00:10Good evening. Thank you so much for joining us on the program today.
00:12What we're seeing now has been described by the French Prime Minister as a catastrophe on an unprecedented scale.
00:19Is this just a seasonal issue?
00:21No, I think it's once more a very strong signal that climate change is intensifying the conditions that make those very big fires and forest fires more likely.
00:39Droughts, extreme temperature, lack of rain for a long period.
00:44And these are coming very often and in many regions of the world with the climate change that is human caused.
00:56So we can only blame ourselves.
00:59So you mentioned the lack of rainfall. Is that the primary issue of what is causing these fires?
01:06It's a facilitating factor. It's not the only factor.
01:10Of course, you also need a burning material, material that can burn easily.
01:17But drought and the lack of rain for a long period, of course, facilitates that kind of fire.
01:24Also, strong winds can also facilitate the extension of those fires.
01:29So there's a number of conditions with the IPCC, the Integral Mental Panel of Climate Change,
01:34already in its report five years ago, said it would become more common with climate change.
01:40And unfortunately, we are seeing now the reality of that projection.
01:45So what can authorities do?
01:47Because we seem to have these problems year in and year out and still we have wildfires.
01:52Well, I don't think we're going to avoid wildfires completely.
02:00But I think the strategies to that, there are two big axes to what can be done.
02:07One is to update the strategies to combat the wildfires and to revisit those strategies
02:14in the light of the intensifying, facilitating conditions coming from climate change.
02:22And the other thing, and that is something that Greece, for example, has done recently,
02:27and they succeeded in decreasing by about one third the amount of wildfires they had until recently,
02:36updating their strategy to combat the fires and to prevent the extension, their extension when they are there.
02:43But the other axis is more upstream prevention of climate change itself.
02:49If we don't fight climate change much more than what we do today,
02:54we're going to have increasingly those kind of conditions.
02:59You spoke about dry vegetation, the conditions on the ground right now,
03:04which sort of facilitated the wildfire which we're seeing in the south of France.
03:08I remember a couple of years ago, there was a pilot project which was launched actually in France.
03:13To get goats on these, you know, to eat these shrubs,
03:17which would eventually go on to fan the flames of fires, essentially.
03:24And the goats was a cheap method of solving the problem.
03:27Have you heard about this?
03:29And if it is successful, why is it not more widespread?
03:32Well, I'm an expert on climate change.
03:36I'm not an expert in fighting wildfire conditions.
03:40But certainly, in general, de-shrubbing or decreasing the amount of shrubs likely to take fire easily
03:48and facilitate the extension of fire, whatever the method is,
03:52whether it's by goats or through other methods, is certainly a good idea.
03:56And if it can be done by goats in certain regions, why not?
03:59Yes, please, do that more if possible.
04:03But too many shrubs is very often a facilitating condition as well.
04:08And too little efforts are made by many citizens to decrease the amount of shrubs on their terrain.
04:16Because I have you here, and you're a climate expert, let me ask you a question.
04:20Because we have these intense fires now in the south of France.
04:25Last week it was in Greece.
04:26But at the same time, we've also had parts of the world that have experienced very, very heavy flooding.
04:32I'm thinking of northern India and Hong Kong.
04:34Is this the trend which we're going to continue to keep seeing?
04:39Yes, it's a bit paradoxical.
04:41And I understand that not everybody can easily grasp why this is related to climate change.
04:47But you have to see climate change due to all greenhouse gases,
04:52mostly CO2 coming from the burning of fossil fuels and from deforestation,
04:57as a kind of doping drug which is boosting the extremes.
05:02And some of the extremes are towards dryness in some parts of the world at some times.
05:09And at other times, in other regions of the world, it's towards more intense rain.
05:15I mean, we know, for example, that when climate is warming,
05:20for each degree Celsius additional,
05:23you have 7% more water vapor in the atmosphere.
05:27And so, when the conditions are met for that water vapor to condense,
05:31you can have more extreme rain.
05:35But the other side of that is that with climate change,
05:39you have more evaporation on the ground,
05:42and that facilitates droughts and dryness.
05:45So, you know, it's a combination of factors.
05:48But in general, climate change intensifies the extremes,
05:51both kind of extremes, the dry extremes and the wet extremes.
05:54Jean-Pascal, thank you so much for joining us on the program today.
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