Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World

by John Vaillant

Never in Earth’s history, or in ours, have so many fires been ignited in so many places on such a continuous basis. At the most basic level, consider every candle, lantern, and cook fire across the globe: approximately 3 billion people around the world still cook and/or heat their homes with open fires. Then, consider every gas stove, furnace, and water heater; every coal-fired and biomass-burning power station; every generator; every human-caused brush and field and forest fire. Already, we are into many billions of fires per day, worldwide, and that is not even counting matches, lighters, or pilot lights, or more rarified sources like oil refineries, incinerators, and war. Nor does this tally take into account automobiles.