Notwithstanding the irony of this being viewed from a plane, it was interesting to see the smoke rising from land-clearing fires during the last hour or 90 mins of the flight from Istanbul to Hanoi, particularly as we crossed Laos north of Luang Prabang. Burning has been an integral part of agriculture in this part of the world for a long time but increasing pressure to get more land into cultivation has seen huge amounts of carbon released into the atmosphere in recent years, most notably further south in Indonesia.
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