the carbon dioxide generated by events of “planetary scale”—like twenty-first-century wildfires—exceeds the annual CO2 output of many states and countries. To put this in perspective, the CO2 emitted by the Australian bushfires of 2019–20 more than compensated for the global reduction caused by the coronavirus pandemic. It hardly needs to be said that more CO2 leads to more heat retention, which leads to more fires, which leads to more pyroCbs…We are, right now, witnessing the early stages of a self-perpetuating and self-amplifying feedback loop, accompanied by myriad “cascade effects.”
