'Denial': Climate change justice

A reporter goes after a fugitive from carbon crimes prosecution in Jon Raymond's latest novel.

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It’s almost time for the Oregon Book Awards; winners will be announced April 3. As I looked over the 34 finalists, I realized one was sitting in my “to be read” pile; it had arrived unsolicited during my previous life as a newspaper books columnist. Onto the nightstand pile it went.

What would happen if we prosecuted those deemed most responsible for climate change — and what would happen if some of the accused got away?

That’s the intriguing premise of Jon Raymond’s latest novel, “Denial.” It’s set in the 2050s, two decades after the pivotal Toronto Trials:

Throughout 2032, we’d watched the most powerful carbon executives and lobbyists stand trial, even as the fires in New Zealand raged and the smoke inversions in South America entered year four, but also as cars and planes remained idle, bio-concretes* rose into vertical farms in the cities, solar panels petaled the grid, and industrial carbon-capture systems came online to filter the planet’s CO2.

*Not a fantastical imagining. Researchers are working on bricks made of mushrooms that can replace and outperform concrete.

Eight of the Toronto defendants were tried in absentia. As “Denial” opens, a journalist based in Portland, Oregon, gets a tip from a possibly reliable source that one of the absent defendants — known as the Empty Chairs — is living comfortably in Guadalajara, Mexico. Our intrepid reporter, smelling a career-making story, heads south, finds his man and strikes up a friendship while surreptitiously recording every word and action.

But a funny thing happens on the way to the big reveal: The hunter begins to have mixed feelings about his prey.

Raymond isn’t subtle about casting carbon crimes as crimes against humanity. His journalist prepares for his confrontation with the Empty Chair by studying how ABC newsman Sam Donaldson conducted his 1994 interview with Erich Priebke, a Nazi war criminal who’d become a doting Argentinian grandfather by the time Donaldson found him:

His life had sent him through multiple, incompatible realities. During the reality of his youth, a sickness had been rampant in the land, but thankfully the sickness had broken and the world had moved on. Ever after, he’d discharged his duties to family and community like any other decent citizen. How could he be judged for the actions of another lifetime now? They were the crimes of a different man. But Donaldson, to his credit, refused to forget.

The Empty Chair in Guadalajara now speaks thoughtfully about humans’ impact on their planet and about shrinking the species’ collective carbon footprint. But the journalist decides he won’t forget, either.

I grew up in a frugal household. My father was the only one with a paying job, and it wasn’t a high-paying one. My mother, who’d grown up outright poor, worked wonders with Dad’s limited but at least predictable income. We never worried about where our next meal was coming from, and we had money for extras like piano lessons.

The habit of frugality has carried over into my adult life, which I share with a similarly minded spouse. We talk a lot these days about whether our frugality makes a difference in our carbon footprint. I hope it does. We still live in the 1,500-square-foot “starter home” we bought 20 years ago. We declined to buy the older kid a car when he got his driver’s license. I cook dinner most nights, eat leftovers for lunch. We hardly ever buy new clothes. We recycle and compost diligently. We spend a lot less time on planes than most everyone else we know.

And I still feel guilty because our lives still center fossil fuels. Our two cars have internal combustion engines. Our water heater uses natural gas. At least our utility uses hydroelectric power. But I look at the paragraph above listing our very modest attempts to tread more lightly on this planet, and I know we’re still in denial.

The journalist’s girlfriend has a different view of his pursuit. She gets him to admit that he’s come to like his target even as he’s working to expose the man.

“How does it help anything?” she said. “That’s my question. It isn’t going to bring back the Indian leopard. It isn’t going to bring back the whooping crane. He’s living his little life in Guadalajara. He isn’t hurting anyone right now. He doesn’t have any power. Why do it?”

The journalist counters with the need to set an example, the need for consequences.

“I suppose,” she said. “You don’t think it’s just a way to make everyone else in the world feel innocent?”