Jan 15, 2025
5. February 7, 2026 at 3 PM ET: Jordan Thomas - Climate Change, Wildfires, & Health Impacts
Jordan's presentation draws on frontline experience from California’s wildfires to examine the structural factors shaping the health impacts of climate change. Wildfires are now among the United States’ deadliest climate disasters, with smoke exposure alone contributing, by conservative estimates, to more than ten thousand deaths each year. Wildland firefighters work, live, and sleep on the edges of these fires for months, providing an embodied vantage from which to understand this trend. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and three years of wildland firefighting experience, I trace the historical, political, and sociocultural factors that shape climate impacts and concentrate them on some people and places with disproportionate violence.
