The New Yorker: Why Is Europe Burning?

Recent wildfires in southwestern France and central and eastern Spain have caused record-breaking destruction, burning 285,000 hectares (704,000 acres) and temporarily displacing 300,000 residents and tourists across the two countries in recent weeks. In France, it was the largest peacetime evacuation ever. Writing for The New Yorker, wildfire researcher and journalist M.R. O’Connor reports that climate change, which is fueling record-breaking temperatures, plays an important role, but so do modern forestry management and rewilding practices and rural depopulation in an area (Mediterranean Europe) which historically has experienced hot and dry summers and is “naturally predisposed to burn because of an annual cycle of wetting and drying”.

In June, Stephen Pyne, a former wildland firefighter and an emeritus professor of history at Arizona State University, published his forty-sixth book, “Undying Fire: A Fire History of Europe.” When I called him, he posed me one of his central questions about megafires: “Why is it that countries that we think of as modernized—those that have money, science, technology—are the ones that are being clobbered?” Climate change is, of course, part of the story. “Fossil fuels give you power,” Pyne told me, but burning them “disrupts the climate in ways that make fires more powerful.” Extreme fire weather, exceptionally dry, windy, and often warm conditions, is on the rise globally. That said, climate change is happening everywhere—and, in Pyne’s account, only some areas are experiencing worsening fires. This is one of the mysteries he’s interested in.

O’Connor continues:

I was surprised that in my reporting, experts from different backgrounds agreed about several things. They warned that countries need to involve local people in their fire-management strategies, and to balance suppression with prevention. They argued that communities could reduce wildfire risks by managing lands and not letting them go wild. One way for European countries to prevent fires is by supporting rural livelihoods and traditional practices such as grazing, farming, forestry, and the intentional setting of controlled fires. If people want to keep conflagrations in check, nature needs people. “What people need to realize is that this is a structural issue in society,” a Spanish fire professional told me. “We’ve turned our backs on the mountains, on nature—and cities have never been so affected by it.”

Link.