Book Review: Naomi Klein’s Capitalism vs the Climate
Naomi Klein’s book called “This Changes Everything — Capitalism vs the Climate” touches upon several aspects of the ‘ debate’ surrounding climate change, rising capitalism, and the do’s and don’ts of solving a climate catastrophe.
In a tumultuous time where climate change sets a precedent as the most critical issue to address, the United State’s current political and social climate lacks the mechanisms, policies, and standards to curb its carbon emissions.
Trump has rolled back 95+ environmental regulations and has pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord, a feat the next president has to tackle and reverse to bring about substantial change. Despite the DNC’s refusal to hold a climate change debate for 2019’s presidential debate, climate change has seemingly been given unprecedented attention from many of the 2020 candidates (NRDC Action Fund). As one of the high priority issues of this election cycle, candidates have developed climate action plans to mitigate the effects of climate change and bring back the US’s reputation at the forefront once again. However, this will not come without its own unique set of challenges, mainly because the US has its own set of drawbacks and flaws in leadership, which has left behind a negative and paternalistic image in front of the world’s vulnerable but nature-rich communities.
Naomi Klein, a Canadian author of seven internationally recognized books, presents the reality of climate change while offering a powerful environmental movement in her publication This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate which Klein. She published it in 2014 and won the Sydney peace prize for her work on bringing the environmental agenda in an assertive and dramatic light. However, it is interesting that neither her beliefs nor actions cater to science. Since her mother was a prominent feminist, she opposed those ideals and embraced consumerism, until a tragedy occurred that changed her perspective (NaomiKlein.org). What makes her writing compelling and truthful is her feigned ignorance surrounding the matter when she was younger until she primarily focused on environmental issues in her work. She attended the University of Toronto, where she started her career, and eventually led to becoming the contributing editor to Harper’s magazine, a columnist for The Nation and Guardian, a reporter for the Rolling Stone, among many more (NaomiKlien.org).
It is interesting to note that the general behaviors and attitudes that surround this topic even presently mimic Klein’s in her younger years. The narrative that surrounds this issue is one of sheer devastation and doom, where individuals often feel hopeless to do anything as big corporations and corporate globalization movements are likely and left to set the pace of our environment. Even though our “house is on fire” as the Swedish climate activist Gretaounge Thurnberg calls it, why are we failing to act on it the way we should?
Klein effectively posits a very honestly brutal response to this in her book. She discusses the different worldviews and realities that humans come from and dives deeper into the human psyche, where we fail to let the truth of the climate crisis sink deep. Humans are forgetful creatures, and “Climate change is like that; it is hard to keep in your head for very long.” (Klein, 4). A changing climate can be hard to see, and even harder to absorb, as the imminent dangers are not as visible in developed nations than in underdeveloped or developing countries. She calls out on our current global free-market policies, consumptive nature, and failure to understand and sufficiently account for the consequences of climate change as one of our more prominent drawbacks. Other issues such as extractivism, big businesses/big green, funding, strict laws & policies, and technological developments are also important topics of conversation in her book.
Klein strongly believes the views of Anderson and Bows-Larkin, who suggest that the “climate catastrophe can be solved, but not within the rules of capitalism as they are currently constructed” (Klein, 88). She blames the lack of advancements or any reforms in protecting the environment despite multiple attempts against neoliberal market fundamentalism. In this type of free market, the policies are unregulated and evolved into corporate power, where corporations do what they want without weighing the consequences for the environment or human life. In her words, it has “systematically sabotaged our collective response to climate change” (Klien, 19).
Nevertheless, in an ever-increasingly globalized world, coming off as anti-globalist seems too much for many people. Some think that one identifies as such is against the growth and prosperity of the country’s economy. However, that is far from the truth. What Klein argues is for corporations to take up more responsibility for their practices, and run their businesses in a fair, equitable, transparent, and sustainable way. She outright refuses the notion of business-as-usual, and calls for changes to be made in the public sector, where through enough pressure, emission reductions can be a priority (Klein, 100). The private sector offers no such options, as she believes they only care about maximizing profits for shareholders, and will not make changes if the changes do not impact their earnings or they if the law does not impose it (Klein, 100). She also does not only emphasize on switching to renewable energy to solve the problem completely. She calls for a mix of many low to zero carbon-intensive measures to deal with the problem and keep emissions under the desired limit.
On the other hand, she is also wary of problematic acts of the so-called conservation movements which she addresses in chapter six of the book. She labels this new class of abuse as “green” human rights abuses (Klein, 222). In Parana, Brazil, major oil companies, such as Chevron, tied with the Nature Conservancy, and a Brazilian NGO kept locals out of their own homes by refusing them to fish or hunt in their land. As a reader, it is hard not to infer that unless strict laws are in place, along with weighty repercussions, humans, more often than not, find a way to cheat the system. Is it not ironic that the people of Parana, that are most committed to their relationships with nature, are the ones most hit with unnecessary sacrifices? Unfortunately, big corporations like Chevron get away with stuff like this as they continue to fuel their lifestyles with nature-intensive resources. The West being the earliest extractors of fossil fuels have much a responsibility to clean up their acts. They have caused much of the greenhouse gases to build up in our shared atmosphere. Therefore, they have to opt for stricter measures to control their emissions. Non-industrialized and developing nations should be given some slack to rise out of poverty using the resources the industrialized countries have enjoyed for far too long. The deniers, despite not being able to fully understand or grasp the science, understand how expensive changing our processes will be.
It is challenging to dispute Klein’s ideas because they are intelligent and realistic about the current state of our environment in a neoliberal world. While some find her views to be too brutal, or too forward, she eloquently presents the reality of climate change as it is. She draws on extensive research and challenges popular solutions that are historically believed to act as saviors of the climate. In the introduction of the book, she talks about whether climate summits are productive, if at all.
She describes how the UN climate summit, in particular, has come to be a “very costly and high carbon group therapy session, a place for the representatives of the most vulnerable countries in the world vent their grief and rage while low-level representatives of the nations largely responsible for their tragedies stare at their shoes” (Klein, 11). In many ways, she is not wrong. Even though she highlights the little that came about from the 2009 summit, the 2019 summit was no better. At the UN headquarters in NY, China and the US kept silent, and only a few other countries made weak promises (NY Times). No stronger climate action was made, for the US did not even opt to speak at the summit for they had nothing to say or show as the country’s current president even refuses to accept climate change as a severe threat.
To sum it up, Klein calls for drastic measures to save our planet. In her concluding chapter, she talks about resistance, and the power mass social movements hold to pave the path for a better future. This book is for the reader who wishes to know more about climate history. Klein optimistically tries to put the control back in the hands of the reader by arming them with the knowledge to turn their situations around, only if they want.
