The outside first.
2023 was a bad year for wildfires, 11.9 million hectares burned including nine million hectares of tree cover.
By the end of the fire season, in 2024, Canada had recorded the second highest wildfire carbon emissions on the GFAS dataset, largely above average and only below the unprecedented values of 2023.
The JEC Democratic Majority's analysis finds that wildfires in the United States cause between $394 billion and $893 billion dollars in damages annually, which is equivalent to between 2-4% of U.S. GDP.
So what are the solutions?
It’s all bad news and it’s also strange as we know how to mitigate a lot of the factors that lead to wildfires. This study is revealing, the author shows how sexism and classism meant that traditional practices in Italy that reduced fire risk were forgotten and even criminalised. Leaf litter was a resource, it was collected and used as bedding for sheep and also as mulch for olive trees. Grazing sheep kept the grass short and small branches and brush were collected to be used for heating and cooking. The locals would occasionally do controlled burns. The countryside was inhabited in a different way to today, there were more people and they were present to put out fires before they became conflagrations. This changed from the 1960s onwards when people started to move to urban areas increasingly. Myopic government policies banned controlled burning and leaf collection was seen as peasant agriculture that needed to be replaced by so-called modern systems.
This isn’t the first study to point out the link between sheep numbers and wildfire risk. This study from Switzerland came up with similar results to the one above: more sheep, goats, and people meant fewer wildfires. Again, government-enforced changes to land management led to fewer animals and people and more planted commercial forests, which has led to more wildfires of increased severity.
Peasants knew what they were doing, but peasants have a low perceived social status, even more so today. Traditional knowledge and practices that had worked for centuries were denigrated and abandoned. Encouraging people to re-inhabit the countryside as shepherds and goat-herders and re-appropriate traditional techniques is a priority. So too is changing their perceived social status, they would be protecting lives and property and producing food. This means that they are very important and therefore of high social status.
The inside
Inflammation (from Latin: inflammatio) is part of the biological response of body tissues to harmful stimuli, such as pathogens, damaged cells, or irritants.[1][2] The five cardinal signs are heat, pain, redness, swelling, and loss of function (wikipedia)
Inflammation is a mechanism used by our bodies to protect themselves. This is a good thing but when it becomes chronic then it’s not. It leads to increased risks of health problems including heart disease, cancer diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and autoimmune and neurodegenerative disorders. It also reduces life expectancy, it disrupts the dopamine system and this can lead to reduced motivation and a range of psychiatric disorders. Systemic chronic inflammation (SCI) in childhood can lead to psychosis and depression in early adulthood.
Our environments, physical inactivity, poor diet, sleep loss, environmental and industrial toxicants, and psychological stress provoke systemic chronic inflammation.
Diet is a major factor, almost six in 10 Americans 57%, have pro-inflammatory diets. Processed and in particular ultra-processed foods are pro-inflammatory. Pro-inflammatory diets lead to a 84% higher risk of dementia. Excessive consumption of sugar is highly inflammatory.
So what are the solutions?
Minimally processed or non-processed foods such as whole grains, green leafy vegetables, legumes, fatty fish, and berries are examples of anti-inflammatory foods. Food campaigns are only slightly effective, price and low socio-economic status are major problems. That said, some countries have generally lower disposable incomes yet the citizens tend to favour home cooking and fresh ingredients. This would seem to indicate that time and the loss of a home-cooking culture is also a major factor in food choice. In many countries, so-called convenience foods and pre-prepared dishes are pushed on people and this has displaced home cooking.
Eating more nuts is helpful, 5 or more servings a week can reduce SCI and even more so when the nuts partially replace red meat and processed meats.
These dietary recommendations are even more important for older people. The gut microbiome tends to change with aging and this can tend to lead to more leaky intestines which means that more bacterial products enter the bloodstream and provoke inflammation.
Green and black tea as well as cocoa contain anti-inflammatory molecules so a cuppa can be a good thing.
Sleeping better, meditation, yoga, and intermittent fasting also help reduce systemic chronic inflammation.
Reducing environmental and industrial toxicants is a high priority, business as usual can’t continue, it’s making us sick. Addressing this means changing our industrial systems, it means a much more precautionary approach to any new synthetic molecules and industrial processes. The idea that we can just carry on producing stuff, releasing it into the environment, finding that this causes problems, and then trying to find ways of dealing with said problems is nonsensical. Turning more towards a precautionary approach based on the Permaculture ethics of people-care and Earth-care would help stop us from creating more problems. “Will, what we propose, look after the Earth and it’s systems and look after people and future generations”? If it’s not the case for one, the other or both then we don’t go ahead.
And finally, trees! People living in neighbourhoods with more trees and bushes suffer less from inflammation. There is a biomarker called high-sensitivity C-reactive protein which is used as a measure of inflammation. People in areas with more trees etc have lower levels of this protein than those living in vegetation deserts. Many studies have shown how ‘nature’ is good for our health. Even a two-hour ‘dose’ can go a long way to improving our health and wellbeing. It reduces our stress levels, our anxiety, improves our mood and leads us to have more positive emotions. It’s also good for our cognitive functions, including memory.
We get told to “get out into nature, visit a park or forest” and the advice is solid but the question is, why do we have to travel to get our dose? Why can’t everyone just step outdoors and be immediately surrounded by ‘nature’? Why are so many towns and cities ‘nature deserts’?
We need to eat more fresh fruit, nuts, and vegetables, we also need much more green space in urban areas. The two would seem to coincide nicely. Notre Dame in Paris partially burnt down and has been rebuilt, the total cost was around 700 million euros. 2000 artisans and 250 businesses were involved in this reconstruction. We can only imagine how Paris, as a whole, could have been transformed had that money and those people been tasked with fully greening the city. The environmental, social, and health benefits would have been enormous. Notre Dame is a major tourist attraction and brings in 12-15 million euros a year. Air pollution alone in Paris is estimated to cost 1602 euros per person per year. Multiply this figure by the number of citizens and we get a total cost of just under 3.5 billion euros per year, slightly more than gets brought in by Notre Dame. Yet the resources of a nation were put to its reconstruction and people living nearby continue to become ill and die due to the pollution.
That should be enough to inflame anyone.