Klein: Climate Crisis Demands Wartime-Scale Mobilization
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- Macron called France's wildfires the country's "most difficult situation since the second world war," with the AP labeling the evacuations "one of the continent's biggest evacuation efforts since World War II."
- Seth Klein, author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, argues that governments are mounting only "purely defensive, rearguard actions" against wildfires while failing to mobilize at the scale needed to end fossil fuel dependence.
- Nearly 1,000 wildfires are currently burning across Canada, while France, Spain, Australia, the U.S., Brazil, Greece, Portugal, Chile, Russia, Turkey, and Indonesia all face escalating fire crises linked to continued fossil fuel combustion.
- Macron and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez have publicly linked the fires to the climate emergency, while Canadian and U.S. leaders have largely avoided connecting the events to fossil fuel use, with the Guardian cited as a rare media exception.
- Klein identifies five markers of genuine emergency mobilization drawn from past wartime efforts: telling the truth about severity, spending what it takes to win, creating new economic institutions, shifting from voluntary to mandatory measures, and committing to leave no one behind.
- Comparing the current moment to the "phoney war" phase of half-hearted engagement, Klein argues that an "alchemy" of compounding extreme weather and political leadership is needed to shift society into genuine emergency mode.
Why it matters: Klein's argument lands as historic wildfires force mass evacuations across France, Spain, and Canada, yet no government has adopted the five wartime-scale markers he identifies — from truth-telling about severity to mandatory economic mobilization. The gap between defensive firefighting and preventive policy is the tension he says must close if fire seasons are not to keep escalating.
