You know, sadly, it's starting
to become the normal around her.
Wildfire smoke during the late summer months.
Well, in a new book called Fire Weather,
author John Valiant takes a look at some of
the real life impacts of climate change.
It's only going warmer.
John joins me now.
Thank you for being here.
This is something that
we're hearing a lot about,
But your your book is an accounf
wildfire that happened in Canada in 2016.
Tell us about how that inspired
you to write this book.
Well, the city that burned was Fort McMurray,
and most Americans may not know about it,
but 90,000 people live and work there.
It's at the Petroleum Hub of Ca.
Most American imports come
out of that out of that town,
and it was overrun by a boreal
wildfire in 2016 in early May
and resulted in the largest,
fastest evacuation due
to fire in modern times.
In modern times, yeah.
It was major that I can't even
imagine something of that scale.
But you talk about fossil fuels as well.
You talk about how it is imperae
that we understand fossil
fuels for what they are. Fire.
Yeah. I mean, climate scientists
have been warning us about this
since really the 1950s and 60s.
Fossil fuels generate a lot of CO2, that.
Insulates the atmosphere
effectively holding heat at
surface level dries out the for,
dries out the grasses,
makes it much more conducive to fire.
So we've burned a lot of fire
in the form of fossil fuels
and the now we've made the the
earth more more flammable place
like you said this has
been going on since 1950s.
I think it got you know researchers folks
overall got more serious about n
the 1980s and and so now here we are.
At a time where we are starting
to see some real change happen,
we're seeing more electric cars,
more efforts to be sustainable,
what is your research shown about how
we got to this place and still g
fossil fuels when we have this available?
It's it's a transition and
I believe it's underway.
It's going to be a slow process because
the petroleum infrastructure iso
huge and pervasive around the w.
But people are realizing that,
I mean even oil fields and petroleum fields
are being overrun by fire in Alberta.
So it's pretty hard to do that n
it's do that work when it's on .
And I think people are starting
to connect the dots unfortunatey
in some very painful ways.
One recent example,
State Farm Insurance has just s.
No new fire insurance for new
builds in the state of Californ,
the whole state of California,
Allstate has also just joined
that group and that is going to
spread across the American West,
across Western Canada,
and it's really going to cause
people to force people to focus.
I hope it does. I also, there'sa
bit of politics involved in that too,
because it is California and there's some
things with the insurance commissioner,
but nonetheless it doesn't change the fact.
The California has seen some incredible
wildfires over the past 10 year.
I personally covered them as a journalist.
Oh wow. And I will say that.
I have seen the difference over the years.
In your opinion, how are wildfis
different today than they were,
let's say in 1990?
I call it 21st century fire.
Right around 2000 we saw and new
behaviors emerge hotter, faster,
more explosive, more destructiv.
Red in California had an
actual EF3 fire tornado.
Tore houses off the fountain.
I mean it was, it was nuclear.
I went there and the damage,
you cannot believe it,
way different than a than a house fire.
And so these,
this new climate that we basicay
created for ourselves is creating this
much more explosive scenario tht
1990s firefighting methods arent
prepared for and so firefighters
are really finding themselves i.
Basically in evacuation scenaris
rather than firefighting scenarios now.
And
we've seen that,
We've seen entire towns get destroyed.
We've seen things that we never
really thought were possible.
There was always a fire line.
We could always, you know,
the firefighters, wildland firefighters,
and God bless them,
they always kept that line.
But now it's just, it's too muc.
Exactly. Moving forward,
how should we think about people
who are forced to relocate becae
of wildfires and climate change?
Because I know that is an issue.
You mentioned people not
being insured in California.
There's certain places that
you just can't afford to live
in safety and financially.
And that goes with flood insurance too,
along the coast in certain riparian areas.
Yeah, I mean,
I think it's fair to call these people.
If not climate refugees,
their climate relocatees,
you know that they are being fod
to change the way they live and where
they live because of changes in
climate that have been predicted again,
you know, for decades now.
And we're really seeing these effects in
real time and they're affecting real lives.
And that's what I think
is really so difficult,
is that the idea that it could happen to me,
you know, that happens to people in Southern.
California, that happens to people in Canada,
but now more and more of us
are joining that club of,
of people who've been impacted
in really visceral,
personal ways, very
much so. And it is going to stat
affecting more and more of us.
Thank you so much for sharing
this information with us and
and for writing this book.
And of course, just a reminder,
John is holding an author event tonight,
June 6th at 7:00 PM at
Elliott Bay Book Company.