Welcome To The Unimaginable - John Vaillant Has Stories For All Of Us From A Hotter World

John Vaillant is today’s guest, and this was a very special conversation that sat within a few days of spending a lot of time together and riffing on everything from new types of fires to debating the merits and qualities of RM Williams or Blundstone boots. John is a renowned author and writer, who for over thirty years has plied his trade in book writing and journalism. His narrative non fiction book The Tiger was an international best seller and included in GQ’s 50 best books of the 21st century. Almost all of our conversation today though centres on his most recent book, Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World. It’s one of the very best books I’ve ever read, but don’t take it from me - Fire Weather won a Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, while it was named one of the best books of 2023 by the New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, TIME, National Public Radio, Slate, and Smithsonian.

John was recently in town for a relatively short tour and I had the great pleasure of meeting him, hanging out and introducing him to a group of financial service employees too. As so much of the Northern Hemisphere continues to burn in yet another record breaking fire season, John’s recollection of a gigantic fire in Fort McMurray in northern Canada in 2016 brings to life the horror and terror of what bigger, faster, more powerful and frankly, just plain new, fire systems mean for our and the planet’s future. Through this book John has found himself a popular go-to for media outlets around the world who are looking to better understand what record breaking after unprecedented fire means, how they form and where we’re headed.

Here in Australia we are sadly all too familiar with the devastating effects of massive fires - but what if that is just the beginning of what is to come? How can we imagine a fire season worse than 2019/20? If wealthy parts of Los Angeles can be wiped off the map, where’s safe? If the climate is changing everywhere to create new conditions for fire, then perhaps we need to prepare ourselves for not just imagery, but experiences anywhere that look like the pages from the Book of Revelation. This is truly horrifying stuff. I can’t imagine the experience of being in or around the type of fire John chronicles in Canada and what we continue to see just about everywhere. But that’s part of John’s message - we need to work out how to not only imagine the unimaginable, but prepare for it.

John’s gift is in story telling. Be careful what you wish for though, bringing someone of John’s calibre to the realities of a changing climate, what’s already happened and where we’re headed may be too much to contemplate. 

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