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This book redefines a geological age, the Anthropocene, where humans have had such a profound influence over the natural world that their presence is recorded in geological strata all over the globe, to the Pyrocene, which began when people started using fire to serve their needs. As long as fuel was available on the landscape and oxygen was present in the atmosphere, the world has always known fire. Once humans came along, they learned how to control and manipulate fire to suit their needs. Because of fire's ability to integrate the complex relationships that shape ecological systems, humanity's use of fire began to reshape those systems. It opened up a greater variety of food available to people from cooking, and it allowed people to migrate into colder regions of the planet where they could use fires to keep warm. More recently, humans have learned to exploit fuels from past millennia in the form of fossil fuels to drive its industry, which transfers carbon from long ago from deep geological reservoirs into today's atmosphere causing a massive disruption in our climate. Just as the accumulation of ice pushed the Earth into an ice age (the Pleistocene), humanity's growing need for fire--particularly this latter type of fire--is pushing Earth into a fire age; the Pyrocene.

Part of the problem with this third type of fire (fossil fuel burning) is that it's being used to fuel equipment to suppress the first type of fire (natural fire). Natural fire is an important feature of terrestrial ecosystems. It clears out dead underbrush and liberates nutrients locked in dead biomass, providing access to sunlight and nutrients required for ecological and agricultural rejuvenation. When natural fires are suppressed, fuels accumulate such that when fire finally arrives it ravages instead of rejuvenates. We now tend to think about fire as a disturbance that requires human intervention, rather than a necessary ecological feature of natural systems.

Fire transmutes stubble and slash into accessible nutrients and typically stimulates nitrogen-fixing organisms. The alternative? Manure and artificial fertilizers. Fire can burn away the unwanted vegetation at least long enough to plant a year or two of crops. The alternative? Chemical herbicides and tractors. Fire sweeps away and smokes away, for a time, problem species. The alternative? Chemical pesticides. Fire does all this in a single process of flaming and smoldering. The alternative? There is none. In intensive cultivation, there is no desire to achieve all these outcomes, only those few that maximize production.

Science has finally come around to recognizing the value of fire, and the profoundly consequential effects of liberating fossil carbon into today's atmosphere. We are finally in the early days of a global transition that will reduce the quantity of greenhouse gasses that we release to the atmosphere. However, that transition does not consider how we can re-establish a healthy relationship with fire. As the pace of this global transition increases, we would be wise to consider fire as an ally instead of a foe, and make use of its powerful integrative capacity to help restore our damaged world.

Although the writing can be a bit saccharine at times, this book offers a unique perspective of past, present, and future fire and offers several insights into what we can do to use it to secure a sustainable future. Having said that, I'm not convinced that the concept of a Pyrocene usurps that of an Anthropocene inasmuch as it is complementary to it. Fire has always existed since plants invaded land. In the end, it was humans who dug up old coal, oil, and bitumen to transfer ancient carbon into future atmospheres. As the author argues convincingly, fire is a net force of good in the world, but its irresponsible use by humans has led to the ecological turmoil we face today. The agency of this ecological abuse rests squarely with humans, best captured by the Anthropocene (Greek "anthropo" = man) concept. What this author defines as the Pyrocene is but a symptom, albeit an important one, of the Anthropocene.

Write for Life is ostensibly a six-week program to lift struggling writers out of any kind of difficulty they may be having with their writing. But really, it's a set of essays that are organized in chapters that loosely relate to the weekly lesson. The author, Julia Cameron, is perhaps best known for her earlier book, The Artist's Way (1992), where she introduces the concept of Morning Pages; a regularized free-writing exercise designed to clear a writer's mind and awaken the muse. Morning Pages are the backbone of this six-week program, together with artist dates (a writer's self-indulgent interlude to spark creativity), long walks, a trusted process, and the courage to write poorly but consistently for the sake of getting words on the page. Although some of the spiritual references can be a bit off-putting to some, if you can get past that, the book has some good--if not novel--writing advice. The basic take-home message for me was that creativity needs to be nurtured, but consistency in the act of writing gets the job done.

Ryan Holiday's book, The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph, has a simple theme. Rather than throwing up your hands in defeat whenever you're faced with a difficult problem, approach it with a Stoic mindset and turn it into an opportunity for personal growth. Holiday has become somewhat of a modern-day popularizer of Stoic philosophy with his many books on the subject. In fact, this book is the first in a series of three.

The book is divided into three parts, each representing overlapping elements of his plan for everyday people to incorporate Stoic philosophy into their own lives: perception, action, and will. In the final chapter, Holiday summarizes how these elements can be adopted; "See things for what they are. Do what we can. Endure and bear what we must." His view is that facing life's challenges with this tripartite ethos presents opportunities for personal growth, if you're open to it.

Stoic philosophy has become popular over the last several years because it offers a way for people to get the most out of life without deferring to religion. There are some very good books on the subject, but this isn't one of them. This book is written in the simplistic, condescending tone of a self-help book written by a self-anointed sage on the topic. Holiday's version of Stoic philosophy is less philosophical and more productivity-oriented—despite a postscript chapter declaring those who finished reading this book are now philosophers. According to Holiday, philosophy has been hijacked by academics and squirrelled away from the public in the hallowed halls of the Ivory Tower. Such a sentiment betrays the author's profound misconception of philosophy.

The book is peppered with examples of famous people incorporating elements of Stoic philosophy to overcome some seemingly insurmountable obstacle. These examples are used to illustrate basic Stoic maxims. Some of the advice provided is good. But some is ill conceived at best and flat out wrong at worst—like disregarding rules when they get in the way of achieving some objective. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this book nor can I bring myself to endure two more books in this series, let alone the other dozen or so by the same author.

This review was originally published on The Ink Smudge, March 1, 2023.

Journalist Geoff Dembicki's The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change follows naturally from an earlier book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, Merchants of Doubt, which documents a complex campaign of disinformation to discredit science on matters of political importance, such as denying the negative health effects of smoking, the ecological impact of pesticides, and human-induced climate change. Oreskes and Conway showed that these propaganda campaigns are mostly based around a strategy developed by the tobacco industry in the 1950s, usually by a relatively small number of bad actors. It involves funding scientific research that produces industry-friendly results, grooming credentialed scientists to represent industry's interests in court, and challenging mainstream science in both traditional and, more recently, social media to give the public the illusion that the science is uncertain. This is a very effective strategy with a long history of calling into doubt perfectly good science that produces results that are not favourable to industry, and delaying the implementation of any public policies that could negatively affect corporate profitability.

The Petroleum Papers looks at how major players in the Canadian oil sands of northern Alberta waged a similar disinformation campaign to protect some of the dirtiest oil in the world. Unlike traditional oil wells, where oil is pumped out of vast underground reservoirs, oil from the Canadian oil sands is mined as bitumen: a thick, solid mixture of oil and sand, which requires considerable processing to separate the oil from its sandy substrate. The more energy that's required for bitumen processing, the more carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere. Consequently, processing Alberta's bitumen contributes disproportionately to global climate change. Industry scientists knew in the 1960s that developing the Alberta oil sands would have devastating consequences on the climate, and by extension, the major ecological systems of the world. In fact, their early predictions were remarkably accurate in demonstrating how temperature increases tracked with atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Rather than making this information available to the global scientific community, they buried it and launched a coordinated, full-frontal disinformation campaign involving right-wing think tanks, foreign money, and high-level political influence, including oil-lobbyist-turned-prime-minister Stephen Harper. Once elected with a majority mandate, Harper cut regulations, purged the words "climate change" from government websites, and muzzled government scientists from speaking to the public about anything that might run counter to corporate interests.

Dembicki draws from a wide range of court documents, government sources, and internal corporate communications. His research is thorough and well documented. Although he covered Jason Kenney's cheerleading for the Alberta oil sands to wealthy American investors of the Petroleum Institute (Jason Kenney was a high-level minister under Stephen Harper's government who was later elected premier of Alberta in 2019), the book ended before Danielle Smith was appointed as Alberta's premier. By the time Smith took over the provincial top job, the basic strategy was set to transfer Alberta's wealth directly into the coffers of oil and gas companies.

Before her most recent run for public office, Smith was an oil lobbyist with the Alberta Enterprise Group. As a lobbyist, she and Alberta Energy Minister Peter Guthrie advocated for the R-Star program, which ostensibly was to incentivize oil and gas companies to clean up their abandoned wells province-wide. The incentive would be a $20 billion dollar gift from the taxpayers of Alberta, even though the gift recipients are already obliged by law—or, some might say, "incentivized"—to clean up their own mess.

The R-Star program was developed by the Sustaining Alberta's Energy Network (SAEN), an oil and gas advocacy group. As though it was made for Dembicki's book (perhaps Volume II), SAEN's founder, Kris Kinnear, was Smith's campaign manager and now holds the position of Special Projects Manager in the premier's office. All Smith needs now is to be granted a mandate by Albertans to give their treasure away to Big Oil and Gas, with an election anticipated by the end of May.

My biggest quibble with The Petroleum Papers is that it ended too soon. I don't say this in a self-immolation sense; rather, I say this because this story is still being written. Kenny gave a billion dollars away to oil and gas. Smith is preparing to give away up to $20 billion. And just last week (February 18, 2023), Christine Anderson, a member of Germany's Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)—a neo-Nazi party—was gifted a white cowboy hat, typically reserved for dignitaries, after her invited talk at the Petroleum Club in Calgary.

You just can't make this stuff up. Thank goodness for Geoff Dembicki and his ilk for recording it all. I can feel the "I told you so's" from here.

It's difficult to review a book that has been read by many thousands or millions of people over the past two thousand years or so, including world leaders, philosophers and other academics, athletes, and everyday people who just want to live their best lives possible. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome (161-180), was never intended to be read by anyone other than its author. It is a collection of Aurelius' thoughts as they occurred to him, presumably over the course of his life. This book has no plot, no story arc, and no relatable characters, per se. Instead, it's a record of his daily journal that has been translated, interpreted, and transcribed repeatedly down through the ages. The individual entries have been compiled into 12 books, which are loosely arranged in chronological order; although there is some debate about that.

This book is remarkable for two important reasons. It provides a glimpse into the thoughts of a Roman emperor, and it defines his personal life philosophy. Aurelius was a student of Stoic philosophy, which he carried with him throughout his life. Meditations represents his version of Stoic philosophy as he applied it to his own life. It's this philosophy that informed his approach not just as a ruler, but also as a human being. The philosophical virtues that were important to Aurelius and other ancient Stoic philosophers transcend time and are just as applicable today as they were back then.

This is not a book to be read once and returned to the shelf to collect dust. It's meant to be read slowly and repeatedly; it's meant to be studied. I found myself often reflecting on individual passages while I searched for ways these ideas were relevant to me and my own circumstances. I've only read this book once, but it's clear to me that new revelations are likely to emerge with each subsequent reading. Very few books can maintain their relevance beyond a few decades, let alone centuries or millennia. But this one does. This is one book to which I will return often as I polish my own personal philosophy, as so many have done before me.

As author Polly Morland was cleaning her mother's library she came across a misplaced book. It was, "A Fortunate Man" (1967) by John Berger, which was about a country doctor who practiced in her own community some five decades before. This book is about the doctor who replaced the Fortunate Man, who herself was inspired to pursue family medicine by the same book when she was a medical student two decades earlier.

This biography is as much about person and place as it is about the transformation of family medicine from the human connections of a country doctor to a monolithic public service focused on efficiencies, fiscal accountability, and key performance indicators. It's a story that mirrors a similar transformation of society at large. As a member of the community she serves, the Fortunate Doctor knows her patients as more than just reporting data, but as human beings, and all the complexities and baggage that that involves—as did the doctor who served in this place before her.

If you value humanity as more than just efficiencies and performance metrics, then this book will move you. Morland's writing is beautiful at times, and brutal when it needs to be. It's a book that forces you to reflect on your own interpersonal connections and question if society's trajectory affords us a reasonable chance to meet the challenges of the future. When that challenge is healthcare, one British country valley lights the way.

Peter Leigh transformed his life from a down-and-out junkie by embracing religion and becoming a well respected pastor. He married Beatrice, the nurse who saved him from himself and cared for him through the worst of his transformation. They both offered their services to USIC, a private corporation that was trying to establish a human colony on Oasis, a far off planet light years from Earth. After a rigorous screening process, Peter was hired on a mission to bring religion to the indigenous people of Oasis, the Oasans. Bea, who did not get past the initial screening, stayed home, holding down the fort and caring for their cat, Joshua, while the world fell down around her.

This is a story about western colonialism and corporate exploitation of indigenous peoples for power and profit, and how religious indoctrination is used to achieve those ends. Despite Peter's best intentions, he was blind to the fact that he was being used as an instrument of USIC to get the Oasans to produce white flower--the only edible, and highly versatile, plant on the planet. In return, USIC provided the Oasans with drugs, which also worked to USIC's benefit. The company was prepared to go to any length to advance its interests, even if it meant great personal costs to the indigenous peoples it exploited and its own employees, like Grainger (the USIC pharmacist) and Peter, among others. It counted on its employees' loyalty, personal commitment to USIC's agenda, and the naive trading abilities of the Oasans.

Although the various story lines followed the kinds of interpersonal relationships we all have with those around us, Faber constructed this story with layers and layers of nuance. The themes in this book ranged from politics and religion, to personal commitment and personal fallibility, to the tension between the environment and raw corporate avarice. It was just the sort of book that whisked you away somewhere far from your everyday travails here on Earth, but returned you thinking about your own circumstances and how interests other than your own got you here. You don't always have to go somewhere else to find your path. Sometimes it's right in front of you.