Chennai on December 3, 2015, after two days of incessant rainfall. Press Trust of India via AP/Atul Yadav

“This is New Orleans after the levees broke.”

Last week, as world leaders met in Paris to discuss climate change, the Indian city of Chennai was drowning. The coastal city of more than 4.6 million residents saw its heaviest rainfall in a century. Around 280 people have reportedly died from the resulting floods. Thousands have lost everything they owned. The city’s key IT, auto, and pharmaceutical industries have been crippled. Three million people have been left without access to food and clean drinking water, as authorities carry out relief operations. A friend of mine from graduate school, the journalist Ajai Sreevatsan, grew up in Chennai, and last week his parents’ house was submerged under water. After a few harrowing hours of not being able to get in touch with them, Sreevatsan found that his parents were ultimately—thankfully—rescued by the National Disaster Response Force. “They've probably lost everything they owned but they're safe and that's all that matters now,” he wrote in one Facebook post. “My hometown is drowning, suffering and hurting. This is New Orleans after the levees broke. Maldives 10 years from now,” he wrote in another.