Fires in the Petrocene
Book: Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant (Knopf-Penguin Random House, 2023)
My review of the book in BioScience: Fires in the Petrocene (doi | free link | pdf)
The book focuses on the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire (Alberta, Canada) to understand firestorms in a warming world
[Extract] Fire Weather tells the story of the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire in Alberta, Canada. The fire burned approximately 600,000 hectares of boreal forest, swept through the oil and mining city of Fort McMurray, forced the evacuation of 88,000 people, and destroyed more than 3000 houses. However, the book goes far beyond this fire; it is essentially a reflection on the Petrocene—that is, the petroleum age defined by Vaillant as “the period of history (about the past 150 years) in which our pursuit of fire’s energy, most notably crude oil, in conjunction with the internal combustion engine, transformed all aspects of our civilization and, with it, our atmosphere.” In other words, the Petrocene is the period in which we filled the air with carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases. Although the Fort McMurray fire may not have been the most severe in world history, it serves as an illustrative and shocking example of the consequences of the Petrocene, including mainly climate change but also the widespread use of petroleum-derived products (plastics and laminates) in our homes. In that sense, the book delves into Pyne’s pyric transition between fire and combustion (Pyne 2021). Through the book, Vaillant draws a parallel between the wildfire, which started by burning forest fuels, and the destruction of Fort McMurray—a city whose existence is rooted in extraction of fossil fuels. That is, a city living from fossil fuels (extinct), created a few millions of years ago, was destroyed by recent fuels (extant). Furthermore, the burning of these fossil fuels is the driver of the extreme fire weather conditions that allowed the wildfire to escalate into ferocious firestorm that destroyed the city. Vaillant makes it clear that these firestorms are no surprise; scientists, by the 1960s, had already predicted that drastic changes in climate and fire behavior would occur if we continued releasing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, many individuals, companies, and governments deliberately ignore (and discredit) those warnings to prioritize their economic gains from the oil industry. This behavior is having a profoundly negative impact on our lives today and, even more so, on future generations—a masterful example of the tragedy of the commons. […]
Full text: Fires in the Petrocene (doi | free link | pdf)
The book was translated to Spanish in 2024: El tiempo del Fuego: historia de un incendio en un mundo más cálido, Editorial Capitán Swing [enlace]
