As I write these lines, one of the main news items in the British media is the spate of forest fires in Yakutia, also known as the Republic of Sakha. Ironically, this vast ‘autonomous’ territory in the far east of Russia is home to one of the world’s coldest permanently inhabited human settlements – the town of Oymyakon, where in winter temperatures routinely plunge below -60°C. Alas, this kind of sad irony is typical of many things Russian.
In mid-August 2021, when I was reading an advance review copy of 'Klimat…', the fires had already torn through more than 4.2 million hectares of forest in Yakutia, sending enormous plumes of smoke as far as the North Pole and producing a record amount of carbon emissions, according to the European Union's Copernicus satellite monitoring unit. The Guardian referred to the ongoing disaster as an ‘apocalypse’, no less.
However, for Thane Gustafson, professor of government at Georgetown University and author...