'Many people continue to think Black Summer, the devastating bushfires of 2019-20, was an aberration and not a current reality. Science only confirms, however, these fires will be the “new normal” in the future. In the forceful The Fires Next Time: Understanding Australia’s Black Summer, scientists, environmentalists and climate change experts gravely chart the unprecedented destructiveness of this “megafire”: 24 million hectares of land incinerated, three billion perished animals and 33 people dead.' (Introduction)