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.