Tag Archives: Climate change

The Heat Is On

Posted on by

Fire Weather is a remarkable nonfiction book by award-winning author John Vaillant—part frightening description, part homage to those who fight wildfires, and part expression of frustration at lost opportunities. He centers the book around a wildfire that started near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, in May 2016. The town is populated by people who work in the oil extraction industry, which is a hellish kind of existence itself. He takes time to describe this environment, so that when the fire arrives, you understand what’s at stake. He calls Fire Weather “a true story from a hotter world.”

The middle section of the book details the battle against the wildfire relentlessly approaching Fort McMurray. Abetted by long-term drought, the fire has plenty of fuel. High temperatures prevent night-time cooling, which would aid the firefighters. The fire develops enough energy to start creating its own weather, propelled forward via hurricane-force winds . Vaillant’s descriptions of fire tornadoes is especially vivid. Using the one road out of town, families must evacuate through fire and smoke, and ordering evacuation is almost unthinkable. But, contrary to expectation and sooner than authorities believe, it has to be done.

Vaillant points out the vast qualitative differences between a structural fire, which we are accustomed to reading about (“Firefighters had the building fire under control in two hours” kind of thing) and a wildfire. Emphasis is on the wild. As people build their houses farther and farther into wooded suburban areas, wildfires engulf them easily. Firefighters on the front lines in Fort McMurray watched the fire move up a residential street, destroying one home after another. From the time the fire first reached a house until it was reduced to nothing but a pile of ash took three minutes. Three minutes in which the house was gone, aluminum framing melted, window glass reduced to puddles, and no plumbing fixtures. They were simply vaporized.

As I write this, the largest wildfire in Texas history rages in the Panhandle and into Oklahoma. Memories are fresh of the smoke from last year’s Canadian wildfires that traveled thousands of miles and created lingering eerie light in the middle and eastern United States. The conditions that enable the spread of these devastating fires continue. We have created the conditions for, as Vaillant puts it, “fire weather.”

The third part of the book details the failed politics of regulating the industries that contribute to the danger. It is, as you would expect, frustrating reading.

You’ll never be able to read about a wildfire in Europe, in Australia, in Chile—anywhere—in the same way. By the way, the Fort McMurray wildfire was not declared extinguished until August 2017—15 months after it began.

Photos: Fort McMurray evacuation by DarrenRD, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license; NYC blanketed in smoke by Anthony Quintano, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

A Failure of Imagination about Climate Change

Posted on by

India, dawn, village

photo: Mario Lapid, creative commons license

Will future generations look back on the people of the 21st century and think we were deranged? According to revered Indian writer Amitav Ghosh, that may be the only way future generations can explain humanity’s feeble collective action in the face of climate change, global warming, and the violence of their likely consequences: drought, fire, famine, extreme storms, rising sea levels, extinction.

In a recent Princeton lecture, Ghosh said climate change is not just a problem of politicians, business leaders, and scientists, it is also a crisis of culture and thus of the imagination. His new book, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, makes the case that literary novelists, with a few exceptions, are failing to recognize and address the coming cataclysm, the most profound challenge of our day, in their work. Thinking about such a future is left to the margins of the literary world—science fiction, fantasy, and other genre fiction. Here’s an example. Even the Venice-based novels of Donna Leon have picked up the cause, in a subgenre dubbed “eco-detective” fiction.

Fundamental to the carbon economy—in fact, so fundamental we don’t even notice it—is that it is a manifestation of power. Not electrical power, the “might makes right” kind. Ironically, while some U.S. military leaders are more candid than our politicians with regard to the security risks posed by climate change, the military is a huge energy consumer. While the generals and admirals may talk about the risks of climate change, they contribute mightily to it, as, he says, the U.S. military consumes more energy than Bangladesh, a country of some 157 million people. Changes in the international power dynamic may be some of the most disruptive and far-reaching.

By framing climate change questions as economic ones, he says, we mask the reality that they are an exercise of power. Economic frameworks emphasize personal choices and desires, just as discussions of climate justice boil down to “how much are you willing to sacrifice?”As long as people in developing nations want to live as Americans (especially) do, a desire fueled by consumerist media, their leaders can’t and won’t suggest these sacrifices come from them. “Why should we cut back? You’ve had your turn. Now it’s ours.” Yet the changes needed go beyond recalibrating the desires of individual citizens of any nation.

Ghosh says only Pope Francis is willing to talk about breaking this cycle of desire and the impact it has on the poor. This should be a matter of significant interest, if Ghosh is correct that “People living at the margins of society will be the first to experience the future.” It’s one very different from that depicted by our politicians and literary leaders.

His was a dense lecture with many innovative and compelling arguments. Only a reading of the book can give you an adequate understanding of his vital points!