WEBVTT - The 21st century will be shaped by fire 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:05.120 Welcome to zero I am Akshatrati. This week the cult 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:21.079 of Fire. On May third, twenty sixteen, a wildfire broke 0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:24.759 out in the boreal forests of sub Arctic Canada, some 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:29.080 six hundred miles north of the US border. Forest fires 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:33.479 are not uncommon here, but this one was different. The 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:36.800 day it broke out, the temperature was several degrees hotter 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:41.000 than the previous record, and thus the fire spread rapidly. 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:45.080 Soon it had engulfed the city of Fort McMurray in 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:49.559 the province of Alberta. The fire stood out for its 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:54.000 size and its speed, but it interested writer John Valiant 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:59.440 for another reason. Its location. Fort McMurray is a company town. 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.600 At its heart is the oil industry. You might not 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:07.759 have heard of tarsan's oil or bitumen before, but it's 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:12.160 a sticky, viscous substance that requires extremely energy intensive steps 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:17.200 to turn into usable crude oil. Canada sells millions of 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:21.240 barrels of this stuff every day. The story of how 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:25.319 fossil fuel extraction made Fort McMurray, and how a fire, 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:29.720 supercharged by the effects of global warming nearly destroyed it, 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:33.600 is the subject of John's latest book, Fire Weather is 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:37.240 a best seller and Pulitzer finalist. It's a deeply reported 0:01:37.240 --> 0:01:40.720 work of nonfiction that taps into some of the contradictions 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:43.720 of the way we live today. I got to talk 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:45.840 to John about it a few weeks ago at the 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:50.920 Charleston Festival, near Lewis in the English countryside. As we'll 0:01:50.920 --> 0:01:53.480 hear on this episode, the fire at the heart of 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:57.200 the story is a thing of awe and terror, but 0:01:57.400 --> 0:02:01.920 it's also a distinctly man made disaster. When I read 0:02:01.920 --> 0:02:04.720 Fire Weather, I was struck by the sheer force it 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:11.040 takes to extract bitchumen. Massive machinery, huge shovels, an enormous 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:14.920 amount of energy, and human willpower, all of which in 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:18.639 this story set the stage for a great deal of destruction. 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:21.640 When I spoke with John, I asked him to begin 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:24.680 our conversation by reading a passage from his book that 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:28.520 describes just how bitchumen is extracted from the Canadian earth. 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:43.399 According to Oil Sands Magazine, a typical oil sands deposit 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:48.320 of the cond beneath Fort McMurray contains about ten percent bitsumen, 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:55.400 five percent water, and eighty five percent solids. Those solids 0:02:55.440 --> 0:02:59.240 are principally quartzite. One of the hardest minerals in the world. 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:05.560 Shortsite's sand is extraordinarily abrasive, and it is hell on machinery, shovels, 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:09.120 dump truck boxes, and pipelines, not to mention the paint 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:13.040 job on your truck and your kitchen floor. The process 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:17.960 of excavating, separating, and then upgrading this pavement like substance 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:23.120 involves elements of strip mining, rock crushing, and steam cleaning, 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:29.280 the petrochemical equivalent to squeezing blood from stones. Because of this, 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:34.280 there's really no comparison between the petroleum industry in northern 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:39.520 Alberta and the petroleum industries in Texas, Saudi Arabia, or 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:43.040 any other place on or offshore where oil is drawn 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:47.520 from the earth by conventional means. A bitchumin mine is 0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:49.840 not a place you would let your child play, but 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:53.640 it's excavated using equipment familiar to any four year old 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:59.920 conversant in Tonka technology and with a similar grandiosity of ambition. 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:04.000 In order to access the bitumen, the forest above it 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:08.640 must first be removed. In industry parlance, this living material 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:12.800 is referred to as overburdened, and the machine used to 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:16.880 scrape it off is a Caterpillar D eleven bulldozer. The 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:19.760 D eleven weighs more than one hundred tons and its 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:23.599 blade is twenty two feet wise, it can plow down 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:28.000 a forest like mowing a lawn, but this is entirely 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:31.280 in keeping with the scale of things up here. Working 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:35.600 alongside the D elevens are Komatsu D five seventy fives, 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:39.440 which are even bigger. Once the forest has been removed, 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:43.800 enormous electric shovels excavate the by two minutes, sand in 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:47.120 boulder sized chunks that can weigh one hundred tons and 0:04:47.200 --> 0:04:53.160 occasionally contain complete dinosaur fossils from the Cretaceous period. These 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:57.640 garage sized payloads are dumped into a hauler, and the 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:01.560 Caterpillar T seven ninety seven is one of the biggest 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:05.359 dump trucks in the world. It's three stories tall and 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:10.960 weighs four hundred tons unloaded. There are hundreds of machines 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:15.200 like this operating in the mines north of Fort McMurray. 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:20.039 Far too large for ordinary highways, they must be transported 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:26.880 north in pieces. It takes twelve oversized semi loads traveling 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:31.760 with escorts to move the component parts of a single hauler. 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:37.360 The tires alone are thirteen feet tall and cost eighty 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:40.960 five thousand dollars a piece. When one of them catches 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:44.480 on fire, something that happens more often than one might 0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:49.039 expect due to the terrific friction their loads generate, it 0:05:49.160 --> 0:05:53.479 must be deflated from a safe distance with a rifle bullet. 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:57.799 Should one of these six ton tires explode on its own, 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:13.359 it will impact its surroundings like a powerful bomb. I 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:16.520 have read that one aloud. It's really that's thanks for 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:18.200 the for the opportunity, But. 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:23.520 Now the event itself is a disaster. It's a man 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:27.279 made disaster, but it's a disaster in the making many 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:31.560 many years. What in the history of Canada makes it 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:35.040 possible for the oil signs industry to be willed into 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:40.040 existence if it is so hard to make something valuable 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:41.480 out of dot. 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:46.039 I think Canadians have been trained since the seventeenth century 0:06:46.279 --> 0:06:51.120 to extract things that nobody else really wanted, and do 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:54.640 it under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. And I really 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:59.520 think the tar trade, you could call it, grew quite organically, 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:01.480 if you want to call it organic, out of the 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:06.800 fur trade, and where basically the European hat industry ran 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:10.600 out of furs in the UK and Europe headed to 0:07:10.680 --> 0:07:14.679 Canada in the late seventeenth century, a really difficult place 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:21.000 to work, freezing cold, and set about basically persuading compelling 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:27.160 the indigenous inhabitants of Canada to denude the boreal forest 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:31.120 of beavers. And it's a really hard thing to do. 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:33.640 But the Hudgson's Bay Company is, you know, along with 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.560 the East India Company, are really one of the first 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:41.760 global corporations. And even though it took three years to 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:45.480 do a full round of furs from the forest to 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:49.840 Montreal to the UK, returning with trade goods into the 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:53.160 Athabasca Wilderness for more beaver firs. That was a three 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:58.560 year cycle, it still was incredibly effective, incredibly lucrative, and 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:04.920 basically managed to harness the entire environment, human, animal and 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:09.960 inanimate into this profit making machine. And I think that 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:15.960 mindset and that skill set has informed the beitchuman industry 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:18.320 in some really powerful ways. 0:08:19.160 --> 0:08:21.400 You also explain in the book that there is a 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:26.200 term called energy return on investment, which is a very 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:29.200 business term, and I bring it up with an important 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:34.040 reason because oil in most places requires one unit of energy, 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:35.080 gives you thirty units of. 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:37.640 Energy roughly, yeah, the way. 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:41.960 You describe, Butitjamen, it takes between one unit of energy 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:44.320 to get only three units of energy out. 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:51.920 Yeah. It's again, no normal developed country and no person 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:56.000 who'd been to business school would ever do this. It's 0:08:56.000 --> 0:09:00.600 insane and really it just doesn't make any sense. And 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:03.800 when you think of, you know, natural gas, that is 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:06.760 a viable fuel, say whatever you want about its impact 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:09.960 on climate. It comes out of the ground, ready to burn, 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:13.679 ready to generate energy. And that's why we're mostly interested 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:17.480 in petroleum is because it burns so In Canada, in 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:21.000 the borel Up in Alberta, they take this excellent fuel, 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:24.160 natural gas, and they burn it by the billions of 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:31.520 cubic feet to melt bitchumen out of quartzite sand. I'm 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:34.320 really sitting here like I don't even I can't even 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:37.560 believe I'm saying it, you know, really, it's so it's 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:41.400 so hard, you know, to do, and the temperature swings 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:44.559 up there, it goes to minus fifty, it goes to 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:49.640 plus ninety five. Machines don't like that. Heavy machinery doesn't 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:52.400 like that. Human beings don't like that, and they do 0:09:52.480 --> 0:09:56.000 it anyway, and so it's so what. 0:09:56.000 --> 0:09:57.200 Makes it a wild business. 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:04.840 It's I think Canadians do have a capacity for suffering, 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:09.760 and a lot of the employees, uh in the in 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:15.040 the Tarsans minds, are from Newfoundland, really depressed place, you know, 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:18.080 that lived off the seal industry, in the cod industry 0:10:18.200 --> 0:10:21.720 until you know, one of them became politically unpopular and 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:24.200 the other one collapsed. So there are a lot of 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:28.680 Newfoundlanders in for McMurray. So some of it is that. 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:32.920 Some of it, I think is because we know where 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:35.840 the bitchumin is. There's there are no exploration costs, it's 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:39.320 literally under the ground. The natural gas is cheap, the 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:44.720 subsidies are generous, and by selling it at a discount 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:49.160 into the US market, which is voracious for petroleum in 0:10:49.200 --> 0:10:52.360 all its forms, there's a way to turn a profit, 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:56.400 a marginal profit. And Putin has been, you know, the 0:10:56.440 --> 0:10:58.920 best friend the bitchumin industry ever had, because it was 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:03.880 really in a hail spin before Russia invaded Ukraine and 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:06.880 spiked petroleum prices around the world. 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:09.840 But this oil industry was willed into existence by the 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:14.120 state right by providing the land for free, by providing 0:11:14.559 --> 0:11:17.719 natural gas for very cheap, by providing subsidies to make 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:20.600 the industry happen, by going out of its way to 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:25.880 create the politics to attract capital from America to currently building. 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:28.880 The Canadian government is building the pipeline that would take 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:31.920 these tar sans to those places they finish. It could 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:36.520 not have existed without essentially the government taking the lead 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:40.720 on this industry. So let's flip the script here, because 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:44.080 one thing that we do need to do is to 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:46.640 try and build an industry that does not produce greenhouse 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:50.080 gas emissions but still produces energy because we all need it, right. 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:55.720 So if the Canadian government could do that for tar sans, 0:11:55.760 --> 0:12:00.760 as you describe, such a difficult industry to make profitable, 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:04.319 could it not do it for clean energy solutions? 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:06.880 It absolutely could. And this is where kind of the 0:12:07.000 --> 0:12:10.720 antidote to fire Weather, which is not an unhopeful book, 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:14.520 but it's a hard book in certain respects. The antidote 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:19.559 to it is oxhot Rothi's climate capitalism. I'm really I mean, 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:23.840 it really shows the way forward. And when I think 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:27.800 about Canada, it's the second largest nation by geography in 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:32.280 the world, second after Russia. We have infinite wind, we 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:37.320 have infinite solar. We have three oceans of title to 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:40.640 draw on. We've got everybody beat on that score. And 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:47.000 then we also have endless geothermal, a lot and enviable hydropower. 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:50.960 So were it to be a priority, were it to 0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:57.280 be subsidized and pursued with the zeal with which the 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:02.160 bitumen industry has been pursued, Canada could power the continent 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:06.360 of North America no problem. By itself. We could power 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:10.640 the United States, and that is a matter of priority, 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:15.040 and we've already demonstrated we can do the impossible by 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:18.440 turning bitchumen into money. It is a dog of the 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:22.120 petroleum world. It's the only petroleum that sinks. You know, 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:26.240 oil is supposed to float, and bitchamin doesn't. Bitumen sinks. 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:30.680 So exactly, it's really it's political will, and you know 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:34.640 right now the petroleum industry is the tail wagging the 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:35.400 dog of the nation. 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:43.000 After the break, John and I look for solutions in 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:46.920 the aftermath of fire, and he explains how he broke 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:51.599 the conventions of science reporting, giving fire agency and personality. 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:55.240 And by the way, if you're enjoying this episode, please 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:57.320 take a moment to read and review the show on 0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:01.040 Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps us their listeners find 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:09.679 the show. Thanks for mentioning the book, because one thing 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:13.320 I look at is how to get businesses incentivized to 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:17.040 make the green transition happen. I'm sort of interested in 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:22.680 what is possible and profitable and practically possible within the 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:26.560 politics that we have today. But some of the stories 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:30.600 in your book are about something else. They're about sacrifice, 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:36.040 heroism that in many cases defies rational thought. Firefighters who 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:38.120 left their own homes to burn in order to try 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:41.520 and focus on trying to stop the spread of fire. 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:45.200 But when we talk about climate and we hear the 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:49.200 words sacrifice, few people want to give up their car, 0:14:49.600 --> 0:14:53.359 their burgers, their flights. So how can we bring sacrifice 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:57.520 to our understanding of what we need to be in 0:14:57.560 --> 0:14:58.720 the twenty first century? Yah? 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:02.080 I think, I mean I think about that all the time, 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:06.920 and your book really shows us how to get there. 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:11.520 And I think if you're living in Newfoundland and your family, 0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:14.560 whole family has been on the doles since nineteen ninety 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:17.960 two when the cod fishery crashed, you are not going 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:21.480 to care if Fort McMurray is digging bitjumin or building 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:24.880 solar panels or building windmills, you're going to go where 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:29.800 the work is. A beautiful counterbouance to that is Texas, 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:35.520 which is pretty hostile to the federal government, super conservative, 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:41.040 always been a kind of rancorous, independent minded place, and 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:44.280 they have installed and it's also the center, you know, 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:48.920 the ground zero of the American oil industry in the 0:15:48.920 --> 0:15:53.000 early twentieth century. They have installed more wind and solar 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:57.720 in the past year than the nation of Canada has 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:03.960 in its entire existence. So you can have climate denial, 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:09.720 you can have hideous politics that punish women, that punish immigrants, 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:13.880 and you can still somehow move forward into twenty first 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:17.520 century energy. And some of that is because of President 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:21.800 Biden and subsidies to build this energy. But also it 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:24.920 makes sense for Texas. It's a huge place, it's got 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:26.840 a lot of wind, it's got a lot of solar, 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:29.560 it's got a lot of empty space, and so they 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:33.240 are laying on the gigawatts by the month now, so 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:40.280 it's totally possible. Whereas in Alberta, the twin sibling to Texas, 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:44.400 they have put a moratorium on wind and solar to 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:52.800 examine the environmental impacts as they expand bitchmin production. So 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:55.880 Canada had its worst fire season ever in twenty twenty three. 0:16:56.280 --> 0:17:00.200 At the same time, the petroleum industry was make can 0:17:00.200 --> 0:17:04.240 get abundantly clear that it wasn't going anywhere. Sun Core 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:06.960 and one of the biggest players up in for McMurray, 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:11.639 sold off its renewable energy arm, laid off fifteen hundred people, 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:17.720 and expanded its production. And every petroleum company that I've 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:21.000 seen quoted, you know, I've read Financial Times, Wall Street 0:17:21.080 --> 0:17:24.040 Journal has made it really clear we're here for the 0:17:24.080 --> 0:17:27.399 profits and we're not going anywhere. And they've almost given 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:30.040 up greenwashing. You know, they've been called out on that, 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:34.720 and I think they will not be allies in this transition. 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:39.400 We have to go around them, and that is happening. 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:42.560 We are in an energy transition right now. If you 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:45.760 kind of need some hope on this score, young people 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:49.280 are not going into the petroleum industry. That's not where 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:51.719 the energy is, so to speak. That's not where the 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:56.280 future is. And so what I see is a very powerful, 0:17:56.600 --> 0:18:01.639 very entrenched industry, like the tobacco industry, trying to wring 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:05.800 every last dollar out of its model before it collapses. 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:08.880 And it's you know, it's obviously it's a huge part 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:11.360 of our world. It's a complicated question. We could talk 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:14.320 about it for an hour in terms of the way forward. 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:18.720 Now, there is a phenomena you describe in the book 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:23.560 where this is a new kind of fire, where the 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:28.240 weather is changed by the fire. Fire creates its own weather. 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:33.640 Yeah, there's a type of fire cloud called a pyrocumulonimbus cloud, 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:38.080 and they were essentially unknown in Europe until very recently, 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:43.600 and they were generally seen only over erupting volcanoes. And 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:47.600 we've seen them in images from the Old Testament. You 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:50.880 see the black cloud billowing up into the heavens out 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:55.560 of the volcano, and there's lightning and black hail. It's 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:58.840 written about an exodus, for example in the Old Testament. Well, 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:04.639 this actually happened, and atmospheric science hasts had not really 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:08.280 ever seen it happening over a forest fire until nineteen 0:19:08.359 --> 0:19:11.880 ninety eight. The most closely studied one happened in Alberta, 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:15.080 quite close to for McMurray in two thousand and one. 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:21.320 And these fire systems puncture the stratosphere. They're forty five 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:25.680 thousand feet tall, they generate their own winds, They turned 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:29.840 the way a hurricane does and because they generate their 0:19:29.880 --> 0:19:35.639 own lightning, This pyrocumulonimbus fire system essentially turns into a 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:39.360 self perpetuation machine where it can start its new fires 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:43.480 twenty or thirty miles away from the central fire. So 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:46.639 this was an extraordinary rarity, really written about in the 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:50.600 late nineties and early two thousands as a kind of novelty. 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:54.960 It didn't really enter the literature of fire science until 0:19:54.960 --> 0:20:00.320 around twenty ten. But this pyrocumulonimbus fire system I was 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:05.520 a companion of the Fort McMurray fire for many, many days. 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:09.680 This fire burnt in the city, not for days, I think. 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:12.560 Actually the Great Fire of London in sixteen sixty six 0:20:12.680 --> 0:20:15.760 lasted for about five days, but obviously that was an 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:20.800 extraordinary historic phenomenon driven by wooden houses and other things. 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:24.119 This fire, this was a modern city, and the fire 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:27.160 was burning in and out of the city, driven by 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:31.040 winds for a week or so, And part of this 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:36.119 was due to this giant fire system swirling above that 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:40.000 was starting new fires again twenty to thirty miles away 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:44.040 from the center, but also generating its own winds and 0:20:44.480 --> 0:20:48.360 sucking up all available moisture not just from the forest 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:51.960 but from fire hoses from any attempt to put this 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:56.080 fire out, and the houses and the trees of Fort 0:20:56.160 --> 0:21:00.720 McMurray basically came back to earth as black hail, and 0:21:00.800 --> 0:21:03.359 it really was a kind of biblical scenario, and that 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:05.399 was one of the things that made me want to 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:09.159 explore this more closely. And then I realized that this 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:13.720 the fire, the heat being generated again. Everything is extraordinary dry, 0:21:13.880 --> 0:21:18.000 extraordinarily hot, and it created this kind of new set 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:21.240 of parameters for the fire to grow and expand in 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:24.960 So the heat coming out of the forest into Fort 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:29.600 McMurray was five hundred celsius. That's the radiant heat, and 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:31.800 radiant heat that's the heat that tells you not to 0:21:31.800 --> 0:21:34.560 touch the candle. It moves at the speed of light, 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:37.600 and so the fire can be way over there, but 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:41.680 the heat is desiccating everything in front of it and 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:44.960 heating it above combustive temperatures. So as soon as an 0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:48.280 ember lands on it and embers were flying in the 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:51.919 tens of thousands that day, it bursts into flame. And 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:56.600 that's why homes half million, three quarter million dollar houses 0:21:56.640 --> 0:21:59.160 built to the state of the art, and they were 0:21:59.240 --> 0:22:02.840 burning to the baseman in five minutes and when firefighters 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:06.560 told me this, I thought, well, you're exaggerating talking to 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:09.200 a journalist. You're a lot of adrenaline that day. I 0:22:09.240 --> 0:22:12.440 can see why things would be accelerated for you. No's 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:15.600 three minutes over here, five minutes over there, eight minutes 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:19.000 over there. And finally I talked to a physicist who 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:23.280 specializes in domestic combustion in the burning of houses, and 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:27.600 he said, well, yes, that is possible, and why don't 0:22:27.640 --> 0:22:31.160 you go and study the Hamburg firestorm of nineteen forty 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:33.560 three if you want to understand the mechanics better. So 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:37.719 that's basically what was recreated in for McMurray from an 0:22:37.840 --> 0:22:39.400 organic wildfire. 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:43.720 And the Hamburg firestorm is where the Allies bomb southeast 0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:48.199 of Hamburg, perhaps the most number of infendiary bombs that 0:22:48.240 --> 0:22:54.160 were dropped in any one place during the entire World War. Now, 0:22:54.960 --> 0:22:57.320 you do a thing in the book in a very 0:22:57.320 --> 0:23:02.640 interesting way. You give fire agency, You personify it. There 0:23:02.680 --> 0:23:05.560 is a character in their book who calls it a beast. 0:23:06.680 --> 0:23:09.280 You write about fires seeming to have a drive of 0:23:09.359 --> 0:23:12.800 its own. And it's an intriguing choice to me because 0:23:12.840 --> 0:23:15.680 I trained in the sciences. So why do you make 0:23:15.760 --> 0:23:19.240 fire a character? This way, what does the beast want? 0:23:20.200 --> 0:23:24.120 Well, it's a really touchy subject, especially among scientists. You're 0:23:24.160 --> 0:23:29.320 not allowed to anthropomorphize natural processes. And also in nonfiction, 0:23:29.840 --> 0:23:33.159 I'm not allowed to take those kinds of liberties. I 0:23:33.200 --> 0:23:35.159 wrote a book about a tiger, I'm not allowed to 0:23:35.240 --> 0:23:38.520 anthropomorphize the tiger, even though I do try to get 0:23:38.560 --> 0:23:41.200 into its head to figure out what its motives are. 0:23:41.440 --> 0:23:44.240 Fire is even more difficult and kind of more fraud. 0:23:44.920 --> 0:23:48.200 But the beauty of not being a scientist and being 0:23:48.359 --> 0:23:50.400 locked up in a room for seven years as I 0:23:50.480 --> 0:23:52.399 was working on this book is you can kind of 0:23:52.440 --> 0:23:56.600 really let your mind wander. And I wondered, humans and 0:23:56.720 --> 0:24:00.720 fire are so closely entangled, and we always have been. 0:24:02.520 --> 0:24:04.760 And I think you think about humans and dogs. You know, 0:24:04.800 --> 0:24:07.840 we've been together for forty or fifty thousand years, and 0:24:08.520 --> 0:24:11.000 you know, what is it about dogs and humans that 0:24:11.119 --> 0:24:14.040 make such good companions? And so I pose the same 0:24:14.119 --> 0:24:17.600 question of fire, even though fire is not animate and 0:24:17.680 --> 0:24:20.600 alive in the same sense, And I thought, do we 0:24:20.680 --> 0:24:24.600 have a common ancestor? And again this is not scientific, 0:24:24.640 --> 0:24:29.280 but we do have a common molecule, and that is oxygen, 0:24:30.040 --> 0:24:35.760 And oxygen is the engine of life, and anything that 0:24:35.840 --> 0:24:39.160 depends on oxygen, whether it's a human or a dog, 0:24:39.320 --> 0:24:43.520 or an octopus or a wildfire, is a hostage to 0:24:43.640 --> 0:24:49.000 that molecule and has to keep moving in order to 0:24:49.119 --> 0:24:53.000 feed itself. And so fire will die. If we just 0:24:53.160 --> 0:24:57.199 lit this table on fire and the table burned up, 0:24:57.800 --> 0:25:00.320 the fire would go out, but there's all all this 0:25:00.520 --> 0:25:04.119 plastic whatever it is here, and that heat would try 0:25:04.160 --> 0:25:07.399 to release the hydrocarbons from that, and it would try 0:25:07.440 --> 0:25:10.040 to keep moving. That's what it wants to do. Its 0:25:10.359 --> 0:25:13.760 default is not to die. Its default is to try 0:25:14.160 --> 0:25:18.320 to perpetuate itself, to try to expand, to try to grow. 0:25:18.640 --> 0:25:21.520 And I made a list of all our common attributes, 0:25:21.560 --> 0:25:24.600 and there's about a dozen of them. And so fire 0:25:24.720 --> 0:25:28.360 is not alive, it's certainly not sentients, but it's lively 0:25:29.480 --> 0:25:34.440 and it's ambitious. And after this fire refused to leave 0:25:34.480 --> 0:25:37.800 the city for three or four days, the fire chief 0:25:38.359 --> 0:25:41.920 called it the Beast, and that's what it became known as. 0:25:42.080 --> 0:25:44.639 And it's really the first time I think in post 0:25:44.680 --> 0:25:48.840 contact North American history that a natural phenomenon has been 0:25:49.400 --> 0:25:53.560 given that kind of sort of animate power and identity, 0:25:54.040 --> 0:25:57.080 and yet to see it behave to talk to firefighters 0:25:57.080 --> 0:26:01.120 about it. It felt like an address area that was 0:26:02.040 --> 0:26:05.719 behaving in a willful and intentional manner. 0:26:06.320 --> 0:26:09.600 And then you flip the script and you say, we're 0:26:09.600 --> 0:26:14.280 not homo sapiens anymore, Homo sapiens being sapiens being wise, 0:26:14.800 --> 0:26:19.320 you know, no longer wise we are homoflagerants. We are 0:26:20.000 --> 0:26:20.800 a burning man. 0:26:21.560 --> 0:26:26.520 Why well, when you I just again had seven years, 0:26:26.560 --> 0:26:29.560 you know, to think about it and not healthy. I 0:26:29.600 --> 0:26:32.640 don't recommend it, really, but I did get a book 0:26:32.680 --> 0:26:36.720 out of it, and I hope yours took less time. 0:26:39.280 --> 0:26:41.560 The question helped me with a question. 0:26:42.800 --> 0:26:46.480 Humans created the environment we live in anymore. Right, we 0:26:46.520 --> 0:26:49.440 are using fossil fuels to be able to power our lives, 0:26:50.000 --> 0:26:52.840 but it's also creating these fires. And now you're saying 0:26:53.080 --> 0:26:56.960 those fires are going to make us we become homo flaggers. 0:26:57.040 --> 0:27:00.840 Yeah. Yeah, this engagement we have with fire and the 0:27:00.880 --> 0:27:03.480 fact that first of all, I had to make the leap. 0:27:03.720 --> 0:27:08.480 So we think about petroleum, We most of us recognize 0:27:08.520 --> 0:27:11.199 that most of what goes on in our world, in 0:27:11.280 --> 0:27:14.360 terms of our mobility, in terms of our economy, heating 0:27:14.840 --> 0:27:17.840 is driven at root by some form of petroleum product, 0:27:18.359 --> 0:27:20.919 and it took me a long time to understand that 0:27:21.960 --> 0:27:25.680