A State of Fire (original) (raw)

Postmodern Pyroscapes (California Wildfires)

Topos 113, 2020

One might think that settling wherever one desires corresponds to the American dream of shaping one's own destiny. Tragically, this dream is bifurcated by the structural inequality that pervades US s ociety, resulting in unequal opportunity and uneven development. This becomes a matter of life and death in a disaster and shapes who can respond and recover and who can't. !is year's California wildfires are a case in point, compounded by the coronavirus pandemic. How did modernization facilitate this disaster, and what can be done to remedy this perfect storm?

California's last conflagration and thoughts on the Pyrocene

The Conversation, 2019

Fossil fuels affect landscape fires in more ways than through climate change. They alter fire practices, which has the effect of reducing open burning. The California fires make a useful pivot to examine how fires in lithic landscapes (eg, fossil biomass) affect fires in living landscapes.