Text Wrestling

This paper about mega fires by Stephen J. Pyne sort of points the finger at everyone else, and rightfully so. Inevitably we have to come to the realization that we are doing more harm than good, and that’s causing us to damage the natural order of things. I think Pyne points out a couple of ways we are turning a blind eye to the matter in “Passing the Torch.” The title in itself is a metaphor about how we are the cause and effect of worldwide mega fires. I wholeheartedly agree that Pyne is right, and the human race has some explaining to do. Let’s first try to get you on board as well.

Summary:

To start, he mentions the insane fires that happened in Greece. Three waves broke out in between late June and the end of August, killing almost 76 people and destroying 100,000 plus acres of land. He points out that he believes the cause was global warming; however he also goes on to say that Gavril Xanthopoulos, a Greek fire scientist, says that global economy also had something to do with the fires. It is exclusive because nature and people had begun interacting in ways that fire was not familiar with

Fire in of itself thinks regarding triangles, as made clear by Pyne. There are three aspects to a fire that makes its life possible. The first to be mentioned was climate, almost an obvious one; next is land use and lastly humanity’s need for fire practices. Let’s talk a little about the first contributor, climate. According to Pyne’s research in 2007, Greece’s climate had made conditions bountiful for fires. It was unclear to Greece if it was because of a man changing the climate or if it was because every two years or so the land would see a dry spell. Was it just mere coincidence that the causes were left unknown or had man made it so?

Just as life needs a brain and a beating heart and the many other organs contributed to our being, so does fire. Fire needs a biota to reproduce; this is anything contributed to making the climate ripe for fires taking. Even the stress that we put on the climate reacts in a “biotic prism” (Pyne, 2008) causing the climate to react to how it sees fit. In a manner of speaking we can control these biotas than we can also control fire, yet we find ourselves adding to the problem instead of softening its blow.

The second provider that fire needs comes from our land use. We are so hurriedly changing our lands that it is also affecting how fires change in intensity and frequency. Looking back, Greece found in a disentanglement of the agricultural countryside, was welcoming an increase in fires. In any third world country we see that with the upsurge of people quickly moving their homes leaves the countryside suitable for widespread burning to occur; we see this frequently in countries freed from dictatorship (Pyne, 2008). The land had not yet seen this type of change and with change will come fear, and with fear comes retaliation through fire. Although humans seem to be the cause of these fires, without them the fires will grow. However many people, when it comes to adding emergency responses, tend to forget about fire measures.

Developing worlds are no less in harm’s way because we are trying to preserve our forest lands. In doing so we leave the land perfect for fires, this is because we don’t practice safe burning, which is an integral part of climate control. Nevertheless, fire is never happy; we can protect its biota or destroy it, and it will find a way to live regardless. Combining city and nature causes more fires because the way cities work are not compatible with woodland and the way they work. We have fire protection agencies to help put fires out, but some places fire is inevitable. In those places we tend to go overboard, not allowing fire whatsoever. By not allowing fires to happen we reserve combustibles and make the land even more plentiful for fires, this in return makes the fires worse.

“The correlation between fire policies and programs and the amount of area burned is unnervingly close” (Pyne, 2008). This quote brings us to our last factor; humanity’s fire practices. Greece’s fires happened because people were revolting; nature had nothing to do with it. People were taking land ravished by fire no longer under the protection of any laws, and building settlements on it. Pyne described this as “Greece’s version of arson for profit”. Some of the fires were due to political changes; people were rebelling against decisions made in office by setting things on fire. Greece was also changing over their fire protection to less knowledgeable response teams, which provided other means for the fire to take control. Media even had a hold on firefighters, causing them to leave unfinished jobs to move on to others for coverage; this caused fires to spread wildly out of hand.  Firefighters trained in all-hazard emergency services; turned their attention from strict fire prevention to all disasters, this left fire not always under constant surveillance.

Reintroducing fire, across specifically the United States, has allowed fire that would normally be suppressed to burn, in spite of this being healthy for the environment; it has gone too far. These fires are not being burned correctly and safely as they should be, and small fires that could’ve gone out easily have distended to thousands of acres. People are using information gathered from past fires to control present fires, and sadly all that info has become inept. Fires are no longer what they use to be, and people are turning the management of fire over to faith-based ecology. Most people are letting the fire take its course, letting it burn acres upon acres of land without prevention ever coming into play because they are turning it over to faith. As for Arizona, fires were left to burn for this exact reason, destroying over 248,000 acres of land (Pynes, 2008).

These fires ignited in protest to changes in policies, programs, and personnel. Some people associated with the fire community itself set the fires they were supposed to help fight. The main purpose behind most acres burned by fire has less to do with global warming than it does with the power of human, and how we shape our landscapes. However, we leave the reason behind these mega-fires up to climate change regardless of the truth. Global warming is being used to cover up political encouragement towards certain fire management decisions while allowing the climate to take the full brunt of the blame. Conversely, we are to blame for global warming, and that leads to the rise of mega-fires.

Response:

I would feel almost inhuman not to agree to this subject matter, especially when Pynes does nothing but tell the reader it’s pretty much the human race that’s to blame for global warming and the troubles it brings. In doing some additional research on forest fires myself I happened upon an article about 2015 Indonesia fires that raised some eyebrows. In the article Indonesia’s Fire Outbreaks Producing More Daily Emissions than Entire US Economy by Nancy Harris and others, I learned that, as the title states, these fires produced more daily emissions than the United States.  Most of the fires stayed central to peatlands, which are high in carbon. Carbon, with knowledge gained from the article, if burned leads to rising in emissions and large amounts of methane.

“Taken together, the impact of peat fires on global warming may be more than 200 times greater than fires on other lands” (Harris, 2015). This line was a very shocking comment, and I believe it ties into Pyne’s essay very neatly. Global warming is a big threat to our environment, not just because forest fires will become more prevalent in climates experiencing higher temperatures and droughts, but because we are the cause of it. We are single handily ruining the only place we’ve found in our vast universe that can harbor life. We have to focus on the effect we have on our earth and take steps in reducing its inevitable decay. I stand with Pyne, and take this and the many other sources I found on the matter to heart, just as I hope you will as well. To pay homage to Pyne, “—a lot of hands are passing the torch.”

Work Cited

Harris, Nancy, Susan Minnemeyer, and Octavia Aris Payne. “Indonesia’s Fire Outbreaks Producing More Daily Emissions than Entire US Economy.” Web blog post. World Resources Institute. WRI, 16 Oct. 2015. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.

Pyne, Stephen J. “Passing the Torch.” The American Scholar. Phi Beta Kappa, 1 Mar. 2008. Web. 23 Mar. 2016.