For Canadian-American author and journalist John Vaillant, wildfires are following the same growth patterns as the world’s big corporations like Standard Oil, Walmart and Amazon. “Once they reach a certain size, these fires are able to dictate their own conditions around the world,” he says. Even if it destroys the ecosystem that allowed them to become so powerful. »
The striking metaphor refers to the general concept of his essay fire-weatheraccording to which the overconsumption of fossil fuels turns against humans, in particular through climate change and accelerated drying of forests.
There is therefore no irony or coincidence in the fact that Mr. Vaillant’s work is arriving in bookstores at a time when Quebec, Nova Scotia and other regions of Canada are grappling with major forest fires. “We are in a trend, he said in a telephone interview with The Press from Portland, Oregon. What is happening now is a continuation. It started in the early 2000s.
The very serious fire that occurred in May 2016 in Fort McMurray, Alberta, is at the heart of the extremely detailed demonstration, both from a scientific and historical point of view, of the work. But it’s not just that one. John Vaillant refers us to the devastating fire in Slave Lake, Alberta (2001), that of Lytton, British Columbia (2021) or those in Australia and California that have occurred in recent years.
“The bad effects of the massive burning of oil are catching up with us,” said Mr. Vaillant. We have overloaded the atmosphere and the seas with CO2. Our mastery of fire has enabled us to achieve enviable prosperity and well-being never before experienced by so many people. It’s good. But what is not is that each time we burn something, we produce polluting emissions. »
And Quebec too…
However, over the years, scientists have noted a gradual drying of the forests, continues Mr. Vaillant. These become every day more likely to catch fire, if only when a train passes by, the friction of the wheels on the rails creating sparks.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR
John Valiant
Alberta has become a veritable powder keg, he says to this effect. And this is also the case in Quebec, where we find a very similar forest system that is drying up. If you talk to any forest hydrologist, they will tell you that this drying trend has been going on for decades.
John Valiant
Joined by The Press, Christian Messier, forest engineer and professor of forest ecology at the University of Quebec in Montreal and the University of Quebec in Outaouais, explains that this situation is attributable to early springs, when deciduous trees do not have time to play one of their roles. “The more deciduous trees there are in a forest, the more the susceptibility to fire decreases. Because their leaves do not burn well, unlike the needles of conifers full of resin”, says the latter, who recently published an open letter on our platforms for stronger government intervention on forest management.
However, he specifies that certain regions of Quebec and Canada will be more likely than others to be vulnerable to fire, due to the variability of weather conditions caused by climate change. “The risks are going to be higher in the west than in eastern Canada and western Quebec [là où on trouve des incendies aujourd’hui] than in the east,” said Mr. Messier.
When we point out his qualities as a popularizer to John Vaillant, the latter indicates that he wanted to put himself in the shoes of Mr. and Mrs. Everyone. “Scientists interested in climate, who care deeply about changes in the world, about the fate of the planet, are not necessarily good storytellers,” he says without a grain of malice. “So I tried to understand them, like a normal person, and synthesize their science for people like you and me. »
A frontal collision
Born in the United States, living in Vancouver and having dual Canadian-American nationality, John Vaillant is on his fourth book with fire-weather. Winner of a Governor General’s Award for his book The Golden Sprucehe sees a link between each of his works.
“Like all the others, my new book is about the collision between human ambition and nature,” he says. But it was done with an urgency that the others didn’t have. He is the only one interested in current events that are happening at breakneck speed. This collision between wilderness and civilization threatens to release immense energy, as if two tectonic plates are crushing each other. »
fire-weather
432 pages
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- unpredictable fire
- Volcanoes can be devastating, but they are fixed in geographical space and usually sound the alarm; nuclear weapons are also devastating, but they are governed by international treaties and detonated intentionally by human beings. Fire is different: it has its own agenda that manifests as something akin to willpower, and it is aided, often unwittingly, by human beings. The Chisholm fire was started by a spark from a passing freight train.
extract of fire weather (free translation)
- At its beginnings…
- The consequences of burning millions of years of accumulated fossil energy in the space of a few decades will be permanent and dramatic. The effects will influence everything that matters in more ways than we can imagine for the foreseeable future and probably much longer. In light of the above, it is almost unbearable to consider that our CO balance sheet2 industry is still in its infancy and that future generations will bear this burden much more heavily than we do today.
extract of fire weather (free translation)