Fire is taking up more and more space in the news. Many fires in recent years have been gaining the upper hand around the world over and over again in recent years. Today’s fires are not the same as before. They have become more aggressive and are profoundly changing the planet, leaving us at the dawn of what we might call piocene. A world in which fire replaces man in his role as a landscape sculptor.
Below we explain what has changed, the extent to which the current fires are affecting the Earth, and how to turn the tide. But first of all, we must remember that this was not always the case. Until recently, we could control the fire. In fact, fire has been our great ally.
In fact, one of the first technologies to be developed was fire-conquering pyrica. With fire control came terrain control, and we also learned how to cook. And with cooking, the nutritional value of food increased, while digestion time and health problems decreased. Cooking has allowed us to increase the size of our brains and therefore our ability to reason.
If we rewind the clock of history, we find the Industrial Revolution, which was in fact a Pyric Revolution. We learned how to control flames to get energy from burning, and all sorts of machines, motors, tools and devices were invented to make our existence easier.
Pyrocene: loss of fire control
But during the industrial revolution, we switched fuels. Industrial fires were fueled not by living, vegetable fuels, but by fossil, stone fuels.
The burning of fossil landscapes changed the atmosphere and we began to warm the climate. The rejection of mountains has changed the physiognomy of the earth, and now there is an accumulation of biomass. More heat and more fuel: more firewood.
And the lights now elude us. We can no longer control them. We’ve held back the flames for decades. The area of forest burnt has decreased due to the development of new extinction strategies, improved education, and a disproportionate increase in the cost of extinction tools. But now it is interrupted.
Everything points to the fact that we are facing a turning point. The moment when, perhaps for the first time since defeating fire, we lose control of it. Forest fires are disappearing more and more often, we are returning to their domain. Now it is the fire that conquers us.
The mastery of fire made possible the Anthropocene, the Age of Man. And the loss of his control takes us to the Pyrocene, the Age of Fire. The era when the flame, not the hoe, is the main creator of our landscapes.
Lights that change the world
The force of the new fires is enormous. Gigafires three years ago in southeast Australia, for example, consumed 21% of its forests, widened the hole in the ozone layer and cooled the climate locally. This happened because particles suspended in the smoke column, aerosols, blocked access to the sun’s rays, and the destruction of the ozone layer changed atmospheric currents. Although these effects were temporary and only lasted a few months.
When the aerosols finally succumbed to gravity, most of them settled in the Southern Ocean, which contributed to the overgrowth of algae. Aerosols contain micronutrients such as iron or nitrogen, which are essential for phytoplankton. Thus, the fires in Australia greened the Antarctic Ocean.
In addition to the impact on the planet, giant fires like those in Australia have a noticeable impact on countless social aspects such as health care, the economy and education.
But it’s not just in Australia. In many parts of the world, on the shores of the Atlantic and the Pacific, we find similar processes. and although it
It is true that there have always been catastrophic fires, and they got out of control, and right now we are constantly confronted with them.
Taming new lights
You can also refuse the path of Pyrocene. The European Green Pact and the urgent energy and environmental transition provide us with a framework to develop an effective policy to stop Pirocene. And science and technology give us suggestions and detailed instructions on how to achieve this:
- Promote the breeding of cattle. Including promotion, support and advice to shepherds in their traditional pasture burnings. Grazing is a great ally to break the fire, reduce the intensity of the fire and create an opportunity to extinguish it.
- Recreate the natural dynamics of fire. It implies the introduction of technical fire through the prescribed burning of low intensity. We are talking about harmless combustion, engineering work based on environmental principles.
- Develop green firewalls. The periphery of the urban environment should include wide strips of great length, devoid of vegetation. But you can also take care of the trees, if you like, by installing prescribed irrigation systems. These are sprinklers mounted on faucets that impregnate the vegetation with reclaimed water and thus slow down the spread of the fire.
- Reduce the thickness of scaffolding. This includes cutting down trees and improving your health. Cutting down trees is not cutting down a forest. On the contrary, environmentally friendly cutting down trees, reducing the amount of fuel is an excellent shield for protecting mountains from forest fire.
- Strengthen agricultural activities. The most effective brake against fires are agricultural crops. Rural abandonment is not a thing of the past, but continues to grow at a rapid pace. This is ironic since we continue to eat every day. So we need a primary sector.
We see the first results of the existence of ghostly, dehumanized fields. During the Anthropocene, during the last 12,000 years, humans have inhabited and used 90% of the rainforests and 95% of the Mediterranean and temperate forests. But the recent desolation of the mountains and the concentration of life in the cities are kindling the flames of the Pyrocene.
We need living, inhabited landscapes. This is a way to prevent fire from continuing to occupy the ecological space that people left free when they left the forest.
Source: Hiper Textual
