Smoke Alarm

BEAWIHARTA / REUTERS

BURNING QUESTION: Enveloped by haze in Indonesia's Riau province

In the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, traffic moves as slowly as blood through a corpse. Streams of motorcycles part for SUVs and diesel-spewing buses, and everyone gets nowhere fast. The air is smeared, both from the vehicle exhaust and the frequent forest fires that break out around Indonesia. Once home to some of the most extensive rain forests in the world, Indonesia is now losing trees at a faster rate than any other nation, to flames but also to rampant logging. Since equatorial trees soak up carbon dioxide when they're alive and release the gas when they're cut down or burned,...

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