BAGnewsOriginals: Fire Watching

I wanted to share this photo with you from BNN contributor Nina Berman. Nina has been working on a project about the consequences of climate change.

The image “British Columbia Fire watching, Notch Hill” represents one of the hundreds of fires that have been burning across the province this summer. According to Climate Ark, over 1,700 square kilometers have burned this fire season, more than double the average over the past seven years. Global warming not only contributes to more fires by causing disease, drought and even spawning plant life that fuel flames but, in a vicious cycle, fires themselves account for a sizable amount of the carbon dioxide being released each year into the atmosphere.

With climate change contributing to more intense and disastrous environmental conditions around the world, including intense and free burning firestorms or “mega-fires“, what’s haunting about the image, perhaps prophetic, is how it simultaneously connotes a feeling of “nuclear winter” and also a sheep-like sense of “come what may.”

(image: ©Nina Berman/NOOR, August 2009)