Presenter: Stephen Pyne, Ph.D., Regents’ Professor and Distinguished Sustainability Scholar
Fire is an endemic feature of terrestrial life on Earth and an indelible attribute of human societies. For over 400 million years fire has evolved; it continues to evolve as human society changes its combustion habits. The greatest phase change came when people began to burn lithic, fossil fuels rather than living, surface combustibles. The relationship between fire and humanity shapes contemporary pyrogeography and underwrites the Anthropocene, which might aptly be described as a Fire Age.