John Vaillant: "Fire Is Our Superpower, And We Can Almost Be Forgiven For Believing That We've Mastered It"

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Fire, represented by its avatars, coal, oil and gas, is our superpower, pure and simple, and we can almost be forgiven for believing that we’ve mastered it. But we glossed over a crucial detail: we aren’t the only ones being supercharged. Due to the colossal scale on which our fire-powered civilisation now operates – including 50,000 seagoing ships, 30,000 jet planes, and nearly 2bn motor vehicles, powered by 100m barrels of oil every day – we have also supercharged the atmosphere. Our atmosphere is a weather engine, and it is energised by heat. Thanks to the historic amounts of CO2 and methane generated by emissions from the uncountable fires we ignite every day, we have empowered fire much as it has empowered us, enabling it to burn hotter, faster, longer and more broadly across any environment containing hydrocarbons (a steadily broadening menu that now includes the margins of Greenland, and which could, in our lifetimes, include Antarctica).

All that extra energy released by our combustive activities (talk about 0% containment) causes normal weather events – such as wildfires in southern California – to metastasise into full-blown catastrophes that violate natural boundaries of season, geography and historic norms. The LA fires, as shocking as their damage is to behold, and as traumatising as they are for those affected by them, are just one manifestation of the atmospheric monster that fossil fuel emissions have loosed upon the world.

It may sound cruel to say this, but you could see this fire coming a decade away, and many did. So, we need to be frank here: climate ­science ain’t rocket science. If you can read a calendar and a ­thermometer, and you have noticed how laundry dries more quickly on hot, dry, windy days, you are well on your way to being able to predict the likelihood of wildfire. I am in southern California by sheer coincidence, visiting family, but the first thing I thought when I got down here was: “It’s January, and boy, those hills look dry – dry enough to burn.”

I was not aware there hadn’t been rain in eight months, or that this current drought follows the hottest summer in LA’s history, but you can see it, and you can feel it: the region is a tinderbox. All of SoCal could burn as viciously as LA is burning right now, as viciously as Valparaíso, Chile and the Texas panhandle burned last spring, or Lahaina, Hawaii did in 2023, or Australia in 2020, or Paradise and Redding, California in 2018, or Santa Rosa, California in 2017, or Fort McMurray, Alberta, in 2016. These fires are only the beginning of a historic reckoning that starts with the question: are fossil fuels liberating us or holding us hostage? There is a clear answer to this, and it can be found in the ledgers of petroleum and automobile companies, and with the investors, banks, governments, insurance companies, lobbyists, churches and media outlets that enable them.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/11/we-built-our-world-with-fire-now-heat-destroying-our-lives

[likesmountains 52]

1. I highly recommend his book Fireweather. Fascinating book on the topic.