If 100,000 people died from smoke in 1997 and 100,000 people died in 2015 from smoke in the Indonesia area

What does that say about life on earth?

It likely says some governments are completely out of control already and don't really care who they kill by accident. Living in the U.S. this likely would be unthinkable but as you can see this wasn't unthinkable in Indonesia which killed people both times likely in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia.

On top of that the smoke helped trap greenhouse gasses much like a volcano going off and this also likely stopped production of many farms so many of these people didn't just die from smoke inhalation but also likely starvation when they couldn't grow any or enough food on their farms because of all the smoke so long.

These are likely the kinds of things we are going to see more and more of as time goes on where poor people around the world are going to be considered "Expendable" as populations get more and more out of control worldwide.