In their incisive joint memoir, What We Can't Burn, Eve Driver and Tom Osborn, who met as students at Harvard, chronicle their frequently contentious friendship and share their often opposing perspectives on how to counter climate change. Driver is an American journalist and climate activist who was heavily involved in Harvard's fossil fuel divestment campaign; Osborn is a Kenyan green energy entrepreneur who cofounded a company that converted sugarcane waste into clean-burning cooking fuel before coming to Harvard. They met during their junior year and immediately found themselves arguing over how to solve the climate crisis. To this day, they often disagree, but they have gained a deep respect for each other's diverging viewpoints and "distinct psychologies of hope."
Told as a dialogue between chapters from Driver's and Osborn's perspectives, What We Can't Burn provides context for the worldwide climate crisis and the authors' individual approaches to it. Osborn pushed for money to support innovative products and practices; Driver believed that powerful institutions, including Harvard, must be called to account for their complicity. Their first-person voices allow readers to comprehend where they agree, overlap, and sometimes misunderstand one another. Driver's visits to Kenya, including a stay with Osborn's family, deepened her understanding of his experience; Osborn's time at Harvard sharpened him, but made him impatient to keep effecting change beyond the ivory tower. Gradually, they came to respect each other's ideas, even when they disagreed. As Driver notes in her conclusion, this "difficult listening" is vital for anyone who hopes to navigate complex 21st-century issues with grace, while preserving the friendships that sustain and challenge them. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams