Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World

by John Vaillant

The consequences of burning millions of years of accumulated fossil energy in a period of decades will be ongoing and dramatic. The effects will influence everything that matters in more ways than we can imagine for the foreseeable future and probably far longer. In light of this, it is almost unbearable to consider that our reckoning with industrial CO2 is only in its infancy, and that future generations will bear this burden far more heavily than we do now. The willful and ongoing failure to act on climate science is unforgivable; recrimination is justified, but none will be sufficient. In this case, at the planetary level, there is no justice; the punishment will be shared by all, but most severely by the young, the innocent, and the as-yet unborn.