In June 2021, the riverside hamlet of Lytton, British Columbia, broke the heat record for Canada three days in a row, topping out at 121°F. On the fourth day, a wind-driven wildfire burned the town to the ground in half an hour. Two people died. “I’m sixty,” said Lytton’s mayor, Jan Polderman, “and I thought climate change was a problem for the next generation. Now I’m mayor of a town that no longer exists.”
