What We Can't Burn: Friendship and Friction in the Fight for Our Energy Future

When they met as juniors at Harvard, Kenyan clean energy entrepreneur Tom Osborn and American climate writer Eve Driver did not get along. While a trip to Kenya over winter break sparked an unlikely friendship, it was tested back on campus amid the college’s fossil fuel divestment campaign––which Eve joined, and Tom opposed. In fresh voices that are raw, funny, and lyrical, the two take turns telling the story of their rocky but transformative friendship, which gripped and changed both of their minds. 

What We Can’t Burn shines a spotlight on the chasm in first-hand experiences, tactics, and hopes between two people from vastly different backgrounds and circumstances on the sibling issues of climate change and renewable energy. The result is a poignant story of coming of age in a generation divided about how to safe itself, and a testament to the power of humor and dialogue to bridge divides in the global climate movement.

EVE DRIVER is a writer and strategist focused on the energy transition. Her writing has been published in the Tusculum Review, Harvard Magazine, Grist, Mongabay, Quartz, and Undark, and she has spoken on panels sponsored by the Better Future Project, Uprooted and Rising, and the Gull Island Institute. She has worked as a journalist in Nairobi, a strategy consultant in New York, and as a climate policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy.

TOM OSBORN is a community-oriented entrepreneur and co-founder of the Shamiri Institute—a public benefit organization that develops and scales mental healthcare to young people across Africa. He is a 2021 TED Fellow and global Forbes’ 30 under 30 social entrepreneur and has won numerous national and international awards for his work, including World Deliver Social Entrepreneur of the year in 2016, the Donors’ Circle for Africa Energy Prize, and many others. Africa Youth Awards named him as one of the 100 Most Influential Young Africans. Born and raised in rural Kenya, he graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor’s in psychology. He lives in Nairobi.