Burning questions: a more fire-prone world
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What are the latest wildfire crises in France and Spain and why are they described as ‘unprecedented’?
The Economist. Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. I'm Jason Palmer.
And I'm Rosie Blore.
Today on the show, the lean-in generation appears to be leaning out. And the American cities rethinking what happens after dark.
First up though.
Unprecedented. It's a word that people, including France's president Emmanuel Macron, keep using to describe rampant wildfires.
У нас la situation aujourd'hui qui est la plus dure, on n'est jamais mesuré, la plus dure depuis la deuxième guerre mondiale.
Yesterday, Mr. Macron said the situation France is dealing with is the toughest since the Second World War. In Spain, near Madrid, the situation is just as tough. Yeah. Each use of the word unprecedented in each new country, in each passing year, makes the direction of travel worryingly clearer. More fires, worse fires, more fire-related deaths.
As of this morning, the twenty eighth of july, the situation seems extremely finely balanced.
Oliver Morton is our Planetary Affairs editor.
The Spanish authorities have talked about the next few hours being absolutely crucial because in the coming days we're expecting to see an increase in temperatures as things get back into true heat wave territory, and that could be very bad for the Fasnia, Bordeaux and those west and northwest of Madrid and Spain.
So put this in context for me, because we have spoken about wildfires on the show lots of times before, but this does seem to be at a different scale. Can you put s some bounds on this for us?
Well, it's at a different scale for the places where it's happening. These aren't wildfires that would necessarily get noticed all that much in, say, Australia or Canada. But it's illustrating a point that is actually applicable more or less all around the world, which is that fire seasons are getting longer, the number of days of intense fire proneness, a very high fire weather index are also going up. And that means that you're gonna be seeing more fires and bigger fire seasons, but you're also seeing an increase in what some people sometimes call extraordinary fires. Fires that leap out along one dimension or another of their sheer intensity or their size or the speed at which they spread or the amount of damage that they do.
So in twenty nineteen twenty, we saw these extraordinary Fires in Southeast Australia mainly, but also across a lot of the rest of Australia, which were called the Black Summer fires. There were the extraordinary fires of 2023 in Canada, where the burning forest gave out four times as much CO2 as Canada produces by burning fossil fuels in a year. And then last year the fires in Los Angeles did more.
How is climate change lengthening fire seasons and creating ‘extraordinary’ fires worldwide?
damage as recorded by insurance companies than any other fires that I think the world has ever seen. But
the actual physical damage, property damage is really only one dimension of it.
Absolutely. The way in which fires kill most people is through the smoke. And this is something that I think people are only really beginning to catch on to now, partly because the world was watching the eastern seaboard of the United States when the World Cup was on, and so when the world's looking at you and you're covered in smoke, that's a way of thinking that the smoke effects really are quite large. And some estimates Suggests that a quarter of a million people every year die of the smoke effects of fires. Something like a billion people a year have an air quality event due to wildfire smoke within their houses for at least one day. And this really does rack up the casualties, and it's something where we're facing a double acceleration because the people most at risk of this are older people and the
the world's population is aging and also the amount of the world that's burning seems to be going up.
But in terms of additive effects, you mentioned also about the carbon dioxide released in Canada, for example. Doesn't that create a feedback loop? The basically the causes of the fires are released by more fires and so on?
Yeah, as you say, fires release CO two and that heats the atmosphere further, and that's an effect that lasts for centuries unless someone develops a way to take the CO two out of the atmosphere.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What are the latest wildfire crises in France and Spain and why are they described as ‘unprecedented’?
0:03–3:31
2
How is climate change lengthening fire seasons and creating ‘extraordinary’ fires worldwide?
3:31–6:30
3
What health impacts do wildfire smoke have and how many deaths are linked to it each year?
6:30–9:59
4
How do CO₂ emissions from massive fires create feedback loops that worsen climate change?
9:59–12:52
5
What does the new data reveal about the ‘lean‑out’ of women in senior roles and boardrooms?
12:52–15:36
6
Why is the gender pay gap widening again in the US, Canada and Europe?
15:36–18:36
7
How are U.S. cities using ‘night‑time economy’ mayors to revive nightlife and address community concerns?
18:36–20:59
8
What are the key policy recommendations for preventing future wildfires and supporting women in the workforce?
20:59–24:00