Water is life and biomass is what life does with water. As biological mass, biomass is nature’s currency, produced from water, sunlight, and nutrients. But forest biomass borrows against water and over time, the demand outpaces the supply and a biomass debt accumulates. The function of fire is to pay the bill and balance the budget. In fire-adapted ecosystems, the historical biomass budget was balanced by a fire rhythm maintained by lightning and by First Nations land management practices. When colonization tipped this balance and removed the regular fire payments, the debt sky-rocketed in dry forests around the world. The penalties and interest, in…