Daniel Macfarlane

Daniel Macfarlane, Natural Allies: Environment, Energy and the History of US-Canada Relations. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023.

Macfarlane offers an innovative reinterpretation of Canadian-American relations through the lens of the environment, braiding diplomatic history with environmental history in a way that reinvigorates both fields. Expansive in both its territorial and temporal breadth, and based on impressive research in a vast literature, this book still manages to offer a concise argument in favour of appreciating the centrality of environmental diplomacy to the inter-state relationship. This is an important reinterpretation of the “nature” of that historic relationship, at a time when enersgy and the environment increasingly shape our future.