Fire
Our Rebel Library’s recommendations this month are themed around fire and include Vaillant’s award-winning book on the Alberta fires in Canada in 2016, Dalby takes a look at a future for humans without burning stuff, and Neale examines how a Green New Deal might meet the future needs of people and planet, plus a guide to ecoactivism for young adults and a wildlife mystery for younger readers.
– February 2025
Non-Fiction
Fire Weather by John Valliant
In May 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, the hub of Canada’s oil industry, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster turned entire neighbourhoods into firebombs and drove 90,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the story of this apocalyptic conflagration, John Vaillant explores the past and the future of our ever-hotter, more flammable world.
For hundreds of millennia, fire has been a partner in our evolution, shaping culture and civilization. Yet in our age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in ways never before witnessed. Vaillant delves into the intertwined histories of the oil industry and climate science, the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern wildfires, and the lives forever changed by these disasters.
‘Astounding on every page. John Vaillant is one of the great poetic chroniclers of the natural world’ David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth.
Future on Fire: Capitalism and the Politics of Climate Change by David Camfield
Climate change is already affecting millions of people. Governments talk about taking action to limit global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, but the greenhouse gas emissions allowed by their policies have the Earth on track to far exceed that by the end of the century—a truly disastrous path. Visionary plans abound for how to slash emissions and improve society at the same time, including various Green New Deals, but how can we make these urgently needed changes?
Future on Fire argues that a just transition from fossil fuels and other drivers of climate change will not be delivered by business people or politicians who support the status quo. Electing green left leaders will not be enough to overcome opposition from capitalists and state bureaucrats. Only the power of disruptive mass social movements has the potential to pressure governments to change, so supporters of climate justice should commit to building them. Confronting the question “What if warming above 2° becomes unavoidable?” and refusing to despair, David Camfield argues that even a ravaged planet is worth fighting for—and that ultimately the only solution to the ecological crisis created by capitalism is a transition to ecosocialism.
Pyromania: Fire and Geopolitics in a Climate-disrupted World by Simon Dalby
We are the only species that uses fire. It has determined how we have made our home on this planet and it has propelled us to the role of the dominant species in the biosphere. But at the heart of contemporary climate change is the process of combustion. Simon Dalby explores what a life without burning things might look like, and how we might get there.
Fires make the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is heating the planet, melting the ice sheets, changing weather patterns and making wildfires worse. Our civilization is burning things, especially fossil fuels, at prodigious rates. So much so that we are now heading towards a future “Hothouse Earth” with a climate that is very different from what humans have known so far.
By focusing on fire and our partial control over one key physical force in the earth system, that of combustion, Simon Dalby is able to ask important and interesting questions about us as humans, including different ways of thinking about how we live, and how we might do so differently in the future. Simply put, there is now far too much “firepower” loose in the world and we need to think much harder about how to live together in ways that don’t require burning stuff to do so.
Fight the Fire: Green New Deals and Global Climate Jobs by Jonathan Neale
Fight the Fire is a book that asks what would a green new deal look like that meets the needs of people and the planet? It addresses both the global South and North and is written in a conversational style using non technical language.
Neale is clear that to avoid cataclysmic climate change, fossil fuels need to go altogether – oil, gas and coal – replaced by renewable forms of energy such as wind and solar, he writes, “The key to stopping climate change will be stopping emissions”.
Using logical argument and evidence the book constructs a global analysis, revealing how all parts of the problem are everywhere and solutions interconnected. Focussing on causes rather than symptoms of climate change it identifies the social relations of globalizing capitalism as the major obstacle to sustainability and the need for connected mass movements.
Fiction
Even If Everything Ends by Jens Liljestrand
Raging wildfires sweep through the Swedish countryside – turning holidaymakers into climate refugees. And yet, against this hellscape, life goes on. Marriages collapse; teenagers fall in love; parents succumb to midlife crises; children rebel.
As society starts to crumble, the fates of four very different characters intertwine. Didrik, a father of three and media consultant, finds that his misguided efforts to be the hero that saves his family only make things worse. Melissa, a climate change denying influencer, is determined to live for the moment, despite it all. Andre, the bitter teenage son of an international sports star, uses the erupting violence to orchestrate his own personal revenge. And Vilja, a once self-absorbed teenage girl steps up in the face of all this adult ineptitude, to organise and resist. This novel asks us to face up to one question: how will you decide to live, even if everything ends?
Young Adult
Fighting in a World on Fire: The Next Generation’s Guide to Protecting the Climate and Saving Our Future by Andreas Malm
Young people are inheriting a world of climate catastrophe. Young people are also one of the strongest forces leading movements for climate justice, and to halt the fossil fuel emissions that are making our Earth unlivable. As Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for the Future movement have made clear, solutions offered by adults are far too little, far too late: the measures in unenforceable international agreements won’t halt our reliance on fossil fuels, or take the drastic steps humans need to take in order to keep our planet liveable.
In this adaptation of Andreas Malm’s best-selling book on the need for a bolder, more confrontational climate justice movement, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, these urgent questions are brought to the most important audience of all: those who are growing up in a world on fire.
Books for Children
Eco Rangers: Wildfire Rescue by Candice Lemon-Scott
Young readers who love mysteries and the environment will love the action-packed story of Ebony and Jay, best friends who love to rescue wildlife. After a devastating wildfire in the bushland, Ebony and Jay are doing their best to find and rescue injured animals. Readers will help Ebony and Jay search for clues and nurse a possum back to health.
Poetry
POEM OF THE MONTH
A ring of fire: a lament for Australia January 2020
by Anne Enith Cooper
Red skies red seas red rivers
the blood red blaze rips through homes and forest
Kathy packs up the ute her girl cries
my red shoes my red shoes where my red shoes
Kathy screams just get in! Slow moving koalas perish
in treetops wombats burrow deeper a stunned
kangaroo stands between flaming shrubs
fast moving wallabies bound for rocky highlands
roads are closed power lines fail fuel tanks run dry
at the coast families huddle in boats
Kathy sits on the beach rocking her daughter
who sobs my red shoes my red shoes
contracts and denial ensure the rape
of the rich red earth continues while
high winds threaten to close the ring.
Australia meet New Zealand in the third test
cricket players wear black armbands
as tribute to bushfire victims and firefighters
umpires monitor visibility and air quality
in the stadium under smoke haze —
only the referee can call the game.
As the global pandemic began, devastating and intense wildfires burned in many places in Australia. It has since been estimated they affected over 24 million hectares of land and destroyed 3000 buildings, mostly homes. In addition it is estimated 3 billion animals were killed or displaced while 400 people died from inhaling bushfire smoke.
Our memories are short, this poem is a reminder of that time and an attempt to bring a close up to the tragic events unfolding in January 2000 in Australia. It asks: how do you write about catastrophe? Are we still racing towards globalised climate catastrophe at an alarming rate in our red shoes? It’s not cricket, it’s critical. A version of this poem appears in seedsandfuses.co.uk
Contact our Librarian if you would like themed book lists to support teaching about climate change.
We’re always looking for contributors to our growing collection of literature to explain and explore the climate and biodiversity emergency. If you’re a writer or poet and would like to share your work or ideas, please get in touch! Contact mattroselibrary@gmail.com for prose or poetsrebelxr@gmail.com for poetry.