Wildfires are burning bigger, hotter and in increasingly unpredictable ways, proving time and again that the traditional ways of dealing with these conflagrations are no longer successful.
Science writer Edward Struzik, author of RCIScience Fall Reads Firestorm: How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future, takes a look at what the history of fire tells us about the present situation and how the present situation – catastrophic fires in Australia, California, Russia and western Canada – is shaping our ability to deal with future fire events. Investing more in the evolving science of wildfire is the best way of learning how to live with fire in a rapidly warming world.
This event was delivered in partnership with THEMUSEUM.
About the Speaker
Edward Struzik is a writer, educator, public speaker and a fellow at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy in the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. For the past decade, he has been a regular contributing writer for Yale Environment 360, an international on-line journal offering opinion, analysis, reporting and debate on global environmental issues. Yale 360 is published at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
His many other articles and essays appear in journals, magazines and newspapers such as Scientific American, Natural History, National Geographic, Hakai Magazine, Ensia, Policy Options, Foreign Policy Review, the Los Angeles Times, The Conversation, Canadian Geographic, the Globe and Mail, and National Post.
Mr. Struzik has earned more than 30 international and national awards for his writing and his books. Included among them are the US-based Grantham Prize, which honours and encourages excellence in writing on the environment; RCIScience’s Sandford Fleming Medal, which honours individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the understanding of science in Canada, the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy, which provides year-long funding for the exploration of a public policy issue of national and international interest, and the Michener Award for public policy. The Michener is awarded each year by the Governor General of Canada and the Michener Foundation.
Mr. Struzik has written six books, and contributed to several others. His latest book, Firestorm: How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future, won the Science in Society Book Award in 2018 and is RCIScience’s first pick for our Fall Reads Book Club.