the cutting of a firebreak, the sort of work that was going on at the Spanish Ranch Fire when the bulldozer operator was overrun by flames, the sort of work that forms the very basis of fighting wildland fires, the sort of work that is familiar to the residents of Santa Barbara.
A canvas fire hose stretches across the top of the mural toward a fire artifact figurine, a girl. The girl is surrounded by flames made from dichroic glass, glass that has been heated in the presence of metals, creating a metallic vapor that cools to form a crystal structure on the glass surface. Dichroic glass shimmers in surprising ways, playing with light. The fire artifact girl will be forever surrounded by dichroic flames, forever on the verge of rescue by firefighters.
In another part of the mural sits a glass bottle, deformed by heat, along with a wineglass, dented and twisted, perhaps from the photographer’s house, the glass that had been covered by ashes and was still hot four days after the fire.
Edward Abbey, reading Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy in his fire tower, looking out over a landscape that was not burning, would have come across a passage about urban fires. He may have underlined it because of his interest in fires, or he may have ignored it because of his place in the wilderness, far removed from cities. But here, in Santa Barbara, it is relevant. “How doth the fire rage,” wrote Burton, “that merciless element, consuming in an instant whole cities! What town of any antiquity or note hath not been once, again and again, by the fury of this merciless element, defaced, ruinated, and left desolate?”
Chapter 3
Cooked
I am in Rio de Janeiro. Last week, mudslides closed streets. People died, their homes swept away in rivers of mud. But the rain has stopped. The pavement steams. The eroded remains of ancient magma—spires of straight-up rock—tower above buildings and bays and beaches.
In 1992, the United Nations met here. The meeting became known as the Rio Earth Summit. More than a hundred national leaders attended along with nineteen thousand others who tagged along to offer advice. In a two-page preamble, the delegates acknowledged that climate change was a common concern of humankind and that human activities enhanced the greenhouse effect. Most of the carbon emissions, they said, came from developed countries. They divided the world into haves and have-nots, the developed and the undeveloped. The haves would try to hold carbon emissions at 1990 levels. The have-nots would emit at will until they became haves.
Brazil was a have-not.
The twenty-four-page document that came from the Rio Earth Summit contained no binding requirements to reduce carbon emissions. The haves agreed only to provide detailed information on exactly what they would do “with the aim of returning individually or jointly to their 1990 levels these anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.”
All of that is ancient history, part of the long confusion of climate change policy. Now I am here on business, attending an oil and gas conference for environmental professionals. It is a week of afternoon cookies and evening beers and endless presentations. The conference is hosted by the Brazilian national oil company, Petrobras. Petrobras is among the world’s largest companies, larger by some measures than Shell or Chevron or BP. And they have just found new oil, more than five billion barrels of it, expanding their reserves by 50 percent. It is oil that they would like to bring to the surface, to burn, to convert to carbon dioxide.
A high-ranking Brazilian official talks about climate change, about carbon emissions, and about the five billion barrels of new wealth. The world must cut carbon emissions, he tells the audience of five hundred, but the cuts must come in the developed world. Countries like Brazil need time to develop. They must have the freedom to emit at will.
John Tyndall, Faraday’s friend and
A canvas fire hose stretches across the top of the mural toward a fire artifact figurine, a girl. The girl is surrounded by flames made from dichroic glass, glass that has been heated in the presence of metals, creating a metallic vapor that cools to form a crystal structure on the glass surface. Dichroic glass shimmers in surprising ways, playing with light. The fire artifact girl will be forever surrounded by dichroic flames, forever on the verge of rescue by firefighters.
In another part of the mural sits a glass bottle, deformed by heat, along with a wineglass, dented and twisted, perhaps from the photographer’s house, the glass that had been covered by ashes and was still hot four days after the fire.
Edward Abbey, reading Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy in his fire tower, looking out over a landscape that was not burning, would have come across a passage about urban fires. He may have underlined it because of his interest in fires, or he may have ignored it because of his place in the wilderness, far removed from cities. But here, in Santa Barbara, it is relevant. “How doth the fire rage,” wrote Burton, “that merciless element, consuming in an instant whole cities! What town of any antiquity or note hath not been once, again and again, by the fury of this merciless element, defaced, ruinated, and left desolate?”
Chapter 3
Cooked
I am in Rio de Janeiro. Last week, mudslides closed streets. People died, their homes swept away in rivers of mud. But the rain has stopped. The pavement steams. The eroded remains of ancient magma—spires of straight-up rock—tower above buildings and bays and beaches.
In 1992, the United Nations met here. The meeting became known as the Rio Earth Summit. More than a hundred national leaders attended along with nineteen thousand others who tagged along to offer advice. In a two-page preamble, the delegates acknowledged that climate change was a common concern of humankind and that human activities enhanced the greenhouse effect. Most of the carbon emissions, they said, came from developed countries. They divided the world into haves and have-nots, the developed and the undeveloped. The haves would try to hold carbon emissions at 1990 levels. The have-nots would emit at will until they became haves.
Brazil was a have-not.
The twenty-four-page document that came from the Rio Earth Summit contained no binding requirements to reduce carbon emissions. The haves agreed only to provide detailed information on exactly what they would do “with the aim of returning individually or jointly to their 1990 levels these anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.”
All of that is ancient history, part of the long confusion of climate change policy. Now I am here on business, attending an oil and gas conference for environmental professionals. It is a week of afternoon cookies and evening beers and endless presentations. The conference is hosted by the Brazilian national oil company, Petrobras. Petrobras is among the world’s largest companies, larger by some measures than Shell or Chevron or BP. And they have just found new oil, more than five billion barrels of it, expanding their reserves by 50 percent. It is oil that they would like to bring to the surface, to burn, to convert to carbon dioxide.
A high-ranking Brazilian official talks about climate change, about carbon emissions, and about the five billion barrels of new wealth. The world must cut carbon emissions, he tells the audience of five hundred, but the cuts must come in the developed world. Countries like Brazil need time to develop. They must have the freedom to emit at will.
John Tyndall, Faraday’s friend and
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