEP, 2022). We are the ones who cut down forests, destroy riverbanks, and build cities without considering hydrological logic. We are responsible for turning floodplains into residential areas. Yet we blame the rain for being the culprit simply because the water returns to its source.
This is why November 2025 is not just a date of disaster; it is a date of remembrance. A reminder that we live in an age where environmental damage is caused by human activity, not the weather. A reminder that contemporary disasters are the result of poor decisions. And our hands will remain clean in the story we write as long as we continue to point to the sky, but the ground beneath us will continue to crumble.
If we want to break out of this cycle, we must stop pointing to the sky and start dismantling the political, economic, and vested interests that make communities vulnerable every time it rains. Disasters must be seen as a reflection of failed environmental governance, not as ‘inevitable’ natural events. This necessitates the establishment of political accountability mechanisms for officials who disregard ecological warnings, independent environmental audits for significant projects, and strict spatial planning reform. We must also understand that change will not come from the heavens; it must come from the very people who have been destroying, if they are finally willing to reform themselves.
The rain will continue to be blamed until that day. And humans will continue to try to save their own reputations by pointing upwards so that they do not see the damage happening beneath their feet. However, the sky is never to blame, as will be clearly recorded in history. The rain simply falls. It is humans who cause the destruction. This is the greatest irony of modern civilization: the more power humans feel they have, the more they enjoy washing their hands of the consequences of that power. Humans who destroy mountains for quick profits from mining, build cities without adequate drainage, and pour concrete into rivers, and then feign surprise when everything comes back to haunt them. Rain is merely the trigger; humans prepare the ingredients for the explosion.
It is not the weather that must change, but our morals. No technical mitigation can replace a political culture that continues to trade forests for capital, mortgaging the future for growth charts, or romanticizing ‘development’ that never produces anything but risk. We can keep praying for favorable weather, but those prayers will only echo in the void as long as the Earth is treated as a victim. Because we are the ones who need to live on Earth. Earth is the source of our life. And as long as people continue to deny that, disasters will become timely consequences, not mere warnings.
