We live in an age of fire. The list of its political manifestations is long: the image of revolutionary sparks ready to ignite the spirits of the oppressed and car bombings or self-immolations at political protests, wars and incendiary speech meant to incite hatred toward others, the “melting pot” of immigration and political kitchens where policy matters were decided by the tightest circle of ministers. But something else is going on with the politics of fire today, something worth reflecting upon so as to realize where our world ablaze is heading.
The prospects of the entire planet going up in flames are at their highest. Global heating, well in excess of internationally agreed-upon limits, and continued reliance on massive incineration of matter for energy production; the warming not only of the atmosphere but also of the oceans; hybrid warfare, now involving AI, and the recently reignited nuclear arms race; inflammatory rhetoric immediately going viral thanks to the pervasiveness of information technologies are so many signs of a devastating fire swallowing up not (only) the world but the earth itself, with its atmosphere and ecosystems, habitable places and previously inaccessible fossil reserves. The forest fires raging everywhere, from LA in 2025 to Spain and Canada in the summer of 2024, are a case in point here.
We are no longer sensing the transformative, positive effects of fire, be it the flames of technology or be it a revolutionary conflagration capable of instituting another economic and political mode of existence. In combination, the reignited arms race and the non-enforceable nature of international climate treatises amount to a scorching heat devoid of any light.
The contemporary flames have a decidedly apocalyptic feel to them. This is the case, in part, because the ashes they produce are not fertile; they suffocate, rather than nourish, the very possibility of the future. The byproducts of mass-scale industrial activity and nuclear waste are just two examples of such death-bearing ashes. Devastating as they were, “scorched earth” warfare tactics still contained the promise of a new beginning in the future, bearing as they did a close resemblance to the myth of the phoenix, reborn from the smoldering remains of its previous life. Today’s “scorched world” no longer sustains this hope.
