A Review of A Good War

The story begins with the parallels between World War Two and our current climate emergency.  The author, Mr. Seth Klein, styles them as existential threats of somewhat similar nature.  He says we mobilized fully to fight the war and we have it within us to do so again to win the climate stabilization battle.

Recommendation

I think many, especially politicians and ordinary Canadians, could benefit from reading this book.  Surely, it has flaws—its editor broke many rules mine won’t—and conceptual bents, but it is a captivating tale.

This book could particularly benefit children in the senior years of high school.  They will soon graduate into the consumer society and the messy political world that tries to control it.  Seeing the alternatives, all readers—especially youths—can be better equipped to understand the world we will experience in the next few decades and to demand action from others around them.

Rating

This book is an exploration of the history of Canada’s greatest national challenge—World War Two—and how the lessons from that era could help our country change the course of the rest of this century.  We are headed for a very bad experience—with fires, floods, storms, disease, food insecurity, and waves of climate refugees—but Mr. Klein lays out his policy path toward a better experience.

I found that this book rates 8 out of 10.  The historical perspectives are illuminating and certainly could be relevant to the politics of today.  The elements of what needs to be done are reasonably comprehensive, specific, and realistic.  However, I detected two important weaknesses in Mr. Klein’s arguments:

1. I doubt Canadians can as yet be rallied to fight themselves—which is a valid way of styling this climate fight—especially if we move to proportional representation (PR), which he recommends.[1] Recent protests against simple public health measures to prevent the spread of the deadly SARS-CoV-2 virus in our communities point to the fact that there is likely a significant portion of the populace that is not ready to join this fight and to be recalcitrant, even disruptive, in its opposition.
2. I doubt that hope will even be helpful in meeting the technical and political challenges around climate change. Instead, the grim determination shown by our forces during the war is what is most needed.

[1] The results of the federal election in 2021 showed that extreme right-wing parties would now be represented in Parliament under a PR system.  I suspect this is not something Mr. Klein would view as helpful given he discusses how PR could give Greens more influence.

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