Doomed again

Today's 'You do realize we're doomed, right?' story comes from Borneo:

This October, street life in Palangkaraya, the capital of Central Kalimantan, is accompanied by the constant whiff of smoke. Drive outside the city's limits, and you are soon in a smoggy haze. There are few flames, but the peat can smoulder for days. At one point, a fallen tree blocks the road—the peat in which it grew has literally burned away. Standing by the roadside, my eyes are streaming.

But this isn't a particularly bad year. Things really go to hell during the reversal of Pacific currents known as El Niño, which brings drought to the region. In 1997, the strongest El Niño on record encouraged fires that cut visibility in Palangkaraya to less than ten metres for almost three months. "Many people went to hospital with lung problems," recalls Alue Dohong, a local environmentalist. The city's airport was closed, and traffic on Kalimantan's rivers—the lifeblood of the area's struggling economy—was disrupted as boats collided in the smog.

“The 1997 fires released up to 40% as much CO2 as a typical year's global emissions from burning fossil fuels.”

Fires burned out of control across Indonesia for months. The haze extended across southeast Asia, and cost more than US$4.5 billion in lost tourism and business1. The burning peat resulted in the largest annual increase in levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since records began in the 1950s.

According to satellite data analysed by Annette Bechteler, a student at the University of Munich in Germany, the 1997 disaster torched more than 2.7 million hectares in Central Kalimantan. And we can expect more of the same. In 2002, a weak El Niño saw the fires return. Given that the peat is more than 12 metres deep in places, it will burn again and again, each time drought returns.

—from Land remediation: Borneo is burning, in Nature

In a word, yikes.