‘The Petroleum Industry is a Fire Industry.’ Interview with John Vaillant on his new book Fire Weather, The Making of a Beast

In my view it’s propaganda to call it fire season. There’s no such thing. Earth has, or used to have, four seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter. It’s human greed, selfishness and pollution-induced climate change/global warming causing extreme conditions leading to extreme fires. Propagandizers tooting to escalate fossil fuel pollution and harms are pushing “fire season” to make citizens globally accept abnormal fires as normal, as lovely and normal as spring. I am stunned how commonly “fire season” is used to describe the new out of control abnormal wildfires.

“Fire Weather is a gripping book that brings readers to the front lines of a major forest fire, while also exploring the inter-twined history of oil and gas development and the study of climate change. Its lessons should not be soon forgotten.”

—Sarah Boon, Science

Earth Island Journal@earthislandjrnl:

@JohnVaillant, author of Fire Weather, a gripping disaster tale with an urgent message, says we need to find new ways of being in the world that tap into Earth’s “non-flammable abundance.”

Excellent 29 Min. interview at link:

‘The Petroleum Industry is a Fire Industry’ by Maureen Nandini Mitra, July 14, 2023, KPFA – Terra Verde, Earth Island Journal

“The petroleum industry has really made it clear – in so many words – that they have no intention of stopping burning.”

Journalist and author John Vaillant’s new book Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World — which chronicles a massive wildfire in the tar sands oil boomtown of Fort McMurray, Alberta in 2016 that forced the entire city of 88,000 people to evacuate— is a gripping disaster tale that comes with an urgent message: Climate change has no baseline, it’s going to keep upping the ante. And, he says, as the hundreds of wildfires currently raging across Canada are showing us — twenty-first century wildfires are a totally different kind of beast, one that we don’t know how to control.

Earth Island Journal editor and Terra Verde host Maureen Nandini Mitra talks with Vaillant about what this new fire regime means, how the petroleum industry, which is largely responsible for our climate crisis, is a “fire industry,” and we humans are “a fire cult,” and, on a more positive note, how we are finding new ways of being in the world that tap into Earth’s “non-flammable abundance.”

Fire Weather by John Vaillant Book Review by CBC Books, Jan 11, 2023

Refer also to:

Ryan Stauffer@ryans_wx Jul 14:

Just as with May, June 2023 satellite measurements from MODIS Terra show unprecedented aerosol optical depth (smoke) values over the region since measurements began in 2000. Smoky summer…