A mixture of pseudo intellectual posturing and showboating.
Using fire as an energy source is cooking (it is "predigestion" which delivers more energy than raw food, and widens the variety of foods eaten), with additional references made to (I'm not kidding!) manufacturing of tools, iron smelting, and the internal combustion engine.
I'm appalled at what passes for research anymore. And this is in Nature.
SJW converged.
I think you must have read past important parts of the author’s statements about fire.
Foremost, fire would not be possible on Earth without life, i.e. organic fuels and organic derived oxygen.
Additionally, fire changed the evolution of plant life on Earth, which is the primary energy source for almost all animal life.
Fire has also beneficially altered vast areas of soil, and it affects the mixture of gases in the oceans and the atmosphere.
Before 1800, malnutrition and hypothermia were the second and third leading causes of human death in all previous human history.
So, fire may not be epochal, but it is certainly significant in the history of human survival, and the migration of humans to almost every corner of the Earth.