Climate Change and the Evolution of Wildfires

The wildfires sweeping Canada have become the largest in its modern history. Across the country, 30 million acres of forest have burned — three times as much land as in the worst American fire in the past 50 years.

The scale has forced an international response and a re-evaluation of how the world handles wildfires.

Firefighters on the front lines discuss the challenges they face, and David Wallace-Wells, a climate columnist for The Times, explores how climate change has shifted thinking about wildfires.

Guest: David Wallace-Wells, a climate columnist for The New York Times. 

Background reading: 

• With most of Canada’s fire season still ahead, the country is on track to produce more carbon emissions from the burning of forests than all of its other human and industrial activities combined, David Wallace-Wells writes in Times Opinion.
• Canada’s record-breaking wildfire season shows the need to shift from suppressing fires to preventing them as they become more difficult to combat.

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