Fire is a key physical process on earth, one that humans alone have worked out how to partly control. 

Fires make the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is heating the planet, melting the ice sheets, changing weather patterns and making wildfires worse. 

The power to use fire has transformed human societies and propelled us to the role of the dominant species in the biosphere. Now as the products of the combustion of fossil fuels are accumulating in the atmosphere the climate is changing rapidly. Our civilization is burning things, especially fossil fuels, at prodigious rates. So much so that we are now heading towards a future "Hothouse Earth" with a climate that is very different from what humans have known so far.

Simon Dalby argues that humanity’s success in using fire has radically changed our circumstances, and unless we work out how to constrain this firepower soon, our success with combustion threatens to undo what we have created. 

By focusing on fire and our partial control over one key physical force in the earth system, that of combustion, Dalby is able to ask important and interesting questions about us as humans, including different ways of thinking about how we live, and how we might do so differently in the future. Simply put, there is now far too much "firepower" loose in the world and we need to think much harder about how to live together in ways that don't require burning stuff to do so.

The current challenge is to make a new economy for life after fossil fuels if a liveable earth is to be made available for future generations.