Jordan Thomas is an anthropologist and former wildland firefighter who researches climate change, disaster, and environmental justice. He is the author of the National Book Award finalist, When It All Burns, a personal account of firefighting and a sweeping history of America’s relationship with wildfire. .

This talk 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.

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