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Stefan Rahmstorf
When Professor Stefan Rahmstorf looked back from the Atlantic surf towards the French coast last Wednesday, the first sign something was amiss was a column of smoke rising over the forest. At that point, the wildfire was still distant; perhaps 20 kilometres away. But within two days, the scene around Lacanau-Océan had changed from holiday brightness to something he described as "totally surreal."
Rahmstorf, Head of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and a leading climate scientist, had arrived in France on 12 July for a summer break, spending a few days in Bordeaux before moving on to the coast. But by Friday afternoon, he told me, the blue sky above the coast had turned grey with smoke.
"The sun became glowing red, high up in the sky," Rahmstorf said. "It coloured the entire scenery just in this bright orange, which was totally surreal, like something from science fiction." He and his partner went up to the dunes, where he photographed the orange light filtering through the smoke. Rahmstorf subsequently posted photos and video of the scenes on his Bluesky social media account.
Gironde Fire Threatens Bordeaux As Evacuations Grow
Across south-western France, the scale of the emergency continues to grow. Reports on Monday said the Gironde fire has now burned at least 42,000 hectares, while more than 300,000 people had fled wildfires across France and Spain. The blaze is now around 15 kilometres from Bordeaux, with officials warning of erratic fire behaviour and renewed heat intensifying the risk.
For Rahmstorf, the decision to leave came before an official evacuation order for the coastal town where he was staying. His Airbnb host had told him the mayor of Lacanau-Océan would issue an update on Friday evening. But Rahmstorf and his partner had a train booked from Bordeaux to Germany, and they feared road access could be cut off.
"We decided to leave," he said. "We weren’t sure whether the fire would spread and block the way out."
That concern proved well-founded. When they took a taxi to Bordeaux on Friday night, he said, the main road from Lacanau-Océan to Bordeaux had been closed, forcing them to make a detour.
Climate Change Raises Wildfire Risk
Rahmstorf has long written and spoken about the way global heating increases wildfire risk. The physics, he said, are straightforward: higher temperatures drive greater evaporation, drying soils and vegetation and making landscapes more flammable. "More heat causes more drought by more evaporation," he said. "Soils dry out and the plants dry out."
That scientific understanding meant the event did not surprise him in the abstract: he had seen dynamics unfold elsewhere, including the Canadian wildfires that are sending smoke across North American cities. In Germany, where Rahmstorf lives, wildfire risk has also grown, including in his home state of Brandenburg. "This was an absolutely familiar problem to me," he said. "And so I was not surprised to see this happening."
ForbesJune Heatwave Cost U.K Economy More Than £1 Billion, Study FindsBy Jamie HailstoneBut familiarity did not lessen the force of experiencing it personally. Rahmstorf said the events in France should be understood alongside broader climate-driven extremes, including deadly heat. He referred to severe June heatwaves have caused thousands of excess deaths in Germany and France, and argued that political responses remain far too weak.
‘Every Additional Ton Of CO2 Emissions Is Going To Make This Worse’
"What I want people to take away is that we are basically in a race against time to get our emissions to zero," Rahmstorf said. "Every additional ton of CO2 emissions is going to make this worse."
He stressed that much of the carbon dioxide emitted today will remain in the atmosphere for millennia. "We can’t go back from the warming that we are causing now," he said. "It will affect us and our children and grandchildren for thousands of years to come, and this is a huge responsibility which I don’t think many policymakers understand."
Fossil Fuels At The Centre Of The Climate Crisis
Asked what role fossil fuels play in the climate crisis, Rahmstorf was unequivocal. "That is what is causing global warming: fossil fuel use. Though land-use change and deforestation also contribute."
He added that any attempt to weaken methane-reduction policies in Europe would be "a bad idea."
"We have to get out of these emissions as fast as we can," he said. "We can see the consequences not just with these fires, also these terrible heat waves we have had lately … We don’t have any time to lose to stop this from getting worse."
And yet the most striking part of Rahmstorf’s account was not the expert analysis, but the anger beneath it. After decades in which climate scientists have warned governments about the consequences of continued fossil fuel burning, he said, living through one of those consequences sharpened his frustration.
"After experiencing this directly, it makes me angry for the lack of response from the politicians," he said. "Climate scientists have been saying this for decades, that we need to get out of fossil fuels. The first IPCC report from 1990 said that it is certain that greenhouse gas emissions [cause warming]. And there is all this denial and lobbyism. This really makes me angry."
Why Wildfire Coverage Must Connect The Dots On Climate Change
Rahmstorf said he had not been closely monitoring international coverage of the fires, but he was aware that many media reports failed to mention the connection between wildfires and climate change.
That omission matters, he said, because the public tends not to relate to charts and data. "It’s taken me actually decades, being a physicist, to understand that most people are not like us," he said. "They don’t respond to data and graphs. They respond to stories and feelings that they can identify with."
ForbesHow Rising Climate Costs Are Changing How Companies Make Business DecisionsBy William Sisson | Paid ProgramFor a scientist who has spent much of his career warning about future risks—Rahmstorf and fellow authors of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, along with former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize—the orange beach at Lacanau was one of those stories made visible: a holiday coast under smoke, a red sun at noon, a road to Bordeaux already closed. The science was not new to him. But the future he had spent decades warning about was now churning overhead.
"It is important to use these events actually to somehow move climate policy forward," Rahmstorf said.
As Europe confronts another week of fire and destruction, Stefan Rahmstorf’s account is a reminder that the rapidly heating world has had more than enough warnings. What it lacks is action.
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