The New Fire Regime

Wildfires are entering a dangerous new phase. In this episode Madrid-based guest Alfonso Soria joins our regular panel to examine the intensifying wildfire crises affecting Europe, North America, and the boreal North. The panel explores how extreme heat, prolonged drought, dry vegetation, erratic winds, and changing jet-stream patterns are creating larger, faster, and more destructive fires.

This video was recorded on August 5th, 2026, and published on August 9th, 2026, and represents the opinions of the discussion participants.

The conversation focuses especially on the severe fire situation in Spain and France, while connecting those events to growing risks in Canada, the United States, Siberia, and the Arctic. The speakers discuss fires that generate their own weather, spread embers far ahead of the flame front, threaten communities and infrastructure, and burn forests and soils that normally act as vital carbon stores. They also consider the roles of land management, rural depopulation, flammable tree monocultures, firefighting capacity, and early intervention.

Finally, the panel examines the wider consequences of the new fire regime: carbon and methane emissions, threats to boreal forests and permafrost, repeated evacuations and destruction of homes, and the prospect of an increasingly uninsurable world. The discussion argues that societies must address both immediate wildfire preparedness and the underlying fossil-fuel emissions driving a rapidly worsening climate emergency.

Links:

• Support Our Mission

• European wildfires in numbers: How record-breaking heatwaves have scorched the continent

• Canada on Fired (CEF Video)

• Europe’s Record‑Shattering Heat (CEF Video)

• State of Wildfires 2024–2025

• The Latest Data Confirms: Forest Fires Are Getting Worse

• Global Land Analysis & Discovery

• Arctic Wildfires Intensify Across Alaska, Siberia and Canada — A Growing Climate Concern

• Increasing frequency and intensity of the most extreme wildfires on Earth

• Sixth-generation wildfires: Why they are more dangerous and how to fight them

• FIRMS - Fire Information for Resource Management System

• European Forest Fire Information System - IFFIS

• Planetary Solvency (CEF Video)

• Oil firms reap billions in profit amid Iran war and climate crisis, new analysis finds

• Cabinet approves ‘Samudra Manthan’ - National Offshore Exploration Scheme with an outlay of ₹84,084 crore

• Heat waves and annual death rates in older adults in the United States

• Suspected heatstroke kills three lions at Japan zoo

Guest Panelist:

• Alfonso Soria - is a Spanish Environmental Activist who was educated and worked as a veterinarian for approximately 8 years before becoming an air traffic controller in Madrid. For the last 30 years, he has been an active member of a national NGO for river ecosystem protection called “Rios Con Vida” which in English means “Rivers with life”.

Regular Panelists:

• Dr. Peter Carter - MD, Expert IPCC Reviewer and the director of the Climate Emergency Institute.

• Paul Beckwith - Climate Systems Scientist. Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Paleoclimatology Laboratory as well as at Carleton University.

• Herb Simmens - Author, Co-founder of the Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC), Climate Emergency Board Member and former college instructor.

Podcast Production:

• Charles Gregoire - Electrical Engineer, Webmaster and IT prime for FacingFuture.Earth & the Climate Emergency Forum; Climate Reality Leader

• Heidi Brault - Climate Reality Leader, BA(Psychology), Library & Information Technician Diploma - Video production and website assistant - Organizer and convener, Metadata technician, COP Team Lead for FacingFuture.Earth and the Climate Emergency Forum.

Attributions:

Background Music:

• Title: Through the City II
• Author: Crowander
• Source: crowander.com

Podcast thumbnail background image:

• Title: Massive Forest Fire Engulfing Trees
• Author: Fedor Lunin
• Source: Source Link
• License: Vecteezy Pro Standard