Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World

by John Vaillant

Since roughly 2000, an inversion has begun: the world’s great terrestrial carbon sinks—the Amazon rain forest and the circumboreal forest, along with many other less famous forest systems around the world—have become net carbon emitters. In other words, what used to be a reliable source of carbon storage is now generating more CO2 than it is sequestering. This grave reversal is one of the most pernicious developments of the Petrocene Age. As forests heat up and die—from disease, beetle infestation, fire, logging, land clearing, and drought, they skew the CO2 balance even further. It is not that living, growing trees don’t continue to absorb carbon, it is that they are no longer keeping pace with the emissions of their sick, dead, and burning neighbors.