Manjula Selvarajah, Solve for X: First of all, I’ll just say this upfront: Fire Weather is one of my best reads this year. It’s beautifully written, and it speaks volumes about the power of storytelling. You discuss this critical idea in your book—that it’s a mistake to think of nature as a “bottomless trust fund.” But I want to share something about this building we’re in. You might know this already: across the road is where Banting and Best invented insulin. It makes me think that there is one bottomless trust fund we can tap into—innovation. I know you’re skeptical of tech solutionism, but do you think technology could play a role in helping us adapt or build resilience?
John Vaillant: Of course! As a species, we are relentlessly, compulsively creative. That process is exhilarating, especially when I hear the ideas and future visions coming from people like those in this room. It’s inspiring, and it’s a future I want to live in too.
That said, there’s a hidden cost to even our best ideas. The energy demands of how we live now—server farms, data centers, and so on—are staggering. It’s the elephant in the room. While we aim high with our creativity, we need to ground ourselves in reality and ask: “Where is this energy going to come from, and what impact will it have on the Earth and climate?” We’re in a climate crisis, and our leaders aren’t fully acknowledging it. Some of us are, but we all need to act like it. There’s a tension between innovation and the costs we often ignore.
Manjula Selvarajah: You’ve highlighted the ingenuity of the oil and gas industry in your book—its massive system that reliably supplies energy worldwide. How can we engage this industry to leverage its expertise and power for adaptation and resilience efforts?
John Vaillant: I think we can engage them, and I think about it all the time. Honestly, we owe the petroleum industry a massive debt of gratitude. Imagine being in a room with a giant whiteboard where everyone lists all the ways petroleum has improved their lives. Everything here—this building, our transportation, even some of the materials on our bodies—is mediated by petroleum. These are excellent products, and we should acknowledge that.
But we also need to call out the industry’s cynical and often illegal efforts to perpetuate itself and stifle the kind of innovation we’re discussing here. That’s a brave and difficult conversation to have. It’s essential to balance gratitude for what they’ve achieved—arguably the greatest supply chain system in history—with the acknowledgment that it’s time to move on. The climate is making that painfully clear.
Manjula Selvarajah: So, you’re calling for confrontation but also innovation. Yet, as you describe in the book, there’s often a failure to act, a failure to confront. Do you think that’s tied to what you call the Lucretius Problem? Can you explain that?
John Vaillant: Yes, the Lucretius Problem is named after a Roman poet and philosopher from the first century BC. He observed a glitch in human cognition: we tend to base our understanding of future extremes on past experiences. Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan, put it well: “The fool believes the tallest mountain in the world is the tallest one he himself has seen.”
This mindset is dangerous. In Fort McMurray, for instance, people prepared for a 1990s-style fire, but what they faced was a 21st-century fire—one that could do things no one had ever seen before. Think about it: pyro-cumulonimbus clouds 45,000 feet high, shooting lightning 20 kilometers away, starting new fires. Houses burned to the basement in five minutes, like milk cartons. We’re unprepared because we haven’t seen the full scale of what climate change can do, but it’s happening worldwide—Australia, California, the Northwest Territories. We need a more global, imaginative perspective.
Manjula Selvarajah: That’s a sobering thought. But what makes our cities so vulnerable to these “21st-century fires”?
John Vaillant: Rising temperatures are a key factor. Fire thrives in heat, and hotter air holds more moisture, drying out forests and fuels faster. Think of your laundry on a breezy August day—it dries quickly. That’s what’s happening to forests now, even in places like New England and Ontario, which historically haven’t burned this way. The Lucretius Problem comes into play here: we struggle to imagine these fires happening in places where they haven’t before, but we must adapt to this new reality.
Our cities are densely packed, often built with flammable materials like wood, which is great in some respects but risky in this climate. Reducing fire risks requires admitting the danger, which is a hard pill to swallow.
Manjula Selvarajah: People often look to firefighters to save the day during disasters. Do you think municipal firefighting resources in Canada are equipped to handle these new challenges?
John Vaillant: Unfortunately, no. Take a recent example: a fire in Vancouver this past August—a six-story condo caught fire due to a roofing job gone wrong. It wasn’t an exceptionally hot or dry day, but the fire generated so much heat that it caused trees and nearby houses to ignite. Firebrands the size of a human head landed in Pacific Spirit Park, forcing firefighters to chase them down to prevent a forest fire. They were so overwhelmed that high school kids were handed hoses to help. And this was just one fire. The system was maxed out.
Canada has been lucky compared to places like Paradise, California, or Lahaina, Hawaii, where wildfires have killed hundreds. But our luck won’t hold forever if we don’t prepare.
Manjula Selvarajah: You’ve mentioned indigenous fire stewardship in your book. Dr. Amy Cardinal Christensen recently told me indigenous guardians hold the key to reducing wildfire risks. Do you agree?
John Vaillant: Absolutely. Indigenous practices of controlled, “good fire” burning have been suppressed for centuries but are now being rediscovered. This is real reconciliation—both with indigenous peoples and the land itself. Fire is a natural part of many ecosystems, and indigenous knowledge is vital to managing it responsibly. It’s a beautiful melding of traditional practices and modern fire science, and it’s an exciting frontier for the 21st century.
Manjula Selvarajah: It’s clear that we need collective action, but also a reckoning with the industries and systems that brought us here. Do you think we can confront these challenges head-on while fostering innovation?
John Vaillant: We have to. Innovation is vital, but it must be grounded in reality. The climate is telling us, louder than ever, that it’s time to move on from fossil fuels. We need to engage industries like oil and gas not as enemies, but as partners who have built extraordinary systems. At the same time, we must hold them accountable for delaying progress.
This is the moment to act—with courage, imagination, and urgency.
Read about John’s earlier remarks at MaRS Climate Impact on his book Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast
