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The Conversation
The Conversation
Environment
Stephen Pyne, Emeritus Professor of Life Sciences, Arizona State University

Human use of fire has produced an era of uncontrolled burning: Welcome to the Pyrocene

Firefighters work near the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles on Jan. 11, 2025. Peyman Fakhraei/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

Los Angeles is burning, but it isn’t alone. In recent years, fires have blasted through cities in Colorado, the southern Appalachians and the island of Maui, along with Canada, Australia, Portugal and Greece. What wasn’t burned was smoked in.

Is this another case of a future not only dire but strange, without a narrative to join past to present or an analog for what is to come?

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