How to be a Climate Optimist: Blueprints for a Better World
By Chris Turner

Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World
By John Vaillant

Reviewed by Elizabeth May and John Kidder

Two recent books illuminate the climate debate with contrasting and complementary lights.

Chris Turner’s 2022 book, How to Be a Climate Optimist, won the 2023 Shaughnessy Cohen prize for political writing. That alone establishes its place of pride on any Canadian shelf. More recently released, John Vaillant’s Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World is beyond timely,  as Canada experiences massive fires from British Columbia to Nova Scotia – eight provinces and one Territory in crisis.

Both writers are skilled, knowledgeable and eloquent. The Albertan, claims to be a “plausible optimist”; the British Columbian is profoundly a pessimist. Both create challenges for a new understanding of the word “optimist”.

Here is how optimist Turner sees our future:

“The world will develop and implement better systems and technologies to meet our daily needs and reduce our global greenhouse gas emissions to somewhere very near zero in this century. It likely won’t happen in time to halt the permanent alteration of many of the planet’s ecosystems and prevent significant dislocation and suffering for millions of people.”

“Permanent alteration of many of the planet’s ecosystems”? “Significant dislocation and suffering for millions of people?” That’s how the optimist sees things.

Turner believes that fossil fuels will soon cease to be humanity’s primary source of energy, thus averting the worst outcomes of climate change. Living in Calgary, he has observed the rise of the fossil business and its government support. He understands the harm being done to ecosystems and to humanity by burning coal, oil and gas. He sees how fast technology and markets are moving to renewable power. He has experienced governments in other parts of the world that have affected business and citizen behaviour to speed the transition. He thinks governments and some companies are sincerely trying to solve the problem, and are moving as fast as is politically possible.

Turner draws hope from past willingness of Big Oil to adopt climate goals: recent events undermine even that. Since the price hikes allowed by the war in Ukraine, Shell, BP and others have disavowed their “commitments” to reduced emissions, fossil revenue is 14 percent of Canada’s exports and rising, the Liberal government continues to support billions for pipelines and fossil infrastructure, provincial governments love their hoped-for LNG exports, and various ministers continue to accept new fossil development. The oil and gas business is being disrupted worldwide by the plummeting costs and increasing efficiencies of renewable energy. So far, the commercial and political drive in Canada to burn even more, to get it while the getting’s still good, seems unaffected. The companies and governments that Turner hopes are allies seem, at best, fair-weather friends.

Turner’s call for a “plausible optimism” starts with a chilling acknowledgement of the damage already done and the unavoidable harm to come. He allows no room for vain hopes that everything will turn out all right. There will be no “win”, but we can optimistically hope for a possible avoidance of the worst case. The best possible outcome is a stop-loss scenario. Turner should be thanked for putting it so plainly – there’s no avoidance here. 

Vaillant’s Fire Weather describes a world increasingly on fire. Humans’ use of fire has grown exponentially over the last hundred years or so, thanks to coal, oil and gas. Vaillant calls our age the “Petrocene”, a “historically brief experiment with fossil fuel-driven civilization.” The addiction to fossils has super-charged the climate and sparked increased frequency and severity of wildfires around the world. Seeing little sign that such disasters will cause a meaningful change in direction, he blames the industry itself. The misinformation of fossil companies shows that they will keep on pushing for short-term profit. And governments love the revenues.

Vaillant has less patience than Turner for governments and none for oil companies. His exquisite and terrifying reportage on the fires that destroyed Fort MacMurray, his contempt for writing “unprecedented” to describe events anticipated for decades, his disdain for our apparent inability to learn, his unequivocal statements that “fire weather” is now baked in to the future – none of this is optimistic.   He likes a suggestion from Cristian Proistosescu at the University of Illinois: Rather than calling June 2023 the hottest June in the last hundred years, call it the coolest June for the next few hundred.    

And Vaillant’s “bright side” optimism statement outdoes even Turner’s.

“On the bright side, life — in one form or another — has always won out against the unregulated, uber-consuming impulses of fire and its most durable byproducts ash, methane and carbon dioxide. That there will be life at the end of the Petrocene is a certainty, but whose, how much and where is less clear.”

Writing in 2021/22, Turner cited psychologist Daniel Gilbert that climate change had not engaged the four primary triggers of humanity’s threat response: 1) it is not a direct personal threat; 2) it’s not happening right now; 3) it’s not abrupt; 4) it is not, in most people’s estimation, immoral.

Perhaps 2023 will change that. Fires and smoke  are a direct personal threat to people in New York City, Washington and, Philadelphia, as well as Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Halifax. They are happening right now. They seem abrupt to people who have not been watching. That’s three of the four triggers. The fourth, the moral argument, seems increasingly obvious — UN Secretary-General António Guterres says “the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness.”

Each book makes climate change personal, immediate and abrupt. They differ on the moral element.  Vaillant is unequivocal – with full knowledge, companies are doing enormous harm to the common weal of this and future generations, and loving the near-term profits. Turner thinks some companies and some governments are doing the best they can. Readers will make their own determinations. 

Both writers are genuinely concerned for the future of the planet. Both foresee the ultimate demise of fossil fuels as the world’s primary source of power. Each acknowledges that, despite full awareness of the outcomes we observe today, companies and governments continue to support and believe in growing the fossil industry. Turner believes that is changing, Vaillant not so much.

Both books are valuable reading and excellent contributions to the literature. Both are full of savage prognostication of damages to ecosystems and people. Each sees the transition from oil and gas as inevitable. Each calls for governments to quit that business in the knowledge that its products are increasingly unviable. Both should be required reading for policy makers and voters. 

Elizabeth May is the Leader of the Green Party of Canada and MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands. John Kidder is a former range ecologist and technology entrepreneur who writes about climate change and energy policy. They co-authored Climate Change for Dummies (Toronto, John Wiley and Sons, 2020).