On Fire by Naomi Klein
Collections of previously published essays and speeches can be a mixed bag, but the sixteen pieces—plus a substantial, new introduction, itself worth the price of the book, and an epilogue detailing the Green New Deal—in Naomi Klein’s blistering On Fire (Simon & Schuster, $27) form not only a coherent picture of the state of the Earth, but, looking back over the last decade of climate change events, constitute an invaluable timeline of the increasing evidence of a climate crisis, our growing awareness of the need to act—and the failure of leaders to take the necessary steps. Written with her signature passion and eloquence, this book is vintage Klein. In reports from 2010’s BP Deepwater Horizon spill, the 2017 wildfires in British Columbia, and the long aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, she demonstrates how the “exploitation of individual workers” and “the decimation of individual mountains and rivers“ are both based on an “indifference to life” that has brought the planet itself to its knees. At the same time, though several World Climate Conferences have failed to curb carbon emissions, more people have organized to demand action. Klein finds hope in groups such as Extinction Rebellion, the Sunrise Movement, and, most of all, Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Octavio-Cortez.
