In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest

foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. Through the lens of this apocalyptic

conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—award-winning author

JOHN VAILLANT warns that this was not a unique event, but a shocking preview of

what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world. In his talk—as he did

in his book, one of the most critically lauded of the past year—Vaillant will take us on

a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry

and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by

modern forest fires, and into lives forever changed by these disasters.