Book Reviews for Writers: John Vaillant’s ‘Fire Weather’

After reading ‘Fire Weather’ I was depressed and demoralized.
I think of walking through Angkor Wat in Siem Reap Cambodia, impressed by the temples and stone buildings surrounded by huge stone walls miles out, that would have been the city limits centuries ago, and while marveling at the immense wonders, the craftsmanship, and the stories that the carvings, buildings and statues told, also having a sense of foreboding disaster as the nagging thought comes, ‘What happened here?’
Are we living in Pompeii before the eruption? Are we close to a cultural and social collapse? That is what I felt when I finished reading the book.

John Vaillant’s ‘Fire Weather’ begins with the 2016 Fort McMurray fire but develops into a book on the oil industry, politics, and climate change. It is a little depressing, although he tries to end with some upbeat talk about resilience and ‘Viriditas’, (Latin, literally “greenness,” formerly translated as “viridity”[1]) He points out how much of the petroleum industry is in relative decline, but not that fossil fuel usage is still growing. Oil, Coal and Natural Gas: They supply approximately 80% of the world’s energy. One hundred million barrels per day of oil is used in the world. That is not decreasing.
Something like the world economy is not turned around quickly. But I don’t think nearly enough is being done.

The lack of footnotes bothered me. There are notes at the back, but not in the text. Maybe it was just the paperback that had this? There were a few dubious statements that I thought should have been supported. The fiction that governments subsidize the petroleum industry, over regular capital tax breaks every industry gets, when the industry actually provides billions of dollars of tax revenues to municipal, provincial and federal coffers, plus billions of dollars in wages and purchases with those taxes added in, was the first of many.
The consensus that we are all using too much carbon was a given, but that the two biggest offenders, India and China, get a pass wasn’t mentioned. It is all a Western/Colonial problem for Vaillant.
I wished there was a map with time-lines included. I had trouble picturing where things were happening on the ground.

A good book, if spotty.

November 30, 2024 at 3:27 PM
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