In the Near Future, Environmental Regulation Leads to All-Out War

It’s common for pundits to opine that the divisions between Americans are worse than they’ve ever been. But, of course, the U.S. was ruptured by civil war not so far in the past—and, in a novel set in 2075, it does so again. In Omar El Akkad’s “American War,” parts of the country have seceded after a federal ban on fossil fuels. El Akkad tells David Remnick that the anti-environmentalism in his book is not just a position but also “a stand-in, in my mind, for stubbornness and for pride, and the often ruinous power of tradition.” El Akkad, who was born in the Middle East and has worked as a journalist for Canada’s Globe and Mail, insists that the book is not science fiction, because everything in it is already happening.