Our house is on fire, but are we even able to put out the fire? A crucial question to ask given the series of devastating fires this summer. Can we still face the catastrophe? Although the fires are largely human in origin, scientists agree and point out that global warming caused by our activities is a major contributor to the scale of these fires. Even tropical Hawaii is no longer spared. And after Siberia last year, Canada’s frigid Arctic, which seems like a totally inappropriate place for wildfires, is also burning.
Because you have to get used to it. A fire season that starts earlier and earlier, fires that now bear the frightening name “megafires,” blazes that smolder underground for months, only to flare up again as soon as the nice weather arrives. In the Gironde, a year after the devastating fires of 2022, the underground fire of a lignite deposit is still burning in Hostens and nobody knows how to put it out.
“The fight is unequal, arduous, but not lost a priori.”
In addition to this general powerlessness, there is that of the countries: France was able to prevent the worst this summer by hiring new Canadians on a massive scale, and Portugal by means of prevention campaigns. A few thousand kilometers away, the Greek firefighters of Rhodes had nozzles that did not match the dimensions of the taps…
The fight is unequal, arduous, but not lost a priori. To do this, we need to invest in far greater resources than today. Most importantly, there is a general awareness that our forests, stressed by climate change, are more fragile than ever. Reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, eternal mantra.
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– The summer of all fires
The summer of 2023 will have been an ecological catastrophe in terms of forest fires. It reveals our growing impotence to fight this planetary scourge.