This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate in The Transition Movement

Nov 25, 2014 Katie rated it liked it

Shelves: nonfiction

This is not the treatise against capitalism that some people have made it out to be, or that I was hoping for. I'm honestly pretty torn on what I think about it. On the one hand, Klein's focus on direct action is both necessary and inspiring, and I think this is an important step in challenging liberals to step outside their ineffective comfort zone of signing petitions, writing the occasional check to a green org, and calling their absolutely useless representatives who will never, ever listen This is not the treatise against capitalism that some people have made it out to be, or that I was hoping for. I'm honestly pretty torn on what I think about it. On the one hand, Klein's focus on direct action is both necessary and inspiring, and I think this is an important step in challenging liberals to step outside their ineffective comfort zone of signing petitions, writing the occasional check to a green org, and calling their absolutely useless representatives who will never, ever listen to them. On the other hand, I was disappointed that despite the title, she doesn't dig deep enough on the subject of capitalism. She makes a lot of really, really great points, but falls short of arriving at the conclusions that logically stem from those points. I think she actually might be doing some damage by dancing carefully around the subject of capitalism. By referring to it constantly as "deregulated capitalism", she has actually given people the false sense that capitalism itself is not the problem. She lays waste to major parts of capitalist theory then gives those who aren't open-minded enough to really question capitalism an escape route. After reading a number of reviews in which people flat out say that she shows that "capitalism itself isn't the problem, we just need to regulate it", it's painfully clear that her treatment of capitalism was too soft and that the right message isn't getting through to people.

For starters, this is less focused on capitalism and more on the human desire to conquer nature as opposed to learning to live in harmony with nature, which is all well and good, but I felt like she repeated this point way too much. In close to 500 pages of writing, she manages to frequently rephrase the same points while failing to expand on others that are very important. For example, she spends a whopping 2 paragraphs each on the food system and militarism, even though they represent a large portion of overall emissions and are huge climate-linked problems we need to tackle. Her points on these subjects were very compelling and I got really excited when she got to them, only to be disappointed when she quickly moved on to something else.

It would also be nice if she at least touched on the subject of resource depletion. I know that it is considered a separate topic from climate change, but it shouldn't be. Both climate change and resource depletion are the result of a constantly growing, profit-driven economic system that knows no bounds. If the goal of the book is to present evidence that capitalism is incompatible with stopping climate change (I'm beginning to wonder if that really was her goal here), why not put one more giant nail in the coffin? I personally think it's an extremely compelling argument that even in the absence of climate change, capitalism is driving us off an ecological cliff. Anyone who cares about the environment, or the fate of the human race for that matter, should also care that we are putting huge reserves of natural resources at risk of disappearing. There will be no clean energy if we use up all the nonrenewable metals to manufacture ipads and killer drones, or if we wait until oil is even harder and more expensive to extract to build out renewables. That's a very powerful, irrefutable point that she easily could have made.

Furthermore, given the title, I was expecting a more detailed argument against capitalism and more discussion of possible economic alternatives. Klein does an absolutely great job of illustrating how some of the big green organizations betrayed their own goals by getting into bed with the fossil fuel industry. That is perhaps the most important points she makes. In doing so, she hits on a critical point regarding the corrupting nature of profit-driven markets. She does a fantastic job of explaining how the profit motive is failing us. However, she stops short of reaching the conclusion that if the profit motive doesn't produce what's best for society, if it actually produces a lot of things that hurt us, then we need to move away from it. It would have made sense at this point to discuss cooperatively owned and managed businesses, cooperative networks/markets, or participatory democracy/economics. It would have made sense to discuss ANY alternatives to capitalism at this point, but she didn't. I can't tell if this was a choice on her part to be soft on the issue of capitalism for fear of pushing people too hard, or if Klein herself still hasn't overcome her own cognitive dissonance. After all, how else can a person discuss how growth is killing us and how the profit motive only leads to greed without calling for a different system that doesn't center on those things? Taxing polluters and regulating emissions, while an important step in the right direction, is not a solution to these particular problems.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more confused I am by her conclusions. She demonstrates how destructive capitalism is, both environmentally and socially (she even discusses the colonial nature of capitalism), but doesn't seem to go beyond the typical liberal solutions of taxing and regulating. She calls for radical, direct action to demand a transition away from fossil fuels, but not for labor organizing to demand any of the economic changes that she says we need (but doesn't really talk about). I was surprised that in a book that confronts capitalism and calls for a "Green New Deal" there was no discussion at all about the labor organizing and strikes that brought us the first New Deal. I think this was a glaring omission.

Another very important point Klein makes is that decentralized, local clean power networks are a necessary part of the solution that will be fought tooth and nail by profit-seeking utility companies because such systems aren't profitable for them. The type of decentralized system she proposes, with public ownership and oversight, is actually the basis of what a new economy might look like, but again, she stops short of making this connection. She even asserts the need for economic planning (which is what has so many conservatives all riled up), but without getting into more detail on how this might be accomplished in an equitable, truly democratic way, she is likely scaring off a lot of people by giving the impression that we should trust our completely corrupt leaders to make those decisions for us. In general, I feel like all her references to a new economic paradigm are too vague. She could have easily made these connections, between decentralized systems and democratic management, and pointed people toward a real way forward, but instead, she leaves us with one vague notion after another. I didn't expect her to delve deeply into any particular economic solutions (there are already entire books dedicated to the subject), but she should have at least mentioned some. People are getting tired of hearing that we need change without presenting specific ideas of what that might entail. And without specific examples of what it might look like, promoting economic planning sounds an awful lot like central planning, which scares people for good reason.

I get the impression that Klein herself has only begun to realize the systemic problems of capitalism and may have written this book before she was adequately prepared to do so. Even after describing one way after another in which the market fails us, Klein falls right back into the market fallacies by saying things like this: "It's true that the market is great at generating technological innovation..." No, that's not "true" at all. It's a belief. It's not a fact. And I expect someone who does research-based writing to know the difference. While she goes on to talk about how the market also drives a lot of terrible behavior, there is no need to walk on eggshells like this. She needs to stop pretending the market is a tool that can be wielded for good, because all the evidence in the world suggests it's not. Plenty of the evidence she herself presents flies in the face of this completely unsubstantiated, ideological claim. I think she has a long way to go with her own understanding of what capitalism is and the difference between regulating it and changing the rules to create something totally new.

Given that her main audience seems to be liberal environmentalists who aren't open-minded enough or brave enough to really question capitalism, I think this book could serve a useful purpose. Most people are completely brainwashed into believing that capitalism is some law of nature or god that we dare not question and I give her a lot of credit for taking on such a controversial topic. Religious-like beliefs like that are hard to chip away at. People don't drastically change strong, ideological views over night and they need steps along the way. Hopefully, this provides a big step in the right direction for those people. Overall, she makes some really great points, pokes some giant holes in capitalist theory (whether she or her readers realize it or not), and offers a somewhat radical and very hopeful outlook on a subject that usually leaves people feeling utter despair. For that, I think she deserves a lot of credit. But for those who have already overcome those ideological barriers, there's nothing new here. The only exception is her discussion of Blockadia, but even that is just the latest in a long, global history of resistance movements that employ direct action. That part of the book at least left me hopeful. If someone with the reach of Naomi Klein can make an effective call for direct action and disobedience, maybe (hopefully) we will finally reach the critical mass needed to start turning things around. ...more

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Mar 02, 2018 Dave Schaafsma rated it really liked it

Shelves: economics, environment, cli-fi-class-spr-18, politics

“If you drink water and breath air, climate change is your business"--Klein

“If we are innately greedy, there’s no hope. What if a corrupt ‘human nature’ is not the problem, though. What if the problem is a story, one we have been telling us for 400 years, a story about capitalism and progress?”--Klein

That story, begun centuries ago: “The Earth is a machine, and we are its masters.” Mother Earth is a Mother Lode for Man to Progress With rather than Live With, in Balance.

“Growth is the closest thi “If you drink water and breath air, climate change is your business"--Klein

“If we are innately greedy, there’s no hope. What if a corrupt ‘human nature’ is not the problem, though. What if the problem is a story, one we have been telling us for 400 years, a story about capitalism and progress?”--Klein

That story, begun centuries ago: “The Earth is a machine, and we are its masters.” Mother Earth is a Mother Lode for Man to Progress With rather than Live With, in Balance.

“Growth is the closest thing we have to a global deity”--Klein

I read this book and saw the documentary by the same name, which you can view for free online. Klein visits the Alberta Tar Sands, the largest industrial project on Earth, a project to extract oil from “flyover” land that is also very much sacred land, the province for centuries of indigenous tribes populating what we now know as Canada. She talks with a range of folks, those bent on extracting the oil and those who feel defiled by the rapacious activity. She investigates native collective action, resistance, and this is moving and inspirational (though at the same time almost, for me, hopeless, as there are so few and they are so poor and so typically powerless—I mean in an conventional institutional sense; they are amazingly powerful spiritually—standing up to the billionaires).

We travel to Montana to talk with people about the pipelines, we travel to South America; everywhere we see rapacious practices, short-term thinking, and local resistance. We travel to talk with the anti-mining solidarity committee of Greece. We go to growth-choked China--now committed to solar, it looks like--and to depressing India, still committed to aggressive coal expansion.

Core problem, and a long known one: An economic system that insists on “progress” and rapacious land use and disregard for ecosystem. A capitalist model of growth that is impossible to sustain. Exploitation, not management, of resources. Growth without Limits, at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable people.

And there’s some local resistance, in pockets, sometimes whole countries. We see everywhere locals crying, shouting, resisting, locals committed to wise land use and management. Renewables, working in harmony with nature, and ecosystem. Spirit of the Sun.

The best thing about this book is that we talk to actual people that move us to act, indigenous activists. Klein is a big picture writer, but when she actually makes people come alive, she is at her most effective. Most people reading this review know all of this stuff by now, I suspect, but if you want a not-completely-hopeless book on the subject of capitalism and the environment, this is a good one.

For instance, Germany is a rapid energy transition, now getting 30% energy from renewables. 400,000 jobs have been created from renewable energy in that country in the past 5 years ago. The German government also enacts policies that are destructive, but—and this is the point--local people fought for alternative energy and against nuclear energy and coal. They run the energy grid themselves, through community-base cooperatives. A German woman says: “We realized; this is the moment.”

“Put another way, only mass social movements can save us now. Because we know where the current system, left unchecked, is headed. We also know, I would add, how that system will deal with the reality of serial climate-related disasters: with profiteering, and escalating barbarism to segregate the losers from the winners. To arrive at that dystopia, all we need to do is keep barreling down the road we are on. The only remaining variable is whether some countervailing power will emerge to block the road, and simultaneously clear some alternate pathways to destinations that are safer. If that happens, well, it changes everything.”--Klein ...more

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Sep 04, 2014 Florence rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: environment, politics, economics, capitalism, climate-change

The other day, I asked a question of a well read scholar....had he read Naomi Klein's latest book on climate change. He responded, "Well, her books are a bit left!" That was it; he was not really interested in knowing her views on global warming and climate change. I went on to argue that Naomi believes, as I do, that unrestricted capitalism is the cause. But arguing against the Nay-Sayers is tough.
We must all challenge the system , become more active and challenge government and corporations to ...more

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Feb 11, 2015 Mark Hebden rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science, politics

Like many people involved in progressive politics Naomi Klein confesses to previously being, if not a climate change denier, then at least an ignorer. Somehow the subject is too large, too dense and scientific, or too apocalyptic to try and get your head around. Many people have made many excuses as to why it isn’t one of the things on their heavily laden agendas, and yet as Klein herself has come to realise, any other successes we have will count for nought if we don’t confront and tackle the i Like many people involved in progressive politics Naomi Klein confesses to previously being, if not a climate change denier, then at least an ignorer. Somehow the subject is too large, too dense and scientific, or too apocalyptic to try and get your head around. Many people have made many excuses as to why it isn’t one of the things on their heavily laden agendas, and yet as Klein herself has come to realise, any other successes we have will count for nought if we don’t confront and tackle the issue of climate change… now!

The central point of this polemic is not simply that climate change is bad; this is accepting by everyone, and if you don’t accept it then you simply haven’t read enough about the subject. It’s that it is bad for everyone, worst for the poorest people on the planet and that capitalism as an ideological concept must take the lion’s share of the blame for it. Klein argues that there is an inextricable link between climate change and the unfettered accumulation of wealth that modern capitalism stands for. It is with this in mind that we soar across the globe discovering evidence of how multinational energy corporations have tied the hands of governments and activists, while co-opting seemingly “green” projects to their own ends. We explore trade deals, legal obscurantism and ostentatious, brazen accumulation of cash at the expense of indigenous peoples, areas of natural beauty and fragile ecosystems from Bolivia to Nigeria, the Canadian tar sands to rural UK villages on the verge of being handed over to large scale fracking exercises.

It’s not just big business that takes a kicking from Klein’s unique polemical style. “Big green” parties and organisations also come in for some much justified criticism given their own dealings with fossil fuels and non-renewable energy sources. Nature Conservancy, one of the largest conservation organisations in the world for instance, also owns and operates an oil well on the very patch they rescued from one of the large oil corporations in the 80s. While such groups, although there are exceptions, have chosen to try and work with mulitnationals, Klein argues that the profit motive built in to capitalism as the first priority isn’t compatible with the empathy and action required to address the climate change issue.

Klein tackles the broad subject with her usual keen journalistic eye; humanising the complexities of the subject with tales of individual hardship or success. At the same time she manages to cut through a lot of the science to get through to the powerful reality of the issues, as people would understand them – much like she was able to dilute complex ideological history in The Shock Doctrine and the convoluted trade laws of No Logo so that we can all understand the difficult and wide ranging arguments, while not in any way dumbing down the issue.

Klein, as you would expect offers solutions as well as problems and in many cases they may not be what you expect. That said, the theme that runs through them is organising and campaigning from the ground up. Grass roots movements empowering themselves outside of the traditional forms of democracy that now fall so flat and have uninspiring leaders attempting to communicate with an ever dis-interested or disenfranchised publics. Perhaps the “grassroots” movement idea has run its course and frankly isn’t radical enough to deal with climate change. However, it has worked in the past and still works today – recent Greek elections have proved this, and Spain with Podemos not far behind their Greek counterparts in Syriza providing the avenue for radical political dissent. Moreover the reason climate change can be different from other large political entanglements is that there isn’t a person living today that won’t be affected by it, and isn’t being affected by it already whether it’s the destruction of your ancestral homeland or the increased prices in foodstuffs and petrol.

It’s been a long time since The Shock Doctrine was published and Klein hasn’t spent that time merely observing and reaping the fruits of her labour. She has committed herself to change in terms of the environment; studied, coerced, campaigned and acted and this book is the result and is a worthy attempt to get others to do the same. People can change things but the will must be there and we are very, very quickly running out of time.
...more

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Oct 19, 2015 David Bjelland rated it it was amazing

Shelves: social-criticism, muckraking, environmentalism, the-left

Probably the most important and galvanizing piece of non-fiction I've read. Of course, given Naomi Klein's track record of awe-inspiring investigative and editorial prowess, and given the nature of the topic, which (as she compellingly argues, in case you're not already on board) represents the most intractable (but potentially unifying!) challenge civilization has faced, that's not really much of a surprise. Even if, like me, you already consider yourself "down for the cause", the journalism he ...more

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