March 13, 2024 • 29 mins
For decades, Western governments have pursued policies of fire suppression. But researchers like Glynis Humphrey have shown that these methods don't work – especially as global heating worsens wildfire risks. Today, Glynis joins the show to talk about wildfire management, and what we can learn from the traditional practices of Indigenous communities around the world. Show notes from Chris:
- Glynis is an author of an excellent but sobering United Nation’s report on how wildfires are becoming more intense and frequent. You can download “Spreading like Wildfire: The Rising Threat of Extraordinary Landscape Fires” for free. But this report also gives hope: Indigenous and traditional knowledge can help prevent and reduce the impact of wildfires in a hotter world.
- There are some heartbreaking (and compassionate) movies on wildfires. Rebuilding Paradise (2020) directed by Ron Howard and Fire Front (2022) directed by Eddie Martin are powerful documentaries that capture the devastating impacts of wildfires and the terrific importance of community.
- If you want to find out how best to plan for and respond to wildfires, there are a wealth of resources online. Some excellent examples are the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (the NSW RFS for short) and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (aka CAL FIRE). These websites are packed with life-saving information.
- For those wanting to learn more about the Australian “dinosaur trees”, the Wollemi Pine, there is an excellent recent article by the ABC. You can see how close the fires of 2019-2020 came to destroying these amazing trees by clicking here. The movie in this article has extraordinary footage.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're heading into a warming phase if governance doesn't take
a niece into the fact that the burning of fossil
fuels are increasing the surface of the earth and the
temperature on the surface of the earth, and that's been
trapped and this envelope that surrounds that surrounds us, that
is causing a heating up of the earth. The fire
fire is responding to that heating of the globe, and
(00:22):
that's really important to be aware of. And if we
don't halt our activities on the ground and really change that,
we are going to head into a catastrophic zone.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Ah fucked.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Welcome to I'm Fucking the Future. I'm your host, Chris Turney.
I've been studying the climate for close to thirty years now.
In most professions, after thirty years, you might say I've
seen it all. But in the climate crisis, there's always
something new. The headlines make everything feel pretty scary, and
(01:02):
that's because in a lot of ways it is pretty scary.
But being alarmed about the fate of our future isn't enough.
We've got to get activated and think creatively about tackling
the climate crisis together. So let's dig in.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
We're fucking the future. Weird are fucking the future.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
If you're listening to this, congrats you lived through the
hottest year on record, and with the hotter temperatures, we
also saw increased intensity in wildfires, and for many of
us it's personal. It doesn't matter if you live in
the country or a city. Wildfires are becoming a part
(01:48):
of all our lives. For me, wildfires became a huge
part of my life. In twenty nineteen and twenty twenty,
it was summerre in Australia and the whole country seemed
to be a blaze. As you can see, it's nuke
it's just gone.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
A state of fier emergency has been declared for the
first time in Queensland's history.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Fifty nine million acres were burnt. That's two times the
size of Pennsylvania. Thirty four people tragically lost their lives.
Three billion animals were either killed or harmed. In Sydney,
the sun cast a weird orange glow and the air
was filled with smoke for months. It fell like a
movie Blade Runner. You could even feel the grit of
(02:33):
charcoal and toxic dust between your teeth. It's estimated the
city air was ten times above Hazard's levels. So last
year when the massive Canadian wildfires happened, I had a
pretty clear idea of a horror's millions there were facing
smoke shut down seats in both Canada and the US.
Air quality crashed and it had devastating effects on the environment.
(02:58):
The Canadian wildfires are released four hundred and eighty mega
tons of carbon in twenty twenty three. That is an
eye watering amount that few of any of us can imagine,
which is also to say, we've really got to figure
out wildfires if we're going to solve the climate crisis.
That's why today I'm thrilled to be speaking with Glennis Humphrey,
(03:20):
a virocologist at the University of Cape Town. She studies
fire history so that we can better understand and prepare
for fires in the future. The interaction between human history
and environmental history is at the core of Glenus's research
and gives us valuable insights into what's coming next. In
(03:40):
my field, we focus a lot on how humans are
damaging the natural environment, but there's another side of this.
Indigenous peoples have been the custodians of our earth for
thousands of years, and their practices of land management are
often regenerative rather than destructive. That's what and this is
research focuses on how and what we can learn from
(04:04):
historical land practice.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I had the problem of been lectured by Norman Myers.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Norman Myers was a British environmentalist who consulted for the
European Commission, the United Nations, the World Bank, and even
the White House. Needless to say, he's a pretty big deal.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
He gave us a lecture of a very interesting human
perspective and ecological perspective. So it's been aware that this
is a delicate and fine balance, and I think that
was when I realized that we need to manage these circumstances,
and I developed an interest in human, social, and ecological circumstances.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Glynnis looks at all of it in her work and
she tries to understand how the climate and humans are
shifting fire patterns across the world. But to understand fire today,
we've got to go back to basics. First things. First,
fires can't happen with dry vegetation, and that means areas
(05:03):
experiencing drought are particularly vulnerable to wildfires.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So fires is really linked to rainfall, but also to
the absence of rainfall and to draft periods. So if
vegetation dries out to a certain extent, it becomes what
we call in the fireworld or fire science world, is
fire weather.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Fire weather is a convergence of several environmental factors high temperatures,
low humidity, and often high winds.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
And when you get a convergence of these different weather
conditions and you have an ignition, you'll have the start
of a fire. So I think those are dynamics which
are really important to understand.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
When those ingredients are in place, there's a very real
risk of wildfires, which brings me to the second point.
There are good fires and bad fires. A lot of
places have naturally occurring fires that have happened for millennia
and crucial for a healthy ecosystem and landscape. Those fires
tend to look like small fire patches where the flame
(06:07):
is contained to a small area because much of the
floora nearby is too wet to ignite. But bad fires
look like the ones we're seeing a lot of lately,
huge swaves of land destroyed. Unmanageable and truly frightening. Fires
are also a major contributor to carbon emissions. When a
landscape is burned the carbon it has been storing is
(06:30):
suddenly released into the atmosphere and the amounts can be
truly staggering. For massive wildfires in Canada, last summer emitted
three times as much carbon as Canada typically pollutes annually.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
There was a lot of carbon dioxide released and that's
will results in global heating that will heat up the
earth and actually accelerate. You get those fires cause they
own fire weather, cause their own fire winds, which generates bigger,
bigger fires. They've burned for longer. With an increase in
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we really need to be
(07:04):
taking measures and listening to people on the ground and
working together with people in order to manage these bigger
fires that are happening across the world.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Today. Wildfires are becoming too large, too frequent, and too intense.
It hasn't always been this way. I mean during the
Australian wildfires in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty, the Walamie
Pine was nearly lost to the fires. Walamie Pines are
the dinosaur trees. They've survived unscathed for ninety million years,
(07:39):
hidden in canyons just two hundred kilometers from the city
and rediscovered just a couple of decades ago. Just think
about that this tree species has been around since the dinosaurs.
There's only a few of them left on Earth, and
we almost lost them because of these fires.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
What we're seeing is different from the past. We're seeing
basically a change in the intensities of fires, the frequencies
of fire that we haven't actually seen before. And we're
aware of the fact that we're having increase in heat
waves in drying our periods.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Ecologists like Glennis look for fire patterns to determine what
is normal and what isn't.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
What we understand as fires scientists is we study a
fire pattern, and that's a repeated pattern of fire in
a certain place, at a certain scale, in a certain
vegetation type. So fire differs in different ecosystems all over
the world, and that's very important to remember when you
see a change where fires occurring where it didn't occur before,
(08:45):
or it's occurring at a much bigger scale than it
did occur before. I think that's what's alerting us that
something is off. That's a warning to say things are
changing because it's different from the past.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Glenna says that one of the greatest inventions is actually
for Humble satellite.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
What's really been pivotal is the release and the advancement
of remote sensing data. There's been a change in the
advance of remote sensing data, which is basically satellite data.
So satellite data is measuring variables on the surface of
the Earth, and when it comes to fires, heat signals,
(09:24):
heat and the possession the geolocation of fires are detected
by satellites that are moving and circulating around the globe.
And I think from a fire perspective, these beautiful maps
that we're emerging that could actually where you could see
where fires were occurring across the globe. And that was
(09:44):
about the early two thousands, and I remember it was
a NASA produced image, and I think you might remember it.
It's this beautiful map that you can see where fires
are occurring. And those maps were rarely illuminating to say, wow,
look at the extent of fire on the surface of
the Earth.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
That's incredible, isn't it, Because before it was spot observations,
someone sort of fire here and there, and people put
up on the map over time. Whereas here you're getting
that single almost like a single shot of view from
up above looking down.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
And also you know, satellites are able to measure fire intensity.
It's one of the fire variables that we need to
really be aware of because it's related to how hot
fires or how coolifire it and that is really important
in understanding how whether fires are damaging or not. Fire
intensity is really important to be aware of when understanding
(10:38):
how fires move through our landscapes and in different vegetation
types and in a point in time.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
And the bad news is that fire intensity is increasing
in many vulnerable areas around the world.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
We are seeing an intensity of fire increasing. And to
take an example, the recent fires in Siberia in the
Russian tundra, and those fires are I think is unusual.
And the fires that are seen in the boreal regions,
the Arctic regions, that is something new that scientists are
still grappling with.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Let's take a brief pause here and unpack what g
Linus is saying, because it's massive. What the fuck are
you talking abou The Artic is heating up at least
twice as fast as the rest of the world. Fires
are now able to take hold fare and with far
greater ferocity than before. And it's not just for humble
(11:32):
tree catching on fire. The Arctic is covered in peatlands
or peats, which are a type of wetland and packed
with dead and decaying plants spanning back thousands of thousands
of years. It's basically like a massive pool of carbon
sitting just below the Earth's surface. And in normal times,
say fifty years ago, most peatlands had a high water
(11:55):
table and weren't prone to fire. But because of the
increasing temperature, the water table has lowered, making the peatlands
dry out, and unlike most forest fires, you don't have
a huge, intense firestorm. Instead, these fires sit under the surface,
smoldering away. In fact, one lab experiment found that smoldering
(12:17):
peat fire could survive at below minus thirty five degrees.
It's like they're cooking the Earth's surface, and obviously all
the carbon release from the plants goes into the atmosphere,
causing even more global heating. The bottom line is the
fires in Siberia and the Arctic are so much worse
for the planet's climate because it causes two problems. First,
(12:41):
you have the carbon released from the fires themselves, but
the fires also melt the permafrost for frozen ground, releasing
more carbon and also creating huge amounts of that far
stronger and nastier greenhouse gas methane, which we talked about
in the last episode. And that's what the fuck we're
talking about. What the FuG are you're talking about? Okay,
(13:07):
back to Glynnis. I mean, that's extraordinary, isn't it, Glinnis?
Because those are fires in Siberia going up towards the Arctic,
and we're getting these major landscape fires. They have never
been seen before on this level. That's right, It's just
not what we expect to see fires. I think most
people should not be able to relate to that.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
It was the first time in history that fire is
recorded so close to the North Pole, and that should
be an alarm signal that something is wrong.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
That's a massive red flag, isn't it. That really is.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
It's a red flag that the world is heating. There
is heating going on, and because we are seeing ecological
changes in places that didn't burn previously at that extent
and that intensity.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
So we've got fires in places where previously they would
have been unimaginable. But we also have a growth in
the size, frequency, and intensity of the wildfires in areas
where they were once a positive part of the environment.
This is caused in part by a heating world and
decreased rainfall in many parts of a globe. But colonization
(14:07):
has also had a heavy hand to play in this crisis,
which brings us to the segment we call holy Fuck.
To understand how colonization and fire policy interact, let's look
at one single biome. For savannah is the most fire
(14:28):
prone environment in the world. This biome is characterized by
seasonal droughts and extensive grasp for when dry is extremely flammable.
It's not a specific geographic place, but rather the savannah
exists in several places around the world Brazil, Australia, Central
(14:48):
and southern Africa, and many of these have been plagued
by European colonization. But for our purposes, let's just take
the African savannah, which accounts for almost half of Africa's
total land area.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I worked in the central Kalihari with the Quessan and
Humbakush people, and I spent time tapping into their knowledge
and understanding why they're used fire. And these people genetically
are some of the oldest people on Earth.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
For at least four hundred thousand years. Humans in Central
Africa used fire as a tool for life.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
It's part of their life, it's culturally connected to them,
it's part of their society. So the burning of vegetation
and the burning, the use of fire has always been there.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
It wasn't just a way of cooking food. Fire was
used to clear land, to hunt and later for agricultural purposes,
replenishing the salt in the process. But when Europeans began
colonizing and stealing land that belonged to indigenous peoples, they
brought harmful fire suppression tactics with them. Europeans claimed that
(15:53):
traditional fire management practices would destroy resources, properties and the environment.
In reality, the opposite is true.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
With colonization came an idea that fires is bad and
that we should stop fires, and that's where the friction
and the conflict started and where people were practicing traditional
practices and then all of a sudden they had to
stop doing and were told that fire is bad, and
that's when things and that happened globally. It happened in Australia,
(16:25):
it happened in America with the Native Americans, it happened
in Africa.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Europeans banned fire as a land management practice, and those
harmful policies are still in place in many parts of
a world. The legacy of fire suppression from colonization has
led to a huge number of wildfires in these areas. Today,
for Savannah, biom accounts for eighty six percent of the
world's fires. It's the kind of surprising fact that makes
(16:52):
you sit back and say, holy fuck. Colonial legacies have
led us to this moment, and now we're baling towards
a pretty blique fire prone future.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
It becomes really serious when it impacts people's lives. It's
impacting on the urban fringe. It's moving into spaces where
people aren't prepared to respond because there's been changes, for example,
in the vegetation around certain places is not being managed
sufficiently to actually manage these catastrophic fires and these wildfires
(17:29):
that happen.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
We're a fucking the future. We're a fucking the future.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Glennus has been working with indigenous communities to better understand
their historical practices. This helps governments make more informed decisions
about fire policy.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
So in my research, I worked with indigenous traditional people
living in the Central Kalahari area in Namibia, and I
asked people how they used fire, to understand how they
used fire in the past. Why people use fire and
wife is important for them, so what reasons why they
used fire.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
These kinds of questions and studies are critical to addressing
the legacy left behind by colonization.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
If you don't burn and use fire to manage fire,
we're not going to address these issues. That's really important.
So we use a term called prescribed fire or early
dry season burning. When you talk about traditional fire management,
we really need to realize that fire is something we
need to use in order to manage life.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
When Glennis says that it's not just a nice SoundBite,
fire is absolutely necessary to a strong and healthy ecosystem.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Fire is essential. We can't live with our fire. From
a management perspective, there's certain plants that only respond to fire. So,
for example, in the system where I'm sitting right now,
surrounded by the ferin boss in a bi university hotspot
in the Western Cape, certain species like for example, the
protea species need fire to germinate. In other parts of
(19:12):
the world, the seeds are actually trapped in those pine
cones and the actually need heat to explode. And there's
another perspective, we live with fire and there's people in
really remote areas of Southern Africa and Africa that live
with fire on a daily basis, and people use fire
to manage the vegetation around their homes, to manage fire
to manage plants that they depend on. For example, the
(19:35):
Quersan in Namibia, they burn certain areas to actually encourage
the grass of vegetation. It regenerates the grass and it
results in improved productivity. We've known for millennia that a
flush of green grass will attract a herd of zebra
for grazing purposes.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Glennis's work with local communities led Namibia to make policy
changes that will help put the country on a more
positive track.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
For the first time in history, the Namibian government changed
from a policy of fire suppression but actually recognized indigenous
knowledge and traditional knowledge and the use of fire. People
are using fire to manage fire. At the ministry level,
I was in asking people how they understood fine, why
they're used fire, and how they were using fire. International
Park where actually it was a very unique circumstance because
(20:23):
the indigenous community were allowed to live in the park.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Usually people are removed, yes, of course, which.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Is a sensitive issue across the world, people have been
removed from ecological from protected areas. This was a unique
circumstances where people were living amongst wildlife and fire, and
so it was a brilliant from a scientific perspective, what
a wonderful experiment to actually be able to ask people
about why, how they were using fire, how they were
(20:51):
living fire. And I think that was revealing in a
sense that when I asked the ministry how they were
using fire, they recognized that the use of fire in
the season to actually remove the vegetation and the fuel
load was really helping them manage the latter hot, dry
season fires that've were damaging to biodiversity. There was a
consensus between why the ministry, at the government level of
(21:14):
the park management why they were using fire, as well
as the community. They were using fire for the same reasons.
And I think that's really important to realize is that
the rationale was the same. You just had to bring
different people's different knowledge forms to come and understand, say
why using fire and try and understand that. And I
think that really needs to be elevated because we can
(21:36):
learn and we have learned, and governance can learn from
traditional communities how to manage these artbreaks of fire. If
we don't use fire to manage fire, we're not going
to stop the infernos and the conflagrations which are occurring
all over the world. We really need to apply that knowledge.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
But if we want to solve this crisis, Glynnis says,
what's happening in the media needs to happen at a
much larger scale.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
There needs to be greater recognition of traditional fire management
practices in order to address some of our wildfire issues.
People need to be allowed to burn and local authorities
need to be allowed to burn in a certain area.
And that is because fire, as I explained, is really
essential to ecological functioning in the majority of ecosystems across
(22:28):
the world. Just that the vegetation type and the fire
cycle will differ according to the climate and the current
and the rainfall patterns and the weather patterns, and that
really needs to be monitored. From a scientific point of view,
that data is really essential for understanding when to light fires.
But the sort of the convergence between people and when
(22:50):
they burn and the fire science, if you bring those
two together, that's where you can reach consensus and actually
understand and actually use fire. But an important aspect of
people need to be allowed to burn. We shouldn't be
suppressing fire. That is terminology which has caused a lot
of damage in the past. But to move into a
new era of addressing the wildfire scenarios, we should not
(23:12):
be using We should not be talking about fire suppression
and fire prevention. We should be talking about fire management
because that is fire prevention. Fire management equates to fire prevention.
So in order to dress global biodiversity and health impacts,
and to support and look after our planet and are
the ecological functioning of it, we need to be thinking
(23:34):
where we actually living, and communities can create awareness about
the fire problem and be activists for fire. Fire activist
degrees awareness that my home is surrounded by alien invasives
and actually create a group yourself and start removing vegetation
from around your home to protect yourself from fire. So
there are things you can do from where you're at.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
And perhaps most importantly, Glenn said, we shouldn't lose hope.
There's been a lot of progress in the fireworld.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
I've seen huge leaps in changes and the recognition of
the importance of the social dynamics in ecological and science
circles and That's what gives me hope is being able
to bring different disciplines and people from different walks of
life together. And if we can do that, we can
actually really move forward and address bigger issues. But it
(24:27):
requires the social process, which is often leather intensive scientist
stuff and run away from people, Johnathan, You we know
planting cologious and nervous of people, and you know not
all scientists like people. We need to bring people together
to come to some sort of consensus and actually rarely
engage in exchange knowledge to actually dress some of these issues.
(24:49):
And I've seen that in the last twenty years, and
that's what gives me hope.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
I was so inspired by my conversation with Glynnis. By
learning from traditional practice in South Africa and elsewhere, we
can help reduce the risk and severity of wildfires even
as global heating accelerates. But a lot of what Glynnis
is talking about will happen in the policies of our
local and national governments, So you might be wondering, what
(25:16):
the fuck can I do?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
What the fuck can I do?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
The wildfires in Australia pushed me to join the New
South Wales Raw Fire Service or RFS for short. This
is the world's largest fire service and it's run almost
entirely by volunteers. It's an incredible and diverse group, and
since joining, I've learned a ton about fires and how
to prevent them. Many places across the world rely on
(25:44):
volunteer firefighters, and I can't recommend you joining your local
group enough. It's an amazing way to serve your community.
But that's not all. To talk about other ways you
can help reduce the risks of wildfire. I'm proud to
welcome back our friend and act t vist Maggie Bed. Maggie,
what did you take away from the chat with g Linnis?
Speaker 4 (26:05):
There's so much to talk about here, but I want
to highlight one important takeaway I had from this conversation.
The power of gardening. Right, okay, Well, specifically, I am
talking about keeping any green spaces you own clear of
invasive plant species. So at first this might sound irrelevant
(26:26):
to wildfires, but actually they're a huge problem when it
comes to unmanaged fires. They fuel wildfires, accelerate their spread,
and increase the likelihood of unusually severe wildfires. So walk
around your house with a plant, identify your app on
your phone and check to see which species are invasive.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Ah, that's great, Maggie. And the other thing I dadd
is we should be regularly cleaning debris on and around
our homes, especially for gutters. Dried leaves and small branches
get trapped in there and they're highly flammable.
Speaker 5 (27:01):
Right.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
I love that, Chris. All of this speaks to the
importance of preparation. We need to actively maintain our homes
and green spaces to prepare for potential wildfires. And for
more tips on how to do that, there is a
great website you can check out called Ready for Wildfire
dot org.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
And that's what the fuck you can do?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
What fuck can I do? Oh?
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Fuck?
Speaker 3 (27:36):
That's all for this episode. Next time on I'm Fucking
the Future, we'll be talking with Kochako and Voacom. She's
a Thai landscape architect who is changing the way we
build cities.
Speaker 6 (27:48):
We assume that and Cuckle be able to enlarge it
capacity to our greed.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
Right, we want more people, we want more buildings, we
want want more economics, we want more tourists, and we
assume that Fank can handle it.
Speaker 6 (28:07):
Whereas the line itself, every line or every infrastructure is
have its capacity, and we also destroyed the natural infrastructure
to reduce its capacity without.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Knowing until then. I'm Chris Turney signing off from Sydney, Australia.
Oh by the way, if you like this episode, please subscribe,
rate and reviewers wherever you get your podcasts. I love
reading your comments. They really do make my day. Thanks
for joining me to Unfuck the Future.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
We're Fucking the Future.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
I'm Fucking the Future is produced by Imagine Audio and
Awfully Nice for iHeart Podcasts and hosted by me Chris Turney.
The show is written by Meredith Bryan. I'm Fucking the
Future is produced by Amber von Shassen and Rene Colvert.
Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Carl and Nathan Chloke are the
executive producers from Imagine Audio. Jesse Burton and Katie Hodges
(29:05):
are the executive producers from Awfully Nice. Sound design and
mixing by Evan Arnette, original music by Lillly Hayden and
producing services by Peter mcgriggan. Sam Swinnerton wrote our theme
and all those fun jingles. If you enjoyed this episode,
be sure to rate and review Unfucking the Future on
Apple Podcasts. Or whether you get your podcasts
We're heading into a warming phase if governance doesn't take
a niece into the fact that the burning of fossil
fuels are increasing the surface of the earth and the
temperature on the surface of the earth, and that's been
trapped and this envelope that surrounds that surrounds us, that
is causing a heating up of the earth. The fire
fire is responding to that heating of the globe, and
(00:22):
that's really important to be aware of. And if we
don't halt our activities on the ground and really change that,
we are going to head into a catastrophic zone.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Ah fucked.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Welcome to I'm Fucking the Future. I'm your host, Chris Turney.
I've been studying the climate for close to thirty years now.
In most professions, after thirty years, you might say I've
seen it all. But in the climate crisis, there's always
something new. The headlines make everything feel pretty scary, and
(01:02):
that's because in a lot of ways it is pretty scary.
But being alarmed about the fate of our future isn't enough.
We've got to get activated and think creatively about tackling
the climate crisis together. So let's dig in.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
We're fucking the future. Weird are fucking the future.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
If you're listening to this, congrats you lived through the
hottest year on record, and with the hotter temperatures, we
also saw increased intensity in wildfires, and for many of
us it's personal. It doesn't matter if you live in
the country or a city. Wildfires are becoming a part
(01:48):
of all our lives. For me, wildfires became a huge
part of my life. In twenty nineteen and twenty twenty,
it was summerre in Australia and the whole country seemed
to be a blaze. As you can see, it's nuke
it's just gone.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
A state of fier emergency has been declared for the
first time in Queensland's history.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Fifty nine million acres were burnt. That's two times the
size of Pennsylvania. Thirty four people tragically lost their lives.
Three billion animals were either killed or harmed. In Sydney,
the sun cast a weird orange glow and the air
was filled with smoke for months. It fell like a
movie Blade Runner. You could even feel the grit of
(02:33):
charcoal and toxic dust between your teeth. It's estimated the
city air was ten times above Hazard's levels. So last
year when the massive Canadian wildfires happened, I had a
pretty clear idea of a horror's millions there were facing
smoke shut down seats in both Canada and the US.
Air quality crashed and it had devastating effects on the environment.
(02:58):
The Canadian wildfires are released four hundred and eighty mega
tons of carbon in twenty twenty three. That is an
eye watering amount that few of any of us can imagine,
which is also to say, we've really got to figure
out wildfires if we're going to solve the climate crisis.
That's why today I'm thrilled to be speaking with Glennis Humphrey,
(03:20):
a virocologist at the University of Cape Town. She studies
fire history so that we can better understand and prepare
for fires in the future. The interaction between human history
and environmental history is at the core of Glenus's research
and gives us valuable insights into what's coming next. In
(03:40):
my field, we focus a lot on how humans are
damaging the natural environment, but there's another side of this.
Indigenous peoples have been the custodians of our earth for
thousands of years, and their practices of land management are
often regenerative rather than destructive. That's what and this is
research focuses on how and what we can learn from
(04:04):
historical land practice.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I had the problem of been lectured by Norman Myers.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Norman Myers was a British environmentalist who consulted for the
European Commission, the United Nations, the World Bank, and even
the White House. Needless to say, he's a pretty big deal.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
He gave us a lecture of a very interesting human
perspective and ecological perspective. So it's been aware that this
is a delicate and fine balance, and I think that
was when I realized that we need to manage these circumstances,
and I developed an interest in human, social, and ecological circumstances.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Glynnis looks at all of it in her work and
she tries to understand how the climate and humans are
shifting fire patterns across the world. But to understand fire today,
we've got to go back to basics. First things. First,
fires can't happen with dry vegetation, and that means areas
(05:03):
experiencing drought are particularly vulnerable to wildfires.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So fires is really linked to rainfall, but also to
the absence of rainfall and to draft periods. So if
vegetation dries out to a certain extent, it becomes what
we call in the fireworld or fire science world, is
fire weather.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Fire weather is a convergence of several environmental factors high temperatures,
low humidity, and often high winds.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
And when you get a convergence of these different weather
conditions and you have an ignition, you'll have the start
of a fire. So I think those are dynamics which
are really important to understand.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
When those ingredients are in place, there's a very real
risk of wildfires, which brings me to the second point.
There are good fires and bad fires. A lot of
places have naturally occurring fires that have happened for millennia
and crucial for a healthy ecosystem and landscape. Those fires
tend to look like small fire patches where the flame
(06:07):
is contained to a small area because much of the
floora nearby is too wet to ignite. But bad fires
look like the ones we're seeing a lot of lately,
huge swaves of land destroyed. Unmanageable and truly frightening. Fires
are also a major contributor to carbon emissions. When a
landscape is burned the carbon it has been storing is
(06:30):
suddenly released into the atmosphere and the amounts can be
truly staggering. For massive wildfires in Canada, last summer emitted
three times as much carbon as Canada typically pollutes annually.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
There was a lot of carbon dioxide released and that's
will results in global heating that will heat up the
earth and actually accelerate. You get those fires cause they
own fire weather, cause their own fire winds, which generates bigger,
bigger fires. They've burned for longer. With an increase in
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we really need to be
(07:04):
taking measures and listening to people on the ground and
working together with people in order to manage these bigger
fires that are happening across the world.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Today. Wildfires are becoming too large, too frequent, and too intense.
It hasn't always been this way. I mean during the
Australian wildfires in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty, the Walamie
Pine was nearly lost to the fires. Walamie Pines are
the dinosaur trees. They've survived unscathed for ninety million years,
(07:39):
hidden in canyons just two hundred kilometers from the city
and rediscovered just a couple of decades ago. Just think
about that this tree species has been around since the dinosaurs.
There's only a few of them left on Earth, and
we almost lost them because of these fires.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
What we're seeing is different from the past. We're seeing
basically a change in the intensities of fires, the frequencies
of fire that we haven't actually seen before. And we're
aware of the fact that we're having increase in heat
waves in drying our periods.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Ecologists like Glennis look for fire patterns to determine what
is normal and what isn't.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
What we understand as fires scientists is we study a
fire pattern, and that's a repeated pattern of fire in
a certain place, at a certain scale, in a certain
vegetation type. So fire differs in different ecosystems all over
the world, and that's very important to remember when you
see a change where fires occurring where it didn't occur before,
(08:45):
or it's occurring at a much bigger scale than it
did occur before. I think that's what's alerting us that
something is off. That's a warning to say things are
changing because it's different from the past.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Glenna says that one of the greatest inventions is actually
for Humble satellite.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
What's really been pivotal is the release and the advancement
of remote sensing data. There's been a change in the
advance of remote sensing data, which is basically satellite data.
So satellite data is measuring variables on the surface of
the Earth, and when it comes to fires, heat signals,
(09:24):
heat and the possession the geolocation of fires are detected
by satellites that are moving and circulating around the globe.
And I think from a fire perspective, these beautiful maps
that we're emerging that could actually where you could see
where fires were occurring across the globe. And that was
(09:44):
about the early two thousands, and I remember it was
a NASA produced image, and I think you might remember it.
It's this beautiful map that you can see where fires
are occurring. And those maps were rarely illuminating to say, wow,
look at the extent of fire on the surface of
the Earth.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
That's incredible, isn't it, Because before it was spot observations,
someone sort of fire here and there, and people put
up on the map over time. Whereas here you're getting
that single almost like a single shot of view from
up above looking down.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
And also you know, satellites are able to measure fire intensity.
It's one of the fire variables that we need to
really be aware of because it's related to how hot
fires or how coolifire it and that is really important
in understanding how whether fires are damaging or not. Fire
intensity is really important to be aware of when understanding
(10:38):
how fires move through our landscapes and in different vegetation
types and in a point in time.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
And the bad news is that fire intensity is increasing
in many vulnerable areas around the world.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
We are seeing an intensity of fire increasing. And to
take an example, the recent fires in Siberia in the
Russian tundra, and those fires are I think is unusual.
And the fires that are seen in the boreal regions,
the Arctic regions, that is something new that scientists are
still grappling with.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Let's take a brief pause here and unpack what g
Linus is saying, because it's massive. What the fuck are
you talking abou The Artic is heating up at least
twice as fast as the rest of the world. Fires
are now able to take hold fare and with far
greater ferocity than before. And it's not just for humble
(11:32):
tree catching on fire. The Arctic is covered in peatlands
or peats, which are a type of wetland and packed
with dead and decaying plants spanning back thousands of thousands
of years. It's basically like a massive pool of carbon
sitting just below the Earth's surface. And in normal times,
say fifty years ago, most peatlands had a high water
(11:55):
table and weren't prone to fire. But because of the
increasing temperature, the water table has lowered, making the peatlands
dry out, and unlike most forest fires, you don't have
a huge, intense firestorm. Instead, these fires sit under the surface,
smoldering away. In fact, one lab experiment found that smoldering
(12:17):
peat fire could survive at below minus thirty five degrees.
It's like they're cooking the Earth's surface, and obviously all
the carbon release from the plants goes into the atmosphere,
causing even more global heating. The bottom line is the
fires in Siberia and the Arctic are so much worse
for the planet's climate because it causes two problems. First,
(12:41):
you have the carbon released from the fires themselves, but
the fires also melt the permafrost for frozen ground, releasing
more carbon and also creating huge amounts of that far
stronger and nastier greenhouse gas methane, which we talked about
in the last episode. And that's what the fuck we're
talking about. What the FuG are you're talking about? Okay,
(13:07):
back to Glynnis. I mean, that's extraordinary, isn't it, Glinnis?
Because those are fires in Siberia going up towards the Arctic,
and we're getting these major landscape fires. They have never
been seen before on this level. That's right, It's just
not what we expect to see fires. I think most
people should not be able to relate to that.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
It was the first time in history that fire is
recorded so close to the North Pole, and that should
be an alarm signal that something is wrong.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
That's a massive red flag, isn't it. That really is.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
It's a red flag that the world is heating. There
is heating going on, and because we are seeing ecological
changes in places that didn't burn previously at that extent
and that intensity.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
So we've got fires in places where previously they would
have been unimaginable. But we also have a growth in
the size, frequency, and intensity of the wildfires in areas
where they were once a positive part of the environment.
This is caused in part by a heating world and
decreased rainfall in many parts of a globe. But colonization
(14:07):
has also had a heavy hand to play in this crisis,
which brings us to the segment we call holy Fuck.
To understand how colonization and fire policy interact, let's look
at one single biome. For savannah is the most fire
(14:28):
prone environment in the world. This biome is characterized by
seasonal droughts and extensive grasp for when dry is extremely flammable.
It's not a specific geographic place, but rather the savannah
exists in several places around the world Brazil, Australia, Central
(14:48):
and southern Africa, and many of these have been plagued
by European colonization. But for our purposes, let's just take
the African savannah, which accounts for almost half of Africa's
total land area.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I worked in the central Kalihari with the Quessan and
Humbakush people, and I spent time tapping into their knowledge
and understanding why they're used fire. And these people genetically
are some of the oldest people on Earth.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
For at least four hundred thousand years. Humans in Central
Africa used fire as a tool for life.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
It's part of their life, it's culturally connected to them,
it's part of their society. So the burning of vegetation
and the burning, the use of fire has always been there.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
It wasn't just a way of cooking food. Fire was
used to clear land, to hunt and later for agricultural purposes,
replenishing the salt in the process. But when Europeans began
colonizing and stealing land that belonged to indigenous peoples, they
brought harmful fire suppression tactics with them. Europeans claimed that
(15:53):
traditional fire management practices would destroy resources, properties and the environment.
In reality, the opposite is true.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
With colonization came an idea that fires is bad and
that we should stop fires, and that's where the friction
and the conflict started and where people were practicing traditional
practices and then all of a sudden they had to
stop doing and were told that fire is bad, and
that's when things and that happened globally. It happened in Australia,
(16:25):
it happened in America with the Native Americans, it happened
in Africa.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Europeans banned fire as a land management practice, and those
harmful policies are still in place in many parts of
a world. The legacy of fire suppression from colonization has
led to a huge number of wildfires in these areas. Today,
for Savannah, biom accounts for eighty six percent of the
world's fires. It's the kind of surprising fact that makes
(16:52):
you sit back and say, holy fuck. Colonial legacies have
led us to this moment, and now we're baling towards
a pretty blique fire prone future.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
It becomes really serious when it impacts people's lives. It's
impacting on the urban fringe. It's moving into spaces where
people aren't prepared to respond because there's been changes, for example,
in the vegetation around certain places is not being managed
sufficiently to actually manage these catastrophic fires and these wildfires
(17:29):
that happen.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
We're a fucking the future. We're a fucking the future.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Glennus has been working with indigenous communities to better understand
their historical practices. This helps governments make more informed decisions
about fire policy.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
So in my research, I worked with indigenous traditional people
living in the Central Kalahari area in Namibia, and I
asked people how they used fire, to understand how they
used fire in the past. Why people use fire and
wife is important for them, so what reasons why they
used fire.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
These kinds of questions and studies are critical to addressing
the legacy left behind by colonization.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
If you don't burn and use fire to manage fire,
we're not going to address these issues. That's really important.
So we use a term called prescribed fire or early
dry season burning. When you talk about traditional fire management,
we really need to realize that fire is something we
need to use in order to manage life.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
When Glennis says that it's not just a nice SoundBite,
fire is absolutely necessary to a strong and healthy ecosystem.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Fire is essential. We can't live with our fire. From
a management perspective, there's certain plants that only respond to fire. So,
for example, in the system where I'm sitting right now,
surrounded by the ferin boss in a bi university hotspot
in the Western Cape, certain species like for example, the
protea species need fire to germinate. In other parts of
(19:12):
the world, the seeds are actually trapped in those pine
cones and the actually need heat to explode. And there's
another perspective, we live with fire and there's people in
really remote areas of Southern Africa and Africa that live
with fire on a daily basis, and people use fire
to manage the vegetation around their homes, to manage fire
to manage plants that they depend on. For example, the
(19:35):
Quersan in Namibia, they burn certain areas to actually encourage
the grass of vegetation. It regenerates the grass and it
results in improved productivity. We've known for millennia that a
flush of green grass will attract a herd of zebra
for grazing purposes.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Glennis's work with local communities led Namibia to make policy
changes that will help put the country on a more
positive track.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
For the first time in history, the Namibian government changed
from a policy of fire suppression but actually recognized indigenous
knowledge and traditional knowledge and the use of fire. People
are using fire to manage fire. At the ministry level,
I was in asking people how they understood fine, why
they're used fire, and how they were using fire. International
Park where actually it was a very unique circumstance because
(20:23):
the indigenous community were allowed to live in the park.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Usually people are removed, yes, of course, which.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Is a sensitive issue across the world, people have been
removed from ecological from protected areas. This was a unique
circumstances where people were living amongst wildlife and fire, and
so it was a brilliant from a scientific perspective, what
a wonderful experiment to actually be able to ask people
about why, how they were using fire, how they were
(20:51):
living fire. And I think that was revealing in a
sense that when I asked the ministry how they were
using fire, they recognized that the use of fire in
the season to actually remove the vegetation and the fuel
load was really helping them manage the latter hot, dry
season fires that've were damaging to biodiversity. There was a
consensus between why the ministry, at the government level of
(21:14):
the park management why they were using fire, as well
as the community. They were using fire for the same reasons.
And I think that's really important to realize is that
the rationale was the same. You just had to bring
different people's different knowledge forms to come and understand, say
why using fire and try and understand that. And I
think that really needs to be elevated because we can
(21:36):
learn and we have learned, and governance can learn from
traditional communities how to manage these artbreaks of fire. If
we don't use fire to manage fire, we're not going
to stop the infernos and the conflagrations which are occurring
all over the world. We really need to apply that knowledge.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
But if we want to solve this crisis, Glynnis says,
what's happening in the media needs to happen at a
much larger scale.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
There needs to be greater recognition of traditional fire management
practices in order to address some of our wildfire issues.
People need to be allowed to burn and local authorities
need to be allowed to burn in a certain area.
And that is because fire, as I explained, is really
essential to ecological functioning in the majority of ecosystems across
(22:28):
the world. Just that the vegetation type and the fire
cycle will differ according to the climate and the current
and the rainfall patterns and the weather patterns, and that
really needs to be monitored. From a scientific point of view,
that data is really essential for understanding when to light fires.
But the sort of the convergence between people and when
(22:50):
they burn and the fire science, if you bring those
two together, that's where you can reach consensus and actually
understand and actually use fire. But an important aspect of
people need to be allowed to burn. We shouldn't be
suppressing fire. That is terminology which has caused a lot
of damage in the past. But to move into a
new era of addressing the wildfire scenarios, we should not
(23:12):
be using We should not be talking about fire suppression
and fire prevention. We should be talking about fire management
because that is fire prevention. Fire management equates to fire prevention.
So in order to dress global biodiversity and health impacts,
and to support and look after our planet and are
the ecological functioning of it, we need to be thinking
(23:34):
where we actually living, and communities can create awareness about
the fire problem and be activists for fire. Fire activist
degrees awareness that my home is surrounded by alien invasives
and actually create a group yourself and start removing vegetation
from around your home to protect yourself from fire. So
there are things you can do from where you're at.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
And perhaps most importantly, Glenn said, we shouldn't lose hope.
There's been a lot of progress in the fireworld.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
I've seen huge leaps in changes and the recognition of
the importance of the social dynamics in ecological and science
circles and That's what gives me hope is being able
to bring different disciplines and people from different walks of
life together. And if we can do that, we can
actually really move forward and address bigger issues. But it
(24:27):
requires the social process, which is often leather intensive scientist
stuff and run away from people, Johnathan, You we know
planting cologious and nervous of people, and you know not
all scientists like people. We need to bring people together
to come to some sort of consensus and actually rarely
engage in exchange knowledge to actually dress some of these issues.
(24:49):
And I've seen that in the last twenty years, and
that's what gives me hope.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
I was so inspired by my conversation with Glynnis. By
learning from traditional practice in South Africa and elsewhere, we
can help reduce the risk and severity of wildfires even
as global heating accelerates. But a lot of what Glynnis
is talking about will happen in the policies of our
local and national governments, So you might be wondering, what
(25:16):
the fuck can I do?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
What the fuck can I do?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
The wildfires in Australia pushed me to join the New
South Wales Raw Fire Service or RFS for short. This
is the world's largest fire service and it's run almost
entirely by volunteers. It's an incredible and diverse group, and
since joining, I've learned a ton about fires and how
to prevent them. Many places across the world rely on
(25:44):
volunteer firefighters, and I can't recommend you joining your local
group enough. It's an amazing way to serve your community.
But that's not all. To talk about other ways you
can help reduce the risks of wildfire. I'm proud to
welcome back our friend and act t vist Maggie Bed. Maggie,
what did you take away from the chat with g Linnis?
Speaker 4 (26:05):
There's so much to talk about here, but I want
to highlight one important takeaway I had from this conversation.
The power of gardening. Right, okay, Well, specifically, I am
talking about keeping any green spaces you own clear of
invasive plant species. So at first this might sound irrelevant
(26:26):
to wildfires, but actually they're a huge problem when it
comes to unmanaged fires. They fuel wildfires, accelerate their spread,
and increase the likelihood of unusually severe wildfires. So walk
around your house with a plant, identify your app on
your phone and check to see which species are invasive.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Ah, that's great, Maggie. And the other thing I dadd
is we should be regularly cleaning debris on and around
our homes, especially for gutters. Dried leaves and small branches
get trapped in there and they're highly flammable.
Speaker 5 (27:01):
Right.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
I love that, Chris. All of this speaks to the
importance of preparation. We need to actively maintain our homes
and green spaces to prepare for potential wildfires. And for
more tips on how to do that, there is a
great website you can check out called Ready for Wildfire
dot org.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
And that's what the fuck you can do?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
What fuck can I do? Oh?
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Fuck?
Speaker 3 (27:36):
That's all for this episode. Next time on I'm Fucking
the Future, we'll be talking with Kochako and Voacom. She's
a Thai landscape architect who is changing the way we
build cities.
Speaker 6 (27:48):
We assume that and Cuckle be able to enlarge it
capacity to our greed.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
Right, we want more people, we want more buildings, we
want want more economics, we want more tourists, and we
assume that Fank can handle it.
Speaker 6 (28:07):
Whereas the line itself, every line or every infrastructure is
have its capacity, and we also destroyed the natural infrastructure
to reduce its capacity without.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Knowing until then. I'm Chris Turney signing off from Sydney, Australia.
Oh by the way, if you like this episode, please subscribe,
rate and reviewers wherever you get your podcasts. I love
reading your comments. They really do make my day. Thanks
for joining me to Unfuck the Future.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
We're Fucking the Future.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
I'm Fucking the Future is produced by Imagine Audio and
Awfully Nice for iHeart Podcasts and hosted by me Chris Turney.
The show is written by Meredith Bryan. I'm Fucking the
Future is produced by Amber von Shassen and Rene Colvert.
Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Carl and Nathan Chloke are the
executive producers from Imagine Audio. Jesse Burton and Katie Hodges
(29:05):
are the executive producers from Awfully Nice. Sound design and
mixing by Evan Arnette, original music by Lillly Hayden and
producing services by Peter mcgriggan. Sam Swinnerton wrote our theme
and all those fun jingles. If you enjoyed this episode,
be sure to rate and review Unfucking the Future on
Apple Podcasts. Or whether you get your podcasts
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