peter_pdp/Instagram “Communicating fire” is an apt figure of speech for raising the alarm about climate change and its impacts, but the aftermath of a climate disaster is the worst time to expect a response from the people who lived through it, author and journalist John Vaillant said in a feature interview Thursday. Vaillant, whose 2023 book “ Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast ” chronicled the devastating wildfire that destroyed much of Fort McMurray, Alberta in 2016, was speaking just hours before delivering a lecture on climate communication and climate denial hosted by the Institute for Environment, Conservation and Sustainability at the University of Toronto. Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world. The Weekender: The climate news you need. Subscribe Fire is a “really charismatic symptom” of climate change, Vaillant told The Energy Mix . “We are hardwired to respond to fire and notice it, in the same way we’re hardwired to notice guns, and sudden movement in the person sitting next to you.” Humanity’s connection to fire dates back before Homo sapiens , he said. But more recently, the fossil fuel era has “created an illusion of mastery over fire that is starting to blow back on us in some very intense ways. And now Hurricane Helene is basically about to wipe out a bunch of flood surge records in South Florida, pretty much as we’re speaking to each other.” The larger issue that connects this week’s storm and the wildfire known as The Beast is the “super-abundance of CO2 in our atmosphere, generated by human activity,” Vaillant added. “Fire is the language I have at my disposal to communicate this in a way that seems to get people’s […]
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