“In this great chain of causes”: Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, Essay on the Geography of Plants (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), p. 79.
“You go to a place”: Dean Bennett, “Alberta Premier Notley to Greet Evacuees; Recalls Early Days of Wildfire,” Canadian Press, May 31, 2016.
“No one’s ever seen anything like this”: Global News, May 9, 2016.
“The foliage is so thick”: “World’s Largest Beaver Dam Explored by Rob Mark,” CBC News, September 19, 2014.
Girdling the Northern Hemisphere: Hanna Corona, “World Boreal Forests—Largest Biome Taiga,” Boreal Forest, August 30, 2022.
The fire generated: Tymstra, The Chinchaga Firestorm, p. 67; Harry Wexler, “The Great Smoke Pall—September 24–30, 1950,” Weatherwise 3 (1950).
Rising forty thousand feet: Tymstra, p. 70.
lavender suns and blue moons: Ibid., p. 72.
Prior to the Chinchaga Fire: Ibid., p. 66.
Carl Sagan was sufficiently: Ibid., p. 90.
The Outlook includes maps: See cpo.noaa.gov/.
“We’re just a colony”: Rick Kirschner interview, February 6, 2017.
around 4 million barrels: Canada Energy Regulator, “Crude Oil Export Summary,” neb-one.gc.ca/. Canada accounts for 40 percent of U.S. daily imports. Despite its lingering prominence in the public mind, Saudi Arabia now accounts for less than 10 percent of U.S. petroleum imports. See nrcan.gc.ca/.
Of this vast quantity: “Crude Oil Export Summary.”
In 2016, two years past: “Median Total Income of Households in 2015” ($195,656.00 CAD) and “Census Profile, 2016 Census, Fort McMurray, Alberta,” Statistics Canada, www12.statcan.gc.ca/.
As one insider put it: Name withheld.
“It happens every year”: Shandra and Corey Linder interview, November 4, 2016. (All subsequent quotations from Shandra Linder derive from this interview.)
“It is natural”: Clark, The Bituminous Sands of Alberta, p. 32.
“TRUDEAU WANTS EVERY DROP”: Bruce Grierson, personal communication; see also “Lougheed Retaliates Against Trudeau for NEP,” CBC News, November 2, 1980.
Those two men may have: “Oil and Gas Liabilities Management,” alberta.ca/.
If all of Alberta’s pipelines: “Pipeline Performance in Alberta,” Alberta Energy Regulator.
“A typical oil sands deposit”: “Oil Sands Geology and the Properties of Bitumen,” Oil Sands Magazine, updated February 28, 2020.
In an effort to articulate: Louie Rondel interview, February 5, 2017.
The tailings ponds alone: “Total Area of the Oil Sands Tailings Ponds Over Time,” osip.alberta.ca.
these skyscraping, fire-breathing gnomons: They were finally surpassed in 2018 by two high-rise office buildings in Edmonton and Calgary.
“Nature’s Supreme Gift to Industry”: International Bitumen Company (IBC).
“Magic Sand-Pile” campaign: Fortune, September 1947, p. 172.
By 1930, the United States: “Map of Oil Trunk Pipe Lines,” The Oil and Gas Journal, August 30, 1928.
In language that sounds: See crudemonitor.ca/.
Had the industry discovered it: “McMurray Formation,” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/.
more than a trillion: Ian M. Head et al., “Biological Activity in the Deep Subsurface and the Origin of Heavy Oil,” Nature, November 20, 2003.
Situated at the lower limits: “Exploring the Limits of Life in the Deep Biosphere,” Deep Carbon Observatory, July 23, 2015, deepcarbon.net/.
“The oil sands and heavy-oil belts”: Stephen R. Larter and Ian M. Head, “Oil Sands and Heavy Oil: Origin and Exploitation,” Elements 10 (August 2014): 277–84.
When Larter tried to calculate: Ibid.
To be capable of ignition: Tristin Hopper, “Can Oil Sands Catch Fire? No, If They Could They Would Have Burned Centuries Ago,” National Post, May 6, 2016.
These diluents are usually: Malone Mullin, “What We Know—and Don’t Know—About Diluted Bitumen,” Globe and Mail, January 30, 2018.
The million-gallon (24,000-barrel) spill: Garrett Ellison, “New Price Tag for Kalamazoo River Oil Spill Cleanup: Enbridge Says $1.21 Billion,” Grand Rapids Press, November 5, 2014.
The market value of the spilled dilbit: Assuming a 2010 price of @ $50.00/bbl, inflationdata.com/.
In both SAG-D and surface mining: Rachel Nuwer, “Oil Sands Mining Uses Up Almost as Much Energy as It Produces,” Inside Climate News, February 19, 2013. Shell’s bitumen operation in Fort McMurray requires roughly six times the energy input to produce the same amount of energy as its conventional oil and gas holdings elsewhere, see cbc.ca/news/.
the energy equivalent of 350,000 barrels of oil: Based on the following calculation: one barrel of oil contains the energy equivalent of 5,800 cubic feet of natural gas.
Canada is the fourth-largest producer: “Oil Sands Production Using Nearly One-Third of Canada’s Natural Gas,” BNN Bloomberg, April 19, 2017.
Even after it has been separated: Rhys Baker, “Making Crude Oil Useful: Fractional Distillation and Cracking,” Owlcation, April 4, 2022.
One way to measure: Nafeez Ahmed, “Will Covid-19 End the Age of Big Oil?,” Le Monde Diplomatique, April 24, 2020.
Alberta has taken: Geoff Dembicki, “This Energy Analyst Says the Oilsands Are ‘Done,’ ” Tyee, May 11, 2020.
A rough estimate: Chris Varcoe, “When the Oil Sands Hit Pay Dirt,” Calgary Herald, September 26, 2017.
“Whereas many incredible miracles”: Diodorus of Sicily, Bibliotheca Historica, II.12, via Forbes, Bitumen and Petroleum in Antiquity, p. 21.
a “Great River”: York Factory Post journals, pdf from microfilm reel 1M154, folio 43, Archives of Manitoba (manitoba.ca).
In return for actionable intelligence: Newman, Company of Adventurers, p. 87. See also “Royal Charter of the Hudson’s Bay Company,” Hudson’s Bay Company History Foundation, hbcheritage.ca/.
“a fist in the wilderness”: Tracy Sherlock, “The Elusive Mr. Pond: A Geopolitical Visionary,” interview with author Barry Gough, Vancouver Sun, November 7, 2014.
Some particularly arduous: Morse, Fur Trade Canoe Routes of Canada, p. 3.
still cost forty beaver skins: Heming, The Drama of the Forests, pp. 19–20. (Today, a dressed beaver pelt starts at around 125 Canadian dollars.)
“A state in the guise”: William Dalrymple, “Before the East India Company,” Lapham’s Quarterly, September 27, 2019; see also newleftreview.org/. The Hudson’s Bay Company, though now under new ownership and much changed, is still in business, making it the oldest continuously operating company in the English-speaking world.
“Since [1840], the dividends”: M’Lean, Notes of a Twenty-Five Years’ Service in the Hudson’s Bay Territory, vol. 2, p. 262, via Murphy, History of Forest and Prairie Fire Control Policy in Alberta, p. 44.
Employees in Alberta’s: Chris Fournier et al., “Canadians Are Feeling the Debt Burn,” Bloomberg, March 26, 2019; see also Chris Fournier et al., “Rising Insolvency Readings Raise Red Flags in Canada. Sort of,” Bloomberg, November 18, 2019.
In 2019, Canadian household debt: Fournier et al., “Canadians Are Feeling the Debt Burn.”
One of those intrepids: “Oil Sands: Sidney Ells,” Alberta Culture and Tourism, history.alberta.ca/.
“a dozen primitive log cabins”: Ells, Reflections of the Development of the Athabasca Oil Sands, p. 15.
“Scow tracking south”: Ibid., p. 12.
first productive New World oil wells: Dug by a carriage maker named James Miller Williams, near Oil Springs village in Lambton County.
“It penetrates, purifies, soothes, and heals”: Gale, Rock Oil, pp. 42ff.
he and his pioneering refinery: Mitch Waxman, “North American Kerosene Gas Light Company,” Brownstoner, July 14, 2014.
“A Parisian, by the name of Lenoir”: Scientific American, January 28, 1860, p. 1 (via Gale, p. 46).
There, in the summer of 1897: Thomas Court, “A Search for Oil,” Alberta Historical Review 21, no. 2 (1973).
enough to heat every house and building: Based on two hundred cubic feet per household, per day.
it burned, intermittently, for twenty-one years: A dramatic example of a gas well on fire can be seen in video footage presented at a Calgary meeting of the Petroleum History Society, on November 27, 2013. The film, entitled “Killing the King Christian D-18 well, Arctic Islands, 1970-71,” can be found on Vimeo.com.
2019 International Monetary Fund report: David Coady et al., “Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Remain Large: An Update Based on Country-Level Estimates,” International Monetary Fund working paper, May 2, 2019, p. 35, imf.org/.
Canadian taxpayers contributed: Erin Gray et al., “Canada’s Fossil Fuel Subsidies Amount to $1,650 per Canadian. It’s Got to Stop,” Narwhal, October 3, 2019.
“Calgary never saw”: Henry, History and Romance of the Petroleum Industry, p. ix.
In that single day: Winnipeg Free Press, May 16, 1914, p. 1; see also David Bly, “May 14, 1914—Dingman Discovery No. 1 Blows in Turner Valley,” Calgary Herald, May 15, 2012.
Pew called the quarter-billion-dollar: “The Oil Sands Story (1960s, 1970s, & 1980s),” suncor.com/.
While Sunoco put up: Tracy Johnson, “The Oilsands at 50: Will They Still Be Producing in 100 Years?,” CBC News, September 29, 2017.
“His conversations”: Bob McClements, Petroleum History Society, Petroleum Industry Oral History Projects, p. 5, petroleumhistory.ca/.
Still engaged in the Lord’s Work: GCOS Annual Report, 1967, p. 4.
Many men shared this dream: “Oil Sands: Setting the Stage—Ernest Manning,” Alberta Culture and Tourism, Alberta’s Energy Resources Heritage, history.alberta.ca/.
“This is a historic day”: “The Great Canadian Oil Sands Project in 1967—Suncor Energy,” YouTube, posted on June 16, 2010.
“We’re gathered here”: Johnson, “The Oilsands at 50.”
“a red-letter day”: “The Oilsands: A Political Timeline,” Edmonton Journal, December 18, 2013; January 7, 2014.
“Prepare ye the way of the Lord”: Isaiah 40:3–5, King James Version.
When it came on line: Peter Mackenzie-Brown, “Bitumen: The People, Performance and Passions Behind Alberta’s Oil Sands,” October 2, 2019, languageinstinct.blogspot.com/.
“the scar on the side”: Nate Harskamp interview, January 20, 2017.
The last time bitumen: M. G. Lay, Ways of the World (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992), p. 50.
Despite the twin chasms: “Babylonia,” Plumbing & Mechanical Magazine (July 1989).
Gates of Ishtar: Forbes, Bitumen and Petroleum in Antiquity, p. 51.
“I…laid its foundation”: Koldeway, Excavations at Babylon, p. 12.
identified eighty first languages: “Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada—Knowledge of Official Languages, Language Spoken Most Often at Home and at Work,” City-Data.com.
Canada’s fourth straight year: See eia.gov/.
When the price of oil drops: The Investopedia Team (Charles Potters, Timothy Li), “How & Why Oil Impacts the Canadian Dollar,” updated March 5, 2022, investopedia.com/.
Harper was in London: Met Office, “Past Weather Events,” July 2006, metoffice.gov.uk/.
“Canada’s emergence”: Paul Wells and Tamsin McMahon, “How Ottawa Runs on Oil,” Maclean’s, March 23, 2012.
“This is not a normal world”: Louis Rondeau interview, February 5, 2017.
“We’ve kind of focused”: Lucas Welsh interview, January 23, 2017. (All subsequent quotations derive from this interview.)
Between January 2021: Amanda Stephenson, “Suncor’s Safety Record in the Spotlight as Activist Investor Calls for Change,” Canadian Press, May 2, 2022; and Gabriela Panza-Beltrandi, “Contractor, 26, Killed at Suncor Mine near Fort McMurray,” CBC News, July 7, 2022. Since 2014, there have been at least twelve deaths at Suncor sites, more than all of its oil sands rivals combined.
COVID-19: Wallis Snowden, “Oilsands Workers Inside Alberta’s Largest COVID-19 Outbreak Fear for Their Safety,” CBC News, May 12, 2021.
alcoholism and suicide: Alberta Health, “Community Profiles: Health Data and Summary,” version 2, March 2015.
In 2018, a Fort McMurray: Liam Nixon, “Record Narcotics Bust at Southern Alberta Border Crossing,” Global News, March 22, 2018.
people like Jake McManus: Not his real name.
When Global News reported: Emily Mertz, “1 Employee Injured in Explosion and Fire at Syncrude Upgrader North of Fort Mcmurray,” Global News, March 14, 2017.
“The front end”: Stephen Wright, personal communication, March 1, 2018.
“Most of them are head-ons”: Name withheld.
“light pillars”: “Icy Temperatures Bring ‘Alien’ Light Pillars to Alberta Night Sky,” CBC News, February 12, 2019.
“…from the arched roof”: John Milton, Paradise Lost, l. 726–30.
“Our intent entered the world”: Wendell Berry, Horses (Monterey, KY: Larkspur Press, 1975).
“reaction zone”: Kit Chapman, “The Complexity of Fire,” Chemistry World, July 20, 2020.
Volcanic eruptions start fires: M. Onifade and B. Genc, “Spontaneous Combustion of Coals and Coal-Shales,” International Journal of Mining Science and Technology 28, no. 6 (November 2018): 933–40.
a South African cave: Kenneth Miller, “Archaeologists Find Earliest Evidence of Humans Cooking with Fire,” Discover, December 16, 2013.
At the most basic level: Michelle Nijhuis, “Three Billion People Cook Over Open Fires—with Deadly Consequences,” National Geographic, August 14, 2017.
Already, we are into: Fred Pearce, “Collateral Damage: The Environmental Cost of the Ukraine War,” Yale Environment 360, August 29, 2022.
quarter billion trucks, buses, and vans: “Car Production,” Worldometer, worldometers.info/.
200 million motorcycles: “Motorcycling,” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycling.
25,000 passenger and cargo jets: Hugh Morris, “How Many Planes Are There in the World Right Now?” Telegraph, August 2017.
more than 50,000 cargo ships: “Shipping Facts,” International Chamber of Shipping, ies-shipping.org/.
Whether it is a teaspoon: Less than 10 percent of global petroleum production is used as feedstock for plastics, fertilizers, lubricants, and so on. See “Oil and Petroleum Products Explained,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, eia.gov/energyexplained/.
one hundred tons of marine biomass: Smil, Oil, p. 66.
According to another energy historian: Maxine Joselow, “Daniel Yergin on Peak Oil, Pandemic, Rom-Coms,” GreenWire, E&E News, October 30, 2020, politicopro.com/.
100 million barrels: Amanda Cooper and Christopher Johnson, “Now Near 100 Million bpd, When Will Oil Demand Peak?,” Reuters, September 20, 2018. A standard barrel holds 42 gallons, or 159 liters.
another 40 million barrels: “Transport Volume of Crude Oil in Global Seaborne Trade from 2010 to 2020,” Statista, statista.com/.
More than a third of global shipping: “Oil Tankers in Canadian Waters,” Clear Seas, clearseas.org/.
Long after other components: Natalie Wolchover, “How Does Oil Form?,” LiveScience, March 2, 2011.
4 billion years ago: Nicola K. S. Davis, “World’s Oldest Fossils Found in Canada, Say Scientists,” Guardian, March 1, 2017.
Abundant and mercurial: David Biello, “The Origin of Oxygen in Earth’s Atmosphere,” Scientific American, August 19, 2009.
Without it, Earth: Nick Lane, “The Rollercoaster Ride to an Oxygen-Rich World,” New Scientist 205, no. 2746 (February 2010).
Then, like a smothered fire: “US Woman Dies in Iron Lung After Power Failure,” NBC News, May 28, 2008.
“I balanced between destiny and dread”: Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996), p. 55.
By 10:00 a.m. on Monday the 2nd: “A Review of the 2016 Horse River Wildfire,” prepared for the Forestry Division, Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, by MNP (Myers Norris Penny), June 2017, pp. 5, 61. (Hereafter “MNP Report.”)
At 5:30 p.m. on the 2nd: “Media Briefing: Wood Buffalo Forest Fire Update—May 2, 5:30 p.m.,” YouTube, posted on May 2, 2016.
During her tenure: Frits Pannekoek and Erin James-Abra, “Fort McMurray,” Canadian Encyclopedia, updated March 11, 2019.
Some of the Cats: Chris Hubscher interview, February 6, 2017.
“A lot of ash has fallen”: Cordy Tymstra interview, November 1, 2016.
In the ensuing days: “Final Report from the Flat Top Complex Wildfire Review Committee,” p. v, May 2012, open.alberta.ca/.
“Metal melted, concrete spalled”: Jamie Coutts via email, February 20, 2017.
“It actually incinerated”: Ronnie Lukan interview (with Jamie and Ryan Coutts), February 4, 2017.
“We’re all sitting in Slave Lake”: Ryan Coutts interview, July 27, 2017. (All quotations derive from this interview unless otherwise indicated.)
among the highest-paid firefighters: Brad Grainger interview, May 4, 2017.
Of those 185 firefighters: Ibid.
“We want them to know”: Jamie Coutts interview, July 31, 2017. (All quotations derive from this interview unless otherwise indicated.)
Later that evening: MNP Report, Exhibit A-8, p. 63.
“Fire synthesizes its surroundings”: Stephen J. Pyne, “Pyromancy: Reading Stories in the Flames,” Conservation Biology 18, no. 4 (2004): 875.
“Here we are on another day”: “Media Briefing: Wood Buffalo Forest Fire Update, May 3, 11 a.m.,” YouTube, posted on May 3, 2016.
This wasn’t just a little bit: “Average Maximum Temperature—Station ‘A’: 14.8°C,” Past Weather and Climate, Government of Canada. See also “Almanac Averages and Extremes for Fort McMurray, May 3, 2016” and “Normals for Ft Mac, Station ‘A’:13.5°C/56°F,” climate.weather.gc.ca/.
Fifteen percent humidity: “Almanac: Historical Information: Death Valley, CA,” myforecast.co/.
Even on its first day: Paul Spring interview, November 7, 2016.
Schmitte had seen: David Staples, “Firestorm: How a Wisp of Smoke Grew into a Raging Inferno,” Edmonton Journal, April 30, 2017.
Depending on who’s telling: Dale Thomas and Dean Macdonald, personal communication, Kelowna Fire Conference, October 24, 2016.
topping out at forty-five thousand feet: “Final Documentation Report Chisholm Fire (LWF-063),” Sustainable Resource Development, updated 2001, open.alberta.ca/.
By the time it intensifies: Peter Attiwill, “Anatomy of a Bushfire,” ABC News (Australia), 2009.
at its height: “Final Documentation Report Chisholm Fire (LWF-063),” p. 48.
“I told the guys”: Troy O’Connor, personal communication, Kelowna Fire Conference, October 24, 2016.
“I have to be careful”: Dale Thomas interview, Kelowna Fire Conference, October 24, 2016.
“The fire behaviour”: “Final Documentation Report Chisholm Fire (LWF-063).”
At its peak intensity: Jim Sergent et al., “3 Startling Facts About California’s Camp Fire,” USA Today, updated November 21, 2018: “The [Camp Fire] grew rapidly near midday Nov. 8, consuming 10,000 acres in about 90 minutes…It charred more than 70,000 acres in a day’s time.”
a funnel cloud was observed: Michael D. Fromm and René Servranckx, “Transport of Forest Fire Smoke Above the Tropopause by Supercell Convection,” Geophysical Research Letters, May 31, 2003.
The energy released: Daniel Rosenfeld et al., “The Chisholm Firestorm: Observed Microstructure, Precipitation and Lightning Activity of a Pyro-Cumulonimbus,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (February 2007).
“Chisholm was the forerunner”: Dennis Quintilio, personal communication, June 2016.
“It was almost as if”: John Knox interview, May 13, 2018. (All subsequent quotations derive from this interview.)
“I don’t think it was”: Chris Vandenbreekel interview, May 19, 2018. (All subsequent quotations derive from this interview.)
The last time a city: “Area of Fire—Wholesale District—Toronto, Canada,” map, toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/8f34-goads_with_image_numbers.jpg.
Meanwhile, the temperature was rising: (12:30-1:00 PM—“A” Station). [“CS” station calls this change between 11 and noon/32.3 C. at 3 PM]. See also “Fort McMurray ‘CS’ Station, Hourly Data Report for May 03, 2016,” Past Weather and Climate, Government of Canada.
“North,” in Alberta’s case: “Northern Arctic Ecozone,” Ecological Framework of Canada, ecozones.ca/, arctic.uoguelph.ca/.
“The greatest shortcoming”: Albert Allen Bartlett, “Arithmetic, Population and Energy: Sustainability 101,” lecture given at the University of Colorado at Boulder, February 26, 2005.
“We saw stories”: Reid Fiest interview, May 24, 2018. (All subsequent quotations derive from this interview.)
In 1995, the Mariana Lake Fire: Alberta Soils Science Workshop, Alberta Soils Tour Guide Book, 2017, p. 26.
more than half a billion dollars: “Firefighters Concentrate on Richardson Fire,” Fort McMurray Today, June 10, 2011.
“Fire-spawned stands”: David Pitt-Brooke, Crossing Home Ground (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2017), p. 62.
itself a record-breaking year: MNP Report, p. 12.
So dry was the forest: Association of Alberta Forest Management Professionals, aafmp.ca/.
Over the past twenty years: MNP Report, p. 11.
“It’s been a tough slog”: Fort McMurray Matters, Mix 103.7, May 3, 2016.
“Maybe it’ll get”: Chris Vandenbreekel interview, May 19, 2018. (All subsequent quotations derive from this interview.)
those in the business of wildfire: For an example, see “Fort McMurray Wildfire Remains Out of Control After City Evacuated,” CBC News, May 3, 2016.
“There is no way a man”: Lynne Stefanizyn interview, January 22, 2017.
“When you listen to wireless”: Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1957), p. 301.
“The problem with exponential growth”: Aubrey Clayton, “To Beat COVID-19, Think Like a Fighter Pilot,” Nautilus, March 18, 2020.
“Macbeth shall never vanquished be”: William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act IV, Scene 1, 105–7; Folger Library edition. https://shakespeare.folger.edu
It is one thing: 82°F, on May 3, 1945.
“The most important failure”: “The 9/11 Commission Report, Executive Summary, General Findings,” p. 9, govinfo.gov/.
While Bernie Schmitte: MNP Report, p. 41.
“We’re streaming the press conference”: Jamie Coutts interview (with Ryan Coutts and Ronnie Lukan), February 4, 2017.
Hall 5 is a brand-new: Marshall-Lee Construction, Completed Projects, Fire Hall #5, marshall-lee.ca/.
“It’s just a hell of a lot”: Evan Crofford interview, November 7, 2016. (All subsequent quotations derive from this interview.)
“We were looking down”: Mark Stephenson interview, February 7, 2017. (All subsequent quotations derive from this interview.)
By 1:00 p.m.: MNP Report, chronology chart, p. 65.
prices tumbling to $16: Oil price charts, January 21, 2016, oilprice.com/.
new projects were being shelved: Yadullah Hussain, “How High Break-Even Costs Are Challenging New Oilsands Projects,” Financial Post, January 22, 2015. See also Peter Tertzakian, “This Crude War Is About a Lot More Than Oil Prices and Market Share,” Calgary Herald, March 9, 2020.
Syncrude, one of the smaller: Elise Stolte, “Syncrude Bison Left Behind as Fort McMurray Fires Force Further Oilsands Shutdown,” Edmonton Journal, May 7, 2016.
“All of a sudden”: Evan Crofford interview.
“When I got in the shower”: “A Look Back at How the Fort McMurray Fire Unfolded,” Canadian Press, April 27, 2017.
“The teachers asked us”: Ryan Pitchers interview, January 29, 2017. (All subsequent quotations derive from this interview.)
“Had we but world enough”: Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress,” Poetry Foundation.
With the low-level jet: Scott Gilmore, “The Horror of Forest Fires Is Roaring Back,” MacLean’s, May 5, 2016.
“Which kid you going to pick?”: Ali Jomha interview, February 10, 2017. (All subsequent quotations derive from this interview.)
The dominant forest type: D. J. Downing and W. W. Pettapiece, eds., “Natural Regions and Subregions of Alberta,” Natural Regions Committee, 2006, p. 149.
Radiant heat: Martin E. Alexander, “The Power of Crown Fires in Conifer Forests,” a presentation prepared for the Canadian Forest Service, Northern Forestry Centre, April 10, 2009; revised February 17, 2020, p. 1.
By the time the fire: David Staples, “Alberta Battles ‘The Beast,’ a Fire That Creates Its Own Weather and Causes Green Trees to Explode,” Edmonton Journal, May 7, 2016.
“Dad drug us up here”: Paul Ayearst interview, May 1, 2017. (All subsequent quotations derive from this interview.)
It wasn’t until 2:05: Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (RMWB) Twitter feed.
“The sky was red”: Emma Elliott interview, January 22, 2017.
“I have to save my wife and children”: Dave Dubuc interview, January 25, 2017.
“If you’re driving in the car”: Ali Jomha interview.
“All halls! All halls!”: Asher, Inside the Inferno, p. 55.
“She was at the door”: Troy Palmer interview, April 30, 2017. (All subsequent quotations derive from this interview.)
“literally like lava”: Jude Groves interview, April 24, 2017.
By then, the four-story Super 8: Struzik, Firestorm, p. 43.
more like lacrosse: Stewart Culin, Games of the North American Indians (New York: Dover, 1975), pp. 562ff. See also Joseph Boyden, The Orenda (Toronto: Hamish Hamilton, 2013), pp. 175ff.
Today, more than a third: Elizabeth Shogren, “What Fire Researchers Learned from California’s Blazes,” High Country News, December 11, 2017.
“Watching houses”: Stephen J. Pyne, “Welcome to the Pyrocene,” Slate, May 16, 2016.
“We could feel it”: Hawley et al., Into the Fire, p. 9.
Fire trucks, invisible in the smoke: Ibid., p. 7.
“We don’t have a forest fire problem”: Bill Gabbert, “The Home Ignition Problem,” Wildfire Today, July 11, 2019.
Underwriters Laboratories conducted: “How Closing Your Bedroom Door Could Save Your Life in a Fire,” CTV Vancouver, October 24, 2017. See also “New vs. Old Room Fire Final UL,” YouTube, posted on December 17, 2010.
“the explosions were constant”: John Topolinsky interview, November 5, 2016.
“only without the incoming”: Pat Duggan interview, February 8, 2017. (All subsequent quotations derive from this interview.)
More alarming still: April 28, “Daily Data Report for April 2016,” Fort McMurray A, Alberta, Past Weather and Climate, Government of Canada, climate.weather.gc.ca/.
In some cases, over-the-radio orders: Lucas Welsh interview.
“I do my best to do my damnedest”: Tim Hus (with Corb Lund), “Hurtin’ Albertan,” Huskies and Husqvarnas, album, 2006.
“There’s four boys”: Wayne McGrath interview, May 4, 2017. (All subsequent quotations derive from this interview.)
“So, folks, here’s the video”: “Labrador Man Wayne McGrath Captured a Frightening Scene as Homes Burned Around Him in Fort McMurray,” CBC Newfoundland and Labrador, May 4, 2016.
The fury of the fire: This YouTube video of an acetylene tank fire in Texas gives an indication of the hazards firefighters faced throughout Fort McMurray: “Oxyacetilene Canister Plant in Texas Blowing Up,” YouTube, see at 1:00. Posted May 20, 2010.
Taken from a security camera: “Fort McMurray Man Watches His Home Burn on Security Cam,” CBC News, May 6, 2016.
“You’re on your own”: David Staples, “Firestorm Part Three: ‘You’re Out of Time,’ ” Edmonton Sun, May 3, 2017.
Running to each one: Paul Curtis interview, Fort McMurray Waterworks, June 14, 2019.
They could even drain: Ibid.
A lieutenant named Damian Asher: Asher, Inside the Inferno, p. 99.
“We look at the present”: Marshall McLuhan, The Medium Is the Message (New York: Random House, 1967).
“So there was hail”: Exodus 9:24 (King James Version).
There was none like it: On September 22, 2005, at least 2.5 million evacuated coastal Texas and Louisiana due to the approach of Hurricane Rita. The evacuation of Manhattan on September 11, 2001, included the largest sea evacuation in recorded history, with more than 500,000 being evacuated in nine hours by hundreds of boats. On October 8–9, 1871, about 100,000 people lost their homes during the Great Chicago Fire. Presumably, all of those people would have evacuated, along with others whose homes were at risk, but that fire burned for approximately thirty-six hours, with residents fleeing ahead of it as it moved north and east.
A photo taken: Via Jude Groves.
In the Northern Hemisphere: Robinson Meyer, “The Simple Reason That Humans Can’t Control Wildfires,” Atlantic, November 13, 2018.
Because of their size: Ed Struzik, “Fire-Induced Storms: A New Danger from the Rise in Wildfires,” Yale Environment 360, January 24, 2019.
wildfire-generated pyroCbs: Michael Fromm et al., “The Untold Story of Pyrocumulonimbus,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, September 2010, pp. 1193-1209.
The plume it generated: Mike Fromm, personal communication, March 4, 2020.
While ember-generated fires: Andrew Dowdy et al., “Pyrocumulonimbus Lightning and Fire Ignition on Black Saturday in Southeast Australia,” Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 122, no. 14 (July 27, 2017): 7342–735.
“All I can hear right now”: Vince McDermott, @Vincemcdermott, Twitter, May 3, 2016, 2:15 p.m.
Jill Edwards, the business manager: Jill Edwards interview, February 6, 2017.
Radiant heat from the fire: Sarah Boon, “Northern Alberta Wildfires,” Science Borealis, May 4, 2016.
This was true: Name withheld.
In 2012, he was hired: David Staples, “Firestorm Part Three: ‘You’re Out of Time,’ ” Edmonton Sun, May 3, 2017.
“At times,” Staples wrote: Ibid.
“We were starting”: Episode transcript, CBC Radio: The Current, July 27, 2016.
“Rather than learning”: MNP Report, p. 41.
The RCMP found out: Struzik, Firestorm, p. 42.
“Yes, and so any river is huge”: Translation by Michael Griffin from the unrevised 1924 Loeb edition by W. H. D. Rouse, VI.674–77.
“The fool believes”: Nassim Taleb, Antifragile (New York: Random House, 2012), p. 46.
“I didn’t quite believe it yet”: Reid Fiest interview.
“I thought, ‘What the hell is going on here?’ ”: Evan Crofford interview.
Given the speed and mobility: David Staples, Edmonton Journal.
“This gives the most people”: Marion Warnica, “Battling the Beast: The Untold Story of the Fight to Save Fort McMurray,” CBC News, July 27, 2016.
“I looked down at Waterways”: John Knox interview.
While fires burned: “Apocolypse & Ash—Couple Narrowly Escape Fort McMurray Wildfire,” YouTube, posted on May 10, 2016, see at 4:40.
By 7:00 p.m.: Julia Parrish, “ ‘Sad Day’: Tens of Thousands Evacuated from Fort McMurray Due to Wildfire,” CTV Edmonton, updated May 4, 2016.
“When thou walkest through the fire”: Isaiah 4:2 (King James Version).
“Basically, the fire behavior”: “RMWB Wildfire Press Briefing, May 3, 2016, 10:00 p.m.” (audio only), YouTube, posted on May 4, 2016.
“All I thought”: Tina LeDrew Sager quoted in Eleanor Hall, “Canadian Wildfire: Weather Change Respite to Exhausted Fire Crews,” World Today, ABC News, May 9, 2016.
The closest rain: See timeanddate.com/.
Taking their places: “Final Update 39: 2016 Wood Buffalo Wildfires (June 10 at 4:30 p.m.),” May 8, 2016, alberta.ca/.
Among more plausible belongings: Caitlin Hanson, “Fort McMurray Fire: What People Brought with Them,” CBC News, May 6, 2016.
“The people’s demeanor”: Henry Lansdell, Through Siberia, vol. I (1879), p. 267.
“During the confusion”: New York Times, June 16, 1886, p. 1.
“It is a possibility”: Jana G. Pruden, “A Week in Hell: How Fort McMurray Burned,” Globe and Mail, May 6, 2016.
“This is a nasty, dirty fire”: “Regional Fire Chief Calls Fort McMurray Wildfire ‘Nasty’ and ‘Dirty,’ ” Global News, May 4, 2016.
“I really believed”: Marion Warnica, “Battling the Beast: The Untold Story of the Fight to Save Fort McMurray,” CBC News, July 27, 2016.
“This fire,” Allen said: “Regional Fire Chief Calls Fort McMurray Wildfire ‘Nasty’ and ‘Dirty,’ ” YouTube, posted on May 4, 2016.
The Great Chicago Fire: “The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory: Inside the Burning City,” greatchicagofire.org/.
A combination of drought conditions: Japan has endured more urban fires than any other country. In addition to many other disastrous fires over the past three centuries, a series of firestorms following the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923 killed well over 100,000 people in Tokyo and surrounding areas. In 1945, American firebombing raids targeted sixty-seven Japanese cities to devastating effect. These lethal raids on predominantly wooden cities preceded the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which ignited additional firestorms. General Curtis LeMay, who oversaw the Japanese bombing campaign, said later that, had the U.S. lost the war, he would have been prosecuted as a war criminal. See “Firebombing Japan,” The Pop History Dig, pophistorydig.com/.
Twenty years ago: “It’s Going to Be a Long, Hot Summer in Toronto, Environment Canada Says,” CBC News, July 8, 2020. See also “Hourly Data Report for July 2000,” Past Weather and Climate, Government of Canada, climate.weather.gc.ca/.
in 2020, it counted fourteen: “July 2020 Weather in Toronto,” graph, www.timeanddate.com/.
During the same month: “Excessive Heat Warning Continues Throughout Arizona; Valley Ties High Temperature Record for August 3,” Fox 10 Phoenix, August 4, 2020.
the new location: Janet French, “Fort McMurray Wildfire: A Small Fire Turns into the Beast,” Edmonton Journal, May 13, 2016.
Miles overhead: MNP Report, p. 69.
Even with the addition: “Fort McMurray Wildfire Update #3—May 4, 2016 at 3:15 pm,” YouTube, posted on May 4, 2016.
“When we actually come through”: Paul Spring interview, November 7, 2016.
Thirty-six hours in: “Fort McMurray Fire—Hwy 63 Prairie Creek. Taken 1:46 am May 5, 2016,” YouTube, posted on May 7, 2016.
it never gets tired: See night burning in Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire, Las Vegas, New Mexico, in May 2022 (biggest in the state’s history), “Wildfires in New Mexico Continue to Grow,” NPR, May 10, 2022.
If you see me running: Via Evan Crofford, November 7, 2016.
“the LORD rained upon Sodom”: Genesis 19:24–25 (King James Version).
Working in conjunction: Douglas Fox, “Inside the Firestorm,” High Country News, April 3, 2017.
“Fire severity in German structures”: Standard Oil Development Company, “Design and Construction of Typical German and Japanese Test Structures at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah,” Standard Oil Development Project 30601, declassified government document, p. 6.
“The bombs,” wrote one survivor: Miller, p. 126.
High above the city: Ibid., p. 39.
According to an official: Ibid., p. 143.
Twenty thousand civilians: Greig Watson, “Operation Gomorrah: Firestorm Created ‘Germany’s Nagasaki,’ ” BBC News, August 2, 2018.
Sixteen thousand apartment buildings: “Royal Air Force Bomber Command 60th Anniversary,” Campaign Diary: 27/28 July 1943,” National Archives, nationalarchives.gov.uk/.
In time, the bombing: “Battle of Hamburg,” National Archives, nationalarchives.gov.uk/.
The firestorm engineers: Standard Oil Development Company, “Design and Construction of Typical German and Japanese Test Structures at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah,” p. 9.
“If we leave that F-150”: Ronnie Lukan interview (with Jamie and Ryan Coutts), February 4, 2017.
“Tearing into somebody’s house”: Jim Rankin interview (with Chris Hubscher), February 6, 2017. (All subsequent quotations from Rankin and Hubscher derive from this interview.)
“Every mountain and hill shall be made low”: Isaiah 40:4 (King James Version).
“to crush and drown”: Troy Palmer interview.
“It was on fire”: Hawley et al., Into the Fire, p. 51.
At that moment in Prairie Creek: “Fort McMurray Fire—Hwy 63 Prairie Creek, Taken 1:46 AM May 5, 2016,” YouTube, posted on May 7, 2016.
“They aren’t just gonna”: Hawley et al., p. 51.
“the glutton element”: Seamus Heaney, trans., Beowulf (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), l. 1124.
“The beast is still up”: Video message posted online, May 5, 10:00 p.m., Bill Chappell, “ ‘The Beast Is Still Up’: Alberta Wildfires Rage; Evacuees Told to Wait It Out,” NPR, May 6, 2016.
“The dark figure streaming with fire”: J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (New York: Ballantine, 1970), pp. 428–29.
“I gave them fire”: Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, trans. Joe Agee (New York: NYRB Classics), pp. 20, 31.
“Dissonance”: William Carlos Williams, Paterson (New York: Penguin, 1983), p. 176.
The first time the word “atmosphere”: Oxford English Dictionary.
That there were elements: John W. Severinghaus, “Fire-air and Dephlogistication: Revisionisms of Oxygen’s Discovery,” Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology (2003).
“Once any quantity of air”: Ibid., p. 181.
“It is evident, however”: Ibid.
“He had very little knowledge”: Johnson, The Invention of Air, p. 73.
Priestley continued: Ibid., pp. 166ff.
“This observation”: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 62 (1772).
“exciting the attentions”: Johnson, pp. 60ff.
“the vegetable creation”: “From Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Priestley, [July 1772]: Extract,” Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov (via Johnson).
Once in the atmosphere: Alan Buis, “The Atmosphere: Getting a Handle on Carbon Dioxide,” NASA—Global Climate Change, October 9, 2019, climate.nasa.gov/.
Meanwhile, methane: Per EPA, epa.gov/.
A by-product of fracking: Phil McKenna, “To Counter Global Warming, Focus Far More on Methane, a New Study Recommends,” Inside Climate News, February 9, 2022. See also Akshat Rathi, “The Case Against Methane Emissions Keeps Getting Stronger,” Bloomberg, February 15, 2022; and “Methane Emissions from the Energy Sector Are 70% Higher Than Official Figures,” International Energy Agency report, February 23, 2022: “The methane leaked in 2021 could have provided 180 billion cu. m. for the market (~all the gas used in Europe’s power sector).”
“It is difficult to know”: Timothy Casey, “Text of E. Burgess’ 1837 Translation of Fourier (1824),” burgess1837.geologist-1011.mobi/, p. 11.
On a sunny July day: Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, “The Cause of the Cold That Reigns on the Mountains,” Travels in the Alps, trans. Alastair B. McDonald, vol. 2, chap. 35. June, 2017, unpublished.
“The more dense the air”: Ibid., pp. 16–17 (quote edited by author).
“a great mathematical poem”: James R. Fleming, Joseph Fourier’s Theory of Terrestrial Temperature (Oxford, 1998).
“Some say the world will end in fire”: Robert Frost, New Hampshire (New York: Henry Holt, 1923).
“An atmosphere of that gas”: Eunice Foote, “Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays,” American Journal of Science and Arts, ser. 2, vol. 22, art. 31 (November 1856): 383.
It was on that late summer day: The male colleague was Joseph Henry, a pioneer in electromagnetism and the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
“The receiver containing the gas”: Foote, p. 382.
Étienne Lenoir built: Tabea Tietz, “Étienne Lenoir and the Internal Combustion Engine,” SciHi Blog, January 24, 2021.
“When the heat is absorbed”: John Tyndall, “On the Transmission of Heat of Different Qualities Through Gases of Different Kinds,” Notices of the Proceedings at the Meetings of the Members of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, vol. 3 (London, 1862), p. 158. See also Roland Jackson, “Who Discovered the Greenhouse Effect?,” rigb.org/explore-science/explore/blog/who-discovered-greenhouse-effect.
As similar as Tyndall’s findings: There is a case to be made for questioning Tyndall’s priority. In 1856, Eunice Foote’s paper was published in the same issue of The American Journal of Science and Arts in which an article by Tyndall (on an unrelated subject) also appeared. Over the next year, Foote’s experiment was written up in Scientific American, the New-York Daily Tribune, and several European journals, including the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal and German Advances of Physics in Year 1856, an annual compendium of significant discoveries. Though based in England, Tyndall had trained in Germany, was fluent in German, and maintained close ties with that country’s scientific community. Given this and his keen interest in the subject, combined with the timing of his own discoveries and his noted eagerness to claim priority for them, it is reasonable to question how and why he had no awareness of Foote’s revelatory work.
It would take another forty years: Svante Arrhenius, “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground,” London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science (April 1896): 237–76. (In 1895, Arrhenius presented a paper to the Stockholm Physical Society.) Arvid Högbom quotes (from 1894) below begin on p. 269; impact of coal on climate, p. 270.
After making tens of thousands: Julia Uppenbrink, “Arrhenius and Global Warming,” Science 272 (May 24, 1996): 1122.
Arrhenius determined: Arrhenius, “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid,” “Table VII: Variation of Temperature Caused by a Given Variation of Carbonic Acid,” p. 266.
“very lively discussions”: Ibid., p. 267.
the impacts of carbon dioxide: Henning Rodhe et al., “Svante Arrhenius and the Greenhouse Effect,” Ambio 26, no. 1 (February 1997).
“This quantity of [CO2]”: Arvid G. Högbom, “On the Probability of Global Changes in the Level of Atmospheric CO2,” Svensk kemisk Tidskrift (1894), quoted in Arrhenius, “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid,” p. 270ff, p. 269. (Translation by Patrick Lockerby.)
At the turn of the nineteenth century: Smil, Oil, p. 161.
“The atmosphere may act”: Nils Ekholm, “On the Variations of the Climate of the Geological and Historical Past and Their Causes,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society (January 1901): 19.
“[Lowell] takes into account”: London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, ser. 6, vol. 14, no. 84 (1907): 749.
After describing the “hot-house”: Arrhenius, Worlds in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe (New York, 1908), p. 51.
“The enormous combustion of coal”: Ibid., p. 61.
To most people: Ibid., p. 63.
In the time since Arrhenius’s: Industrial fossil fuel emissions increased from 1.5 billion tons in 1895 to 36 billion tons in 2018. See Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, “Annual Total CO2 Emissions,” ourworldindata.org/.
He had doubts: Frank Wicks, “The Engineer Who Discovered Global Warming,” American Society of Mechanical Engineers, April 29, 2020.
“Few of those familiar”: G. S. Callendar, “The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and Its Influence on Climate,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 64 (1938): 223–40.
Callendar made his calculations: Ibid., p. 233.
“The course of world temperatures”: Ibid., p. 236.
Was it 2,000 years ago: Paul Stephenson, “Ancient Roman Pollution,” Lapham’s Quarterly, February 23, 2022.
In his lifetime: James R. Fleming, “What Role Did G. S. Callendar Play in Reviving the CO2 Theory of Global Climate Change?,” Presidential Symposium on the History of the Atmospheric Sciences: People, Discoveries, and Technologies. Hans Seuss and Roger Revelle referred to the “Callendar effect,” defining it as “climatic change brought about by anthropogenic increases in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, primarily through the processes of combustion.”
“Releases of carbon dioxide”: Washington Post, May 5, 1953, p. 5.
“In the hungry fires of industry”: “Science: Invisible Blanket,” Time, May 25, 1953.
In June 1953, Life: Lincoln Barnett, “The World We Live In—Part IV: The Canopy of Air,” Life, June 8, 1953.
“It is not usually appreciated”: Gilbert Plass, “Carbon Dioxide and the Climate,” American Scientist 44, no. 3 (July 1956): 302–16, 305.
“Today man by his own activities”: Ibid., pp. 305–6.
“In the last fifty years”: Ibid., p. 310.
“There can be no doubt”: Ibid., p. 312.
In his article: Smil, Oil, p. 161.
on that balmy March morning: “Arlington, VA, Weather History,” Wunderground, wunderground.com/.
“Human beings during”: “Hearings Before Subcommittees of the Committee on Appropriations on Second Supplemental Appropriation Bill,” House of Representatives, 84th Congress, Second Session, 1956 (426), pp. 467ff.
“Didn’t I read”: Ibid., p. 473.
“Glacier studies”: Ibid., p. 502.
“The reason [for this new warming cycle]”: Ibid., p. 474.
“I think the best way”: “Hearings Before Subcommittees of the Committee on Appropriations,” House of Representatives, 85th Congress, First Session, 1957, pp. 104ff.
The 20 percent increase: Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in 1957 were 315 parts per million. They reached 378 ppm, Revelle’s cautioned 20 percent increase, in 2004.
has increased eightfold: “Indicators of Climate Change in California—Wildfires,” Cal Fire publication, p. 185.
Meanwhile, the drought: Kasha Patel and Lauren Tierney, “These Maps Illustrate the Seriousness of the Western Drought,” Washington Post, June 16, 2022.
As for fire tornadoes: Andy Park and Alex McDonald, “Former ADF Official Says Increasing Climate-Related Weather Events Could Overwhelm Defence Force,” ABC News, April 19, 2012.
Given where things stand: Philip Shabecoff, “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate,” New York Times, June 24, 1988.
“Tomorrow came and went”: Cormac McCarthy, The Road (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), p. 28.
(talk about colonization): Doreen Stabinsky, @doreenstabinsky, “Net zero is the great escape of developed countries. We refuse carbon colonialism, Diego Pacheco (Bolivia) on behalf of the Like Minded Developing Countries at #cop26,” Twitter, November 13, 2021.
The Unchained Goddess: “The Unchained Goddess 1958—Bell Science Hour,” YouTube, posted on August 8, 2015.
“man may be unwittingly changing”: Ibid., at 50:51.
Columbia’s monumental Low Library: Benjamin Franta, “On Its 100th Birthday in 1959, Edward Teller Warned the Oil Industry About Global Warming,” Guardian, January 1, 2018.
“Many petroleum products”: Allen Nevins et al., “Energy and Man: A Symposium,” Trustees of Columbia University, 1960, p. 25.
Teller was a champion: Ibid., pp. 67–68.
“When the temperature does rise”: Ibid., p. 70.
Humble Oil, a subsidiary of Esso/Exxon: February 2, 1962, pp. 88-89.
That same year: Evolution of Canada’s Oil and Gas Industry, Canadian Centre for Energy Information, 2004, p. 37.
“At a single stroke”: Tristin Hopper, “Nuke the Oilsands: Alberta’s Narrowly Cancelled Plan to Drill for Oil with Atomic Weapons,” National Post, August 2, 2016.
strontium 90, a known “bone seeker”: “Alberta Technical Committee Report to the Minister of Mines and Minerals and the Oil and Gas Conservation Board,” Alberta Government Publications, 1959.
Much to the relief: Petroleum History Society Archives 16, no. 4 (June 2005).
This sophisticated instrument: “A Breathing Planet, Off Balance,” NASA, November 12, 2015, nasa.gov/.
A 12 percent increase: D. Luthi et al., “Graphic: The Relentless Rise of Carbon Dioxide,” NASA, Global Climate Change, climate.nasa.gov/.
Today, there are monitoring: “Bloomberg Carbon Clock,” bloomberg.com/.
It was called: Wallace S. Broecker et al., “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment,” President’s Science Advisory Committee Report on Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, 1965, climatefiles.com/.
“Man is unwittingly”: Ibid., pp. 126–27.
“There is evidence”: James R. Garvey, “Air Pollution and the Coal Industry,” Mining Congress Journal (August 1966).
The following year: E. Robinson and R. C. Robbins, “Sources, Abundance, and Fate of Gaseous Atmospheric Pollutants,” Stanford Research Institute, February 1968, smokeandfumes.org/documents/document16.
“when the abundant pollutants”: Ibid., p. 110.
There was wiggle room: Geoff Dembicki, “Has Suncor Seen the Climate Crisis Coming for 61 Years?” Tyee, July 21, 2020.
“Present thinking holds”: J. F. Black, “The Greenhouse Effect,” summary, Exxon Research and Engineering Company, July 1977, p. 2.
“foresee and prevent”: John W. Zillman, “A History of Climate Activities,” World Meteorological Organization, 2009, public.wmo.int/en/.
It was a hopeful beginning: Neela Banerjee, “Exxon’s Oil Industry Peers Knew About Climate Dangers in the 1970s, Too,” Inside Climate News, December 22, 2015.
Exxon was a leader: Neela Banerjee et al., “Exxon Believed Deep Dive into Climate Research Would Protect Its Business,” Inside Climate News, September 17, 2015.
“STUDY FINDS WARMING TREND”: New York Times, August 22, 1981, p. A1.
In 1982, Exxon released graphs: Exxon Research and Engineering Company memo from M. B. Glaser, Manager, Environmental Affairs Program: “CO2 ‘Greenhouse’ Effect,” November 12, 1982; Figure 9, p. 28 (via Inside Climate News).
“Exxon knew”: David Hasemyer, “2015: The Year We Found Out #ExxonKnew,” Inside Climate News, December 30, 2015.
“There is concern”: M. B. Glaser, “CO2 ‘Greenhouse’ Effect,” internal memo, Exxon Research and Engineering Company, November 12, 1982, p. 5, climatefiles.com/.
In October of that year: E. E. David, “Inventing the Future: Energy and the CO2 ‘Greenhouse’ Effect,” speech, Exxon Research and Engineering Company, October 26, 1982, climatefiles.com/.
The bibliography goes on: Banerjee, “Exxon’s Oil Industry Peers Knew.” See also Shannon Hall, “Exxon Knew About Climate Change Almost 40 Years Ago,” Scientific American, October 26, 2015.
“There is no wad of cash”: Douglas Martin, “The Singular Power of a Giant Called Exxon,” New York Times, May 9, 1982.
In October 1983: Walter Sullivan, “Study Finds Warming Trend That Could Raise Sea Levels,” New York Times, August 22, 1981.
“Swiss RE and Munich RE”: Don Smith, via Tom Smith, personal communication, July 8–15, 2021; 1985 joint UNEP/ICSU/World Meteorological Organization Conference in Villach, Austria. At the time, Don had been nominated for deputy secretary-general of the WMO.
This vexing quandary: “Crude Oil Prices—70 Year Historical Chart,” Macrotrends, macrotrends.net/.
“Government is not”: Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981, reaganfoundation.org/.
One Watt: Bill Prochnau, “The Watt Controversy,” Washington Post, June 30, 1981.
For the first time: Philip Shabecoff, “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate,” New York Times, June 24, 1988, A-1.
They called themselves: This was the brainchild of the publicist E. Bruce Harrison. Via Amy Westervelt, Drilled podcast, Season 3, Episode 8: “Meet the Harrisons.”
The GCC’s role: “Global Climate Coalition,” desmog.com/. See also GCC Disinformation campaign: Kurt Davies, Climate Investigation Center, “Once Again the US Has Failed to Take Sweeping Climate Action. Here’s Why,” NPR, October 27, 2021.
Adopting the tobacco industry’s: Amy Westervelt, Drilled podcast, Season 3, Episode 1: “The Mad Men of Climate Denial.”
Lobbyists and receptive politicians: Amy Westervelt, Drilled podcast, Season 1, Episode 4: “Exploiting Scientists’ Kryptonite: Certainty.” See also María Paula Rubiano A., “How Economists Helped Big Oil Obstruct Climate Action for Decades,” Mother Jones, October 11, 2021.
Exxon and the Koch family: Scott Neuman and Jeffrey Pierre, “How Decades of Disinformation About Fossil Fuels Halted U.S. Climate Policy,” NPR, October 27, 2021. See also Jane Mayer, “ ‘Kochland’ Examines the Koch Brothers’ Early, Crucial Role in Climate-Change Denial,” New Yorker, August 13, 2019; Elliott Negin, “Will This Case Finally Bring Down ExxonMobil’s Culture of Climate Deception?,” EcoWatch, November 5, 2018; and Robert J. Brulle et al, “Corporate Promotion and Climate Change: An Analysis of Key Variables Affecting Advertising Spending by Major Oil Corporations, 1986-2015,” Climatic Change, March 2020.
It’s hard work: Matthew C. Nisbet and Teresa Myers, “Twenty Years of Public Opinion About Global Warming,” Public Opinion Quarterly 71, no. 3 (fall 2007): 444–70.
Despite knowing full well: Dawn Stover, “Shaming: I Care About Climate Change, So Why Am I Driving an SUV?,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November 18, 2019.
atmospheric CO2 has increased: NOAA, Global Monitoring Laboratory (May 2021), gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/.
According to a summary analysis: “SUVs Are Worse for the Climate Than You Ever Imagined,” wired.com/.
“The number of trucks and SUVS”: “Average Canadian Vehicle Size Rises 25%. Automakers Double Down on Trucks, SUVs,” theenergymix.com/.
One of the few things: Fuel economy, 2020 Ford F150 Pickup, U.S. Department of Energy, fueleconomy.gov/. Fuel economy, 1988 Ford F150 Pickup, U.S. Department of Energy, fueleconomy.gov/.
Despite the abundance: “Ford F Series—US Sales Figures,” fordauthority.com/.
If they got one thing wrong: Robert Lee Hotz, “World’s Ice Is Melting Faster Than Ever, Climate Scientists Say,” Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2021.
“It will sometimes burst”: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), p. 379.
Prior to that sweltering: John Thistleton, “Researchers Confirm First ‘Fire Tornado’ During 2003 Bushfires,” Sydney Morning Herald, November 19, 2012.
Looking northward: “Mount Arawang Summit,” alltrails.com/.
“Holy shit…Ho-ly mackerel”: Tom Bates, “Fire Tornado Video,” ACT Emergency Services Agency, esa.act.gov.au/cbr-be-emergency-ready/bushfires/fire-tornado-video.
The Canberra fire tornado: Richard H. D. McRae, “An Australian Pyro-tornadogenesis Event,” Natural Hazards, October 12, 2012.
While you can have: Rick McRae and Jason Sharples, “Turn and Burn: The Strange World of Fire Tornadoes,” Conversation, December 17, 2012.
It is fair to say: “7 of the Most Destructive Wildfires in Australian History,” Interesting Engineering, January 24, 2020.
“There are no weather records”: “Flashback: Black Saturday,” ABC News, YouTube, posted on February 6, 2010.
The ambient temperature: “Melbourne—Highest Temperature for Each Year,” Current Results, currentresults.com/.
While none of them: Kennedy Warne, “60 Hours on Burning Kangaroo Island,” National Geographic, January 22, 2020.
So otherworldly: Cameron Stewart, “The Australian ‘Black Saturday’ Bushfires of 2009,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, britannica.com/.
The new, more dire classification: Ibid.
“For your survival”: “Fire Danger Ratings,” New South Wales Rural Fire Service, rfs.nsw.gov.au/.
Flying into Redding: In August 2018, I traveled to Redding on assignment for The Guardian with the photographer Tim Hussin.
Poking through the murk: Ian Livingston et al., “Mount Shasta Is Nearly Snowless, a Rare Event That Is Helping Melt the Mountain’s Glaciers,” Washington Post, September 15, 2021.
“It was unreal”: Name withheld.
“The lawn chair’s in the house”: Willie Hartman interview, August 28, 2018.
There is video: “Aerial Footage of Massive Fire Tornado That Killed California Firefighter,” YouTube, posted by The Oregonian on August 17, 2018.
“A bomb,” he said: Larry Hartman interview, August 28, 2018.
“It made a roaring sound”: Christel Hartman interview, August 28, 2018.
“like it had been through”: Dusty Gyves interview, August 27, 2018. (All subsequent quotations derive from this interview.)
“You could see the plume”: Steve and Carrie Bustillos interview, August 28, 2018. (All subsequent Bustillos quotations derive from this interview.)
This might have been true: Cal Fire, “Carr Incident Green Sheet,” July 26, 2018, p. 2.
“I’m zero for six”: Kate Baker interview, August 29, 2018.
“Sometimes, that channel”: Robinson Meyers, “The Simple Reason That Humans Can’t Control Wildfires,” Atlantic, November 13, 2018.
“peak gas temperatures”: Bill Gabbert, “Report Concludes Fire Tornado with 136+ Mph Winds Contributed to a Fatality on Carr Fire,” Wildfire Today, August 20, 2018.
“Well-constructed houses levelled”: “Enhanced Fujita Scale,” Wikipedia.
“this is a rare”: David W. Goens, “NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS WR-129: Fire Whirls,” National Weather Service Office, Missoula, Montana, May 1978.
“Natural fire never did this”: Dusty Gyves interview.
With the exception: The only local comparable is a gigantic fire whirl, which occurred in thick forest forty miles east of Redding during the 2014 Eiler Fire. While it broke and uprooted mature trees, it was not documented as thoroughly as the Redding event.
Collectively, they caused: Since then, nearly two dozen PG&E executives and board members have been named in a civil action lawsuit brought by eighty thousand fire victims. See PBS Newshour, February 24, 2021, at 7:15.
“The fire season used to run”: Jonathan Cox interview, September 10, 2018.
“It shifted from a firefighting effort”: Cheryl Buliavac interview, August 26, 2018.
“If all three realms are ruined”: Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Everyman’s Library, 2013), Book II, p. 51.
On July 7 alone: Lien Yeung et al., “ ‘We Are in This for the Long Haul’: No Relief in Sight as B.C. Wildfires Rage,” CBC News, July 8, 2017.
“the most significant”: Bethany Lindsay, “B.C. Wildfires Triggered Mega Thunderstorm with Volcano-Like Effects,” CBC News, April 26, 2018.
Even so, more than forty thousand: Michelle Ghoussoub, “Meet the 30-Year-Old Who Steered B.C. Through the Worst Wildfire Season on Record,” CBC News, October 1, 2017.
British Columbia’s historic aerosol injection: Mike Fromm, personal communication, March 2, 2021.
“the mother of all pyroCbs”: Lindsay, “B.C. Wildfires.”
“The Australian bushfires”: Sergei Khaykin et al., “The 2019/20 Australian Wildfires Generated a Persistent Smoke-Charged Vortex Rising Up to 35 Km Altitude,” Communications Earth & Environment 1, no. 22 (2020).
PyroCbs are now being observed: Ed Struzik, “Fire-Induced Storms: A New Danger from the Rise in Wildfires,” Yale Environment 360, January 24, 2019.
The oceans absorb: Nicholas Gruber et al., “The Oceanic Sink for Anthropogenic CO2 from 1994 to 2007,” Science, March 15, 2019.
Over the course: Jennifer Bennett, “Ocean Acidification,” Smithsonian ocean portal, ocean.si.edu/.
To put this in perspective: “Wildfires Had a Bigger Climate Impact Than the Pandemic in 2020,” Yale Environment 360, August 3, 2021.
In terms of its implications: “The ship is not built to outlast the world, but to incinerate it. A workhorse of the global market, its own gargantuan carbon emissions unrecorded in any nation’s ledger, it accelerates the rate at which oil is burned to make power and plastic to make commodities to make money.” Mark Bould, “Dulltopia,” Boston Review, January 22, 2018.
Every year, this global industry: “Global Carbon Emissions,” Co2-Earth, co2.earth/.
This is a rate: Bärbel Hönisch et al., “The Geological Record of Ocean Acidification,” Science 335, no. 6072 (March 2, 2012): 1058–63.
Simply put: Sherry Listgarten, “What Is a ‘Ton’ of Carbon Dioxide Anyway?,” Almanac, December 1, 2019; see also “How Can Carbon Emissions be Weighed?,” niwa.co.nz/.
“the worst thing”: Peter Brannen, “Burning Fossil Fuels Almost Ended All Life on Earth,” Atlantic, July 11, 2017.
With far less year-round ice: Maureen E. Raymo et al., “Departures from Eustasy in Pliocene Sea-Level Records,” Nature Geoscience, April 17, 2011.
If we fail this test: Christina Goldbaum and Zia ur-Rehman, “ ‘Very Dire’: Devastated by Floods, Pakistan Faces Looming Food Crisis,” New York Times, September 11, 2022. See also Lisa Cox, “ ‘Unprecedented’ Globally: More Than 20% of Australia’s Forests Burnt in Bushfires,” Guardian, February 24, 2020.
In the summer of 2021: Josh Lederman, @JoshNBCNews, “Feds formally issue first-ever water shortage declaration for Lake Mead & Colorado River, triggering water cuts to AZ, NV & Mexico starting in January,” Twitter, August 16, 2021.
Farther north: Gillian Flaccus, “Water Crisis ‘Couldn’t Be Worse’ on Oregon-California Border,” AP, May 24, 2021.
“This isn’t a ‘drought’ ”: Bob Berwyn, @bberwyn, Twitter, March 2, 2020. See also Bob Berwyn, “New Study Projects Severe Water Shortages in the Colorado River Basin,” Inside Climate News, February 20, 2020; and Allison Chinchar, “The US ‘Megadrought’ Sets Another Stunning Record,” CNN, January 13, 2022.
Based on tree ring analysis: Margaret Osborne, “The Western U.S. Is Experiencing the Worst Drought in More Than 1,200 Years,” Smithsonian, February 17, 2022.
In the meantime, scientists: Bob Berwyn, “Global Warming to Spur More Fires in Alaska, in Turn Causing More Warming,” Inside Climate News, May 16, 2016.
Around Fort McMurray: Jason Markusoff et al., “Fort McMurray: The Great Escape,” Maclean’s, May 12, 2016. “Since the 1960s, per-decade average temperatures around the city for the seven-month period between October and April have risen a stunning 3.4°C. During the same period, Environment Canada records show, precipitation levels have plummeted from a total of 161 mm in the seven months between October and April to just 80, turning the densely forested area around the city into a giant tinder box.”
“Fire has been largely absent”: Michelle E. Mack et al., “Largest Recorded Tundra Fire Yields Scientific Surprises,” Science Daily, July 27, 2011.
“The amount of carbon”: Ibid.
A decade later: Brian Kahn, “Wildfire Burns Across (Formerly) Icy Greenland,” Scientific American, August 8, 2017.
In 2016, Tasmania: Karl Mathiesen, “World Heritage Forests Burn as Global Tragedy Unfolds in Tasmania,” Guardian, January 27, 2016.
In 2015, fires in Indonesia: Ann Jeannette Glauber, “Seeing the Impact of Forest Fires in South Sumatra: A View from the Field,” World Bank Blogs, February 19, 2016.
In 2012, wildfires burned: Roman Vorobyov, “Siberia in Flames,” Russia Beyond, August 3, 2012.
In 2010, pan-Russian wildfires: Andrew E. Kramer, “Past Errors to Blame for Russia’s Peat Fires,” New York Times, August 12, 2010.
According to the global reinsurer Munich RE: “Overall Picture of Natural Catastrophes in 2010—Very Severe Earthquakes and Many Severe Weather Events—Major Catastrophes Dominate the List of Losses,” Munich RE, March 1, 2011.
In Russia, following the worst: Anna Liesowska, “Zombie Fires Burn at -60C Outside Oymyakon, the World’s Coldest Permanently Inhabited Place,” Siberian Times, December 2, 2021.
And, like coal dust: Bill Gabbert, “Explosive Peat Moss,” Wildfire Today, July 15, 2019.
The Indonesian peat fires: Beh Lih Yi, “Southeast Asian Fires Emitted Most Carbon Since 1997—Scientists,” Thomson Reuters Foundation, June 28, 2016.
comparable to the annual emissions: “Environment—Energy-Related CO2 Emission Data Tables,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2019, eia.gov/.
a 12 percent increase: Ed Struzik, “1950 Monster Fire Burned Its Way into History,” Edmonton Journal, May 22, 2011.
“mutual reaction”: Julius Hann, Handbook of Climatology, translation of Handbuch der Klimatologie, 2nd ed. (New York and London: Macmillan, 1903), p. 389.
Australia and the American West: “Tundra Is Ablaze in Magadan Region in Out-of-Season Wildfire, Complicated by Wind and Zero Snow,” Siberian Times, November 4, 2021. See also Fred Pearce, “Why ‘Carbon-Cycle Feedbacks’ Could Drive Temperatures Even Higher,” Yale Environment 360, April 28, 2020.
March 26, 2021: Jason Samenow, “Japan’s Kyoto Cherry Blossoms Peak on Earliest Date in 1,200 Years, a Sign of Climate Change,” Washington Post, March 29, 2021.
landscapes that have not known trees: Bianca Fréchette et al, “Vegetation and Climate of the Last Interglacial on Baffin Island, Arctic Canada,” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 236 (2006) 91–106
These new forests: Ben Rawlence, “ ‘The Treeline Is Out of Control’: How the Climate Crisis Is Turning the Arctic Green,” The Guardian, January 20, 2022.
“What seems clear now”: Jon Gertner, “In Greenland’s Melting Ice, a Warning on Hard Climate Choices,” Yale Environment 360, June 27, 2019.
hit 340 ppm for the first time: “Earth in the Future—Carbon Dioxide Through Time,” Penn State/NASA, e-education.psu.edu/.
The chances of anyone alive today: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Climate at a Glance: Global Time Series, published October 2022, retrieved on November 11, 2022, from https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/.
“Just wanna make sure”: Cristi Proistosescu, @cristiproist, Twitter, September 10, 2020.
“I’m sixty”: Via Will Cole-Hamilton, @w_colehamilton.
Since roughly 2000: Brendan Montague, “Brazilian Amazon ‘Releasing Carbon,’ ” The Ecologist, April 30, 2021. See also Barry Saxifrage, “One of Canada’s Biggest Carbon Sinks Is Circling the Drain,” The National Observer, May 7, 2021.
fire, logging, land clearing: Antonio José Paz Cardona, “Settlers Invading, Deforesting Colombian National Parks ‘at an Unstoppable Speed,’ ” trans. Theo Bradford, Mongabay.com, May 19, 2021.
Tundra may be the least: Yang Chen et al., “Future Increases in Arctic Lightning and Fire Risk for Permafrost Carbon,” Nature Climate Change, April 5, 2021. See also Steven Mufson, “Scientists Expected Thawing Wetlands in Siberia’s Permafrost. What They Found Is ‘Much More Dangerous,’ ” Washington Post, August 2, 2021.
In 2020, we saw: Chelsea Harvey, “Heat-Trapping Methane Surged in 2020,” Scientific American, April 9, 2021. See also Hannah Osborne, “Giant, 90ft Deep Craters Are Appearing on the Arctic Seafloor,” Newsweek, March 14, 2022.
Despite decades: James Gustave Speth, “They Knew: How the U.S. Government Helped Cause the Climate Crisis,” Yale Environment 360, September 15, 2021.
Now, the “bank”: “Mortgaging the atmosphere” via Lisa Song and James Temple, “Is California’s Carbon Offset Program Actually Helping the Environment?” High Country News, May 11, 2021.
“The climate system”: Andy Rowell, “RIP Wally Broecker, the ‘Grandfather of Climate Science,’ ” Oil Change International, February 20, 2019. See also William K. Stevens, “Scientist at Work: Wallace S. Broecker; Iconoclastic Guru of the Climate Debate,” New York Times, March 17, 1998.
As the Penn State climate scientist: Upstream podcast, December 28, 2021. See also Jason Moore’s writings on the “Capitalocene.”
“And where two raging fires meet together”: William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew. Act II, Scene 1, 139–140; Folger Library, shakespeare.folger.edu/.
In monetary terms: Otiena Ellwand, “Fort McMurray Wildfire Destroys Work Camp, Encroaches on Oil and Gas Facilities,” Edmonton Sun, May 18, 2016. “The Conference Board of Canada on Tuesday estimated average oilsands output would fall by 1.2 million barrels of oil a day for two weeks, translating into $985 million in lost gross domestic product.”
“It’s super loud”: Aron Harris interview, May 1, 2017. (All subsequent quotations derive from this interview.)
“I’ve never seen anything”: Darby Allen, “ ‘No One’s Ever Seen Anything Like This’: Fire Chief on Fort Mcmurray Wildfire,” Global News, May 9, 2016.
The formulas did not need rewriting: Mike Flannigan, personal communication, July 8, 2021.
In 2015, ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance: Tom Randall and Hayley Warren, “Peak Oil Is Suddenly Upon Us,” Bloomberg, November 30, 2020.
“We think we got this thing beat”: “Fort McMurray Fire Chief Speaks to Residents,” Global News, May 10, 2016, posted to YouTube, May 11, 2016.
On the 16th: MNP Report, p. 59.
A suspected gas leak: Julia Parrish, “Two Explosions in Fort McMurray Cause Damage to a Number of Homes,” CTV News, May 17, 2016.
South of town: Marion Warnica, “Hazardous Smoke and Hot Spots Slow Re-entry Plans for Fort McMurray,” CBC News, May 16, 2016.
Blacksands Executive Lodge: Otiena Ellwand, “Fort McMurray Wildfire Destroys Work Camp, Encroaches on Oil and Gas Facilities,” Edmonton Sun, May 18, 2016.
That day, the air quality: Otiena Ellwand, “Fort McMurray Air Quality Health Index Has Risen to Extreme Levels,” Calgary Sun, May 16, 2016.
By then, smoke: Bill Gabbert, “Wildfire Smoke from Canada Affects Much of the United States,” Wildfire Today, May 8, 2016.
“CSI murder scenes”: Via Craig MacKay, January 27, 2017.
the lobsters in the live tank: Ibid.
All told, about twenty thousand: Paige Parson, “Thousands of Refrigerators Emptied and Crushed as Fort McMurray Landfill Deals with What’s Left of Destroyed Homes,” Edmonton Journal, June 19, 2016.
“I hate that fucking fire”: Pauline Vey interview, May 3, 2017.
“I grew up in a war zone”: Name withheld.
“He texted me”: Sue McOrmond via email, June 6, 2019.
“The grass was neon”: Randy Stefanizyn interview, January 27, 2017.
“On May second we had no claims”: Craig MacKay interview, January 27, 2017.
“I was born in Louisiana”: Vonda Pikes interview, April 9, 2017.
“A lot of people were in debt”: Geoffrey Morgan, “ ‘Mental Degradation’: A Fresh Wave of Layoffs Is Pushing Albertans to the Edge—and in Danger of Losing Their Homes,” Edmonton Journal, October 26, 2020.
Concrete pulverizers: “ShearForce Fixed Demolition Pulverizers for Excavators,” shearforce.ca/.
“In our country”: From a 1974 interview, in his memoir, The Oak and the Calf (New York: Harper & Row, 1980).
What is happening: Ketan Joshi, “The End of Coal Is Coming Sooner Than You Think,” Foreign Policy, August 13, 2021.
a “War Room”: Geoff Dembicki, “Alberta Inquiry Paid $28K for a Report Smearing Hundreds of Climate Journalists,” Vice, January 25, 2021. See also Ian Austen, “Alberta Took on Environmental Groups, but Only Proved They Did Nothing Wrong,” New York Times, October 22, 2021.
Perceived enemies: Nicholas Kusnetz, “In Attacks on Environmental Advocates in Canada, a Disturbing Echo of Extremist Politics in the US,” Inside Climate News, February 24, 2021.
Around the world: “UK Heatwave: Weather Forecasters Report Unprecedented Trolling,” BBC, July 29, 2022.
Environmental groups: Drew Anderson, “Alberta’s Energy ‘War Room’ Launches in Calgary,” CBC News, December 11, 2019.
companies and banks: Christopher Flavelle, “Global Financial Giants Swear Off Funding an Especially Dirty Fuel,” New York Times, February 13, 2020.
“opinion of a structural weakness”: Sarah Rieger, “Moody’s Downgrades Alberta’s Credit Rating, Citing Continued Dependence on Oil,” CBC News, December 4, 2019.
In early 2020, Moody’s downgraded: “Rating Action: Moody’s Changes TransCanada’s and Most Subsidiaries Outlooks to Negative from Stable, Affirms Ratings,” Moody’s Investors Service, March 31, 2020.
It was around this time: Karen Bartko, “Alberta Energy Company Under Fire for Image Appearing to Depict Greta Thunberg,” Global News, February 29, 2020.
In October, Moody’s downgraded: Emma L. Graney, @EmmaLGraney, Twitter, October 2, 2020.
“Now is a great time”: “Alberta Minister Says It’s a ‘Great Time’ to Build a Pipeline Because COVID-19 Restrictions Limit Protests Against Them,” Canadian Press, May 25, 2020.
“improving market access”: “Oil & Gas Survey Report,” Daily Oil Bulletin, 2019, p. 18.
The mood among: Ibid., pp. 4, 5.
A crane operator named Randy: Not his real name.
Those who endorsed: John Paul Tasker, “Conservative Delegates Reject Adding ‘Climate Change Is Real’ to the Policy Book,” CBC News, March 20, 2021.
“The problem with despotic”: David Mattson, “The Cult of Hunting and Its Timely Demise,” Grizzly Times, April 19, 2018.
Ever since the downturn: Ernest Scheyder and Nia Williams, “Innovators Toil to Revive Canada Oil Sands as Majors Exit,” Reuters, June 18, 2017.
By 2016, auction prices: Dan Healing, “Companies Abandon Nearly One Million Hectares of Alberta Oilsands Exploration Leases,” Canadian Press, July 28, 2017.
“The challenges currently posed”: “Mark Carney Warns Investors of ‘Potentially Huge’ Losses from Climate Change Risks,” Bloomberg, September 30, 2015.
In December 2016: “Statoil Sells Oilsands Assets to Athabasca Oil in Deal Worth Up to $832 Million,” Canadian Press, December 15, 2016.
But then: Patrick DeRochie, “Seven Oil Multinationals That Are Pulling Out of Canada’s Tar Sands,” Environmental Defence, March 14, 2017.
A month after that: “Exxon to Leave Up to 3.6 Billion Barrels of Tar Sands/Oil Sands in the Ground,” Energy Mix, February 22, 2017.
In March, Royal Dutch Shell: “Royal Dutch Shell Signs Deals to Sell Oilsands Assets,” CBC News, March 9, 2017.
In October, the French Bank BNP: “BNP Paribas Takes Further Measures to Accelerate Its Support of the Energy Transition,” press release, October 11, 2017. See also “French Bank La Banque Postale Quits Oil & Gas, Sets International Precedent,” press release, October 14, 2021, reclaimfinance.org/; and “Canada’s 7th Largest Bank @Blaurentienne Will Stop New Financing of Coal, Oil and Gas to ‘Differentiate’ Itself from Fossil Banks,” December 2021, via @reclaimfinance.
Two months later, in early 2018: “Suncor Buys Out Mocal Energy’s 5% stake in Syncrude to Increase Oilsands Ownership,” Global News, February 27, 2018.
As of 2022, the World Bank: Nick Cunningham, “World Bank Continues Financing Fossil Fuels Despite Climate Crisis,” DeSmog, October 6, 2022.
a controlling interest: “Suncor Takes Control of Syncrude in $937M Deal for Additional Five Per Cent Stake,” Financial Post, April 27, 2016.
taken over operations: Sarah Rieger, “Suncor to Assume Operation of Syncrude by End of Next Year,” CBC News, November 23, 2020.
Anticipating this, a Calgary-based consortium: Sarah Rieger, “Trump Issues Presidential Permit Authorizing $22B Railway Between Alaska and Alberta,” CBC News, September 30, 2020.
“Climate change,” the report stated: Don Jergler, “Report Urges Urgent Action from Financial Regulators to Address Climate Change,” Insurance Journal, September 10, 2020.
the world’s biggest insurance companies: “Munich Re Toughens the Tone on the Oil Sands,” Reclaim Finance, May 12, 2020.
Zurich Insurance: “Sustainability—Exclusion Policies,” Zurich Insurance Group, zurich.com/.
the Hartford: Stephen Singer, “Hartford Financial to Speed Exit from Tar Sands Investments to Year End” (originally published in the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis on November 10, 2021).
Talanx Group: Paul Lucas, “Talanx Group Dropping Support for Trans Mountain Pipeline,” Insurance Business Canada, June 30, 2020.
“This type of project”: “Insurance Provider for Trans Mountain Pipeline Says It Won’t Renew Policy,” Global News, June 3, 2021. See also David Thurton, “Finance Canada Defends $10 Billion Loan Guarantee for Trans Mountain,” CBC News, May 11, 2022; and “Royal Bank of Canada, TD, Scotia, CIBC, BMO, National Bank Front $10 Billion to Finance Financially Risky Trans Mountain Pipeline, Analysis Reveals—Unprecedented Loan Guaranteed by Public Money, Deal Inked Three Weeks Before Being Made Public,” Stand.Earth, May 31, 2022.
In September 2021: Lyle Adriano, “Chubb Exits from Covering Tar Sands Projects,” Insurance Business Canada, September 15, 2021. See also “Swiss Re Leads Insurance Industry’s Exodus from Oil and Gas,” press release, March 17, 2022, global.insure-our-future.com/.
The Australian Insurance giant: Graham Readfearn, “Insurance Giant Suncorp to End Coverage and Finance for Oil and Gas Industry,” Guardian, August 21, 2020.
Lloyd’s of London: Julia Kollewe, “Lloyd’s Market to Quit Fossil Fuel Insurance by 2030,” Guardian, December 17, 2020.
The same goes for mines: Corbin Hiar, “Coal, Oil Sands Companies Feel Growing Insurance Squeeze,” E&E News, September 20, 2021. “There is always the concern in the back of insurers’ minds that climate change may be the next asbestosis…Senior executives mentioned the fact that their kids at dinner table start talking to them about, you know, what is your business doing about climate change, and why are you not changing things?” she said. Those questions have caused leaders Surminski has spoken with to rethink the impacts of their work and to feel more personally accountable for their company’s climate-related decision making. “I’m surprised how often I hear that from senior executives,” she said.
The plaintiffs claimed: “Boulder Sues Exxon over Climate Change: Wildfires, Droughts and Water Are a Few Reasons Why,” Inside Climate News, April 18, 2018.
As of 2021, at least 1,500: Tom Wilson, “Lawyer Who Defeated Shell Predicts ‘Avalanche’ of Climate Cases,” Financial Times, December 30, 2021.
“The government accepts”: John Schwartz, “Court Quashes Youth Climate Change Case Against Government,” New York Times, January 17, 2020.
Climate change, they wrote: Patrick Greenfield and Jonathan Watts, “JP Morgan Economists Warn Climate Crisis Is Threat to Human Race,” Guardian, February 21, 2020.
Like Mark Carney’s predictions: Ibid. Between 2016 and 2018 alone, the top thirty-three banks loaned $1.9 trillion to the fossil fuel industry.
In fact, the world’s sixty biggest banks: “Banking on Climate Chaos 2021: Fossil Fuel Finance Report,” Oil Change International, March 24, 2021.
“Imagine Shell decided”: Ben van Beurden, “The Spirit of Shell Will Rise to the Challenge,” LinkedIn, June 9, 2021.
As bitumen royalties plummeted: Ainslie Cruikshank, “Alberta’s Deficit Is Set to Reach Historic Levels. A Collapse in Oil Revenue Is a Big Reason Why,” Narwhal, August 27, 2020.
Lawyers for Alberta’s bitumen: “Opinion in Reference Re: Impact Assessment Act,” p. 8, albertacourts.ca/.
Meanwhile, in Calgary: Geoffrey Morgan, “ ‘Mental Degradation’: A Fresh Wave of Layoffs Is Pushing Albertans to the Edge—And in Danger of Losing Their Homes,” Edmonton Journal, October 26, 2020.
There hasn’t been much: “Total Takes $7-Billion Writedown on Oilsands Projects, Labels Fort Hills, Surmont ‘Stranded’ Assets,” Bloomberg, August 4, 2020.
That same month: “Keystone XL Is Dead, and Albertans Are on the Hook for $1.3B,” CBC News, June 9, 2021.
In mid-July 2021: Sebastien Malo, “Maine Pipeline Co Drops Lawsuit Over City Law That Blocked Oil Export,” Reuters, July 16, 2021.
A week earlier: Tony Seskus, “University of Calgary Hits Pause on Bachelor’s Program in Oil and Gas Engineering,” CBC News, July 8, 2021.
Van Beurden himself: @ClimatePower video, 8:31 a.m., May 5, 2022.
“Maybe it wasn’t as profitable”: Personal communication, August 24, 2022.
“Virtue, then, is anything that moves you”: “Joyfulness in Everything: A Conversation with George Saunders,” February 15, 2017, oxfordexchange.com/blogs/.
On May 26, in a stunning conclusion: Maxine Joselow, “Historic Dutch Ruling Targets Corporate Emissions,” E&E News, May 27, 2021.
It was, all in all: Ketan Joshi, “The Surprise Court Ruling That Cut Through Shell’s Greenwashing Facade,” New Republic, May 28, 2021. (This article is noteworthy for its thorough explanation—and dismantling—of common greenwashing tropes.)
(Boulder v. Suncor Exxon): Boulder v. Suncor Exxon court documents.
“This is the first time”: “The Australian Government Has a Duty of Care to Protect Children from Climate Harm, Court Rules,” SBS (Special Broadcasting Service), May 27, 2021.
The case, based on: A similar case, based on citizens’ constitutional rights, is 345 through the Canadian courts: “Youth Climate Case Forges Ahead After Court Affirms Historic Decision,” press release, March 26, 2021, ecojustice.ca/.
With the cataclysmic fires: Lisa Cox, “ ‘Unprecedented’ Globally: More Than 20% of Australia’s Forests Burnt in Bushfires,” Guardian, February 24, 2020.
“It is difficult to characterise”: “Sharma v. Minister for Environment,” Equity Generation Lawyers, equitygenerationlawyers.com/.
In January 2022: Lisa Friedman, “Court Revokes Oil and Gas Leases, Citing Climate Change,” New York Times, January 27, 2022.
“Yeah, we knew”: Justin Worland, “The Reason Fossil Fuel Companies Are Finally Reckoning with Climate Change,” Time, January 16, 2020.
“the deliberate slowing”: John Elkington, “Alex Steffen on Predatory Delay,” April 30, 2016, johnelkington.com/2016/04/alex-steffen-on-predatory-delay/.
“The evidence that had been gathered”: Hiroko Tabuchi and Lisa Friedman, “Oil Executives to Face Congress on Climate Disinformation,” New York Times, October 27, 2021.
“the greatest threat”: Worland, “The Reason Fossil Fuel Companies Are Finally Reckoning with Climate Change.”
A fossil fuel divestment campaign: “Swarthmore Environmental Studies—Divestment Debates,” swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies/.
University of California’s $80 billion endowment: Umair Irfan, “The University of California System Is Ending Its Investment in Fossil Fuels,” Vox, September 18, 2019.
As of mid-2021: Global Fossil Fuel Divestment Commitments Database, gofossilfree.org/. See also Bill McKibben, “This Movement Is Taking Money Away from Fossil Fuels, and It’s Working,” New York Times, October 26, 2021.
In 2019, Shell acknowledged: Bill McKibben, “Money Is the Oxygen on Which the Fire of Global Warming Burns,” New Yorker, September 17, 2019.
“Removing fossil fuel securities”: “Largest Federal Employee Union Applauds Biden Push to Remove Fossil Fuel Securities from Retirement Funds,” press release, afge.org/publication/. See also “Blackstone, Inc., Once a Major Player in Shale Patches, Is Telling Clients Its Private Equity Arm Will No Longer Invest in the Exploration and Production of Oil and Gas,” Bloomberg, February 22, 2022.
For generations, Big Oil: James Gustave Speth, “They Knew: How the U.S. Government Helped Cause the Climate Crisis,” Yale Environment 360, September 15, 2021.
it is carrying debt loads: ExxonMobil: 2005 Summary Annual Report, p. 4
Meanwhile, dividends: Benji Jones, “Exxon Is Slashing Workers and Cutting Costs, and Employee Morale Has Collapsed. Here’s Everything We Know,” Business Insider, March 3, 2021.
The biggest companies: Clara Vondrich, “Big Oil and Investors Knew a Crash Was Coming: COVID-19 Just Sped Up the Clock,” Front Page Live, May 11, 2020.
Home Depot was worth more: Kevin Crowley and Bryan Gruley, “The Humbling of Exxon,” Bloomberg, April 30, 2020.
In 1980, the oil and gas sector: “IEEFA Update: ExxonMobil’s Slide from the Top Ten of the S&P 500—Historic Turning Point for the Company,” Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), August 30, 2019, ieefa.org/.
ExxonMobil, which was the most valuable: Clare Duffy, “Major Shakeup for the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index: 3 New Stocks Join,” CNN, August 4, 2020.
“We have an obligation”: Attracta Mooney, “Aviva Will Use Its ‘Ultimate Sanction’ to Force Action on Global Warming,” Financial Times, January 30, 2021.
Truly unnerving to anyone: Mitchell Beer, “After Big Oil’s Very Bad Week, the Message for Alberta Is Clear,” Policy Options, June 2, 2021.
In their “World Energy Outlook”: “World Energy Outlook 2020,” International Energy Agency, October 13, 2020. See also “Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2020,” International Renewable Energy Agency, 2021.
The threat is serious enough: Justin Worland, “The Reason Fossil Fuel Companies Are Finally Reckoning with Climate Change,” Time, January 16, 2020.
by 2030 the European Union: Kate Abnett, “Climate ‘Law of Laws’ Gets European Parliament’s Green Light,” Reuters, June 24, 2021.
due largely to the bitumen industry: Barry Saxifrage, “Remember the Copenhagen Accord’s 2020 Targets? Here’s How Canada and Many of Its Peers Did,” National Observer, May 24, 2022.
emissions have more than doubled: According to the Pembina Institute, the oil and gas sector accounted for 26 percent of Canada’s GHG emissions in 2019. Emissions from the oil sands rose by 137 percent between 2005 and 2019. See also Barry Saxifrage, “Climate Snapshot: Bay du Nord,” National Observer, February 23, 2022.
In a statement: Alex Ballingall, “ ‘We Recognize the Problem’: Canada’s New Ministers for the Environment and Natural Resources Have the Oil and Gas Sector in Their Sights,” Toronto Star, October 30, 2021.
In this way, fire resembles: James Mackintosh, “Shareholders Reign Supreme Despite CEO Promises to Society,” Wall Street Journal, February 10, 2022. See also Kyle Bakx, “Banned for Decades, Releasing Oilsands Tailings Water Is Now on the Horizon,” CBC News, December 6, 2021.
It has taken decades: Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, “Assessing ExxonMobil’s Climate Change Communications (1977–2014),” Institute of Physics, August 23, 2017. See also Max Binks-Collier, “For Decades, Alberta’s Energy Regulator Massively Downplayed Crude Oil and Saline Water Spills,” National Observer, February 16, 2022; Jeffrey Pierre and Scott Newman, “How Decades of Disinformation About Fossil Fuels Halted U.S. Climate Policy,” All Things Considered, October 27, 2021; Rachel Siegel, “Brainard Questioned on Inflation, Climate Risk Issues as Part of Nomination to Become Fed’s Second-In-Command,” Washington Post, January 13, 2022 (in which Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) said, “There is no reason to believe that global warming poses a systemic risk to the financial system”); Hiroki Tabuchi, “House Panel Expands Inquiry into Climate Disinformation by Oil Giants,” New York Times, October 28, 2021; Owen Walker, “HSBC Suspends Banker over Climate Change Comments,” Financial Times, May 22, 2022 (regarding HSBC executive Stuart Kirk who gave a paper entitled “Why investors need not worry about climate risk”); and Zia Weise, “Shell Consultant Quits, Says Company Causes ‘Extreme Harm’ to Planet,” Politico, May 23, 2022.
By a nearly two-thirds vote: “Chevron Investors Back Proposal for More Emissions Cuts,” Reuters, May 26, 2021.
On the same day: Pippa Stevens, “Activist Firm Engine No. 1 Claims Third Exxon Board Seat,” CNBC, June 2, 2021.
issued a landmark “flagship report”: “Net Zero By 2050,” International Energy Agency, May 2021, iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050.
“it is a fire which consumes me”: Jorge Luis Borges, “A New Refutation of Time,” Labyrinths (New York: New Directions, 1962).
in recorded history (prior to 2020): “2020 Tied for Warmest Year on Record, NASA Analysis Shows,” January 14, 2021, climate.nasa.gov/.
“We could have been looking”: Mike Hager, “Will Wildfires Get Too Intense to Fight?,” Globe and Mail, July 14, 2017.
“We had the radio on”: Name withheld.
Since 2016, people all over the world: John Muyskens et al., “1 in 6 Americans Live in Areas with Significant Wildfire Risk,” map, Washington Post, May 17, 2022. See also Bill Gabbert, “Wildfire Risk Rating Now Available for 145 Million Properties in the United States,” Wildfire Today, May 16, 2022.
“How we get there”: Via Harsha Walia (“How you get there is where you are”), personal communication, January 8, 13, 2020. See also Philip Booth’s line, “How you get there is where / you’ll arrive” from his poem “Heading Out.”
