Changemakers Speakers Series: John Vaillant

FIRE AND OIL: Rising to the Challenge of a More Flammable World

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Humans, aided by the fossil fuel industry (the “fire industry”), have altered the chemistry of our planet and its atmosphere in profound, life-changing ways. As a result, we are now, in real time, crossing a threshold into a new climate regime marked by previously unimagined extremes and whipsawing instability. How we conceptualize and respond to this unprecedented challenge is of immediate and paramount importance, not just to our psyches and our souls, but to the future of everyone on Earth. In this Changemakers talk, John Vaillant will offer ways of seeing, feeling – and meeting – this epochal moment.

John Vaillant is an author and freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and The Walrus, among others. His first book, The Golden Spruce, was a bestseller and won several awards, including the Governor General’s and Writers’ Trust awards for non-fiction. His second non-fiction book, The Tiger, won the B.C. Achievement Award for Non-Fiction, was a bestseller, and has been published in 16 languages. In 2014 Vaillant won the Windham-Campbell Prize, a global award for non-fiction. In 2015, he published his first work of fiction, The Jaguar’s Children, which was long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC and Kirkus Fiction Prizes, and was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His latest book, Fire Weather (Knopf, 2023), is a #1 national bestseller; it has won the Baillie Gifford Prize (UK). Fire Weather was also a finalist for the National Book Award (US), and the Writers’ Trust Non-fiction Prize. It has been named one of the ten best books of 2023 by The New York Times, among many other prominent publications.