This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

The big, corporate-affiliated green groups don’t deny the reality of climate change, of course—many work hard to raise the alarm. And yet several of these groups have consistently, and aggressively, pushed responses to climate change that are the least burdensome, and often directly beneficial, to the largest greenhouse gas emitters on the planet—even when the policies come at the direct expense of communities fighting to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Rather than advancing policies that treat greenhouse gases as dangerous pollutants demanding clear, enforceable regulations that would restrict emissions and create the conditions for a full transition to renewables, these groups have pushed convoluted market-based schemes that have treated greenhouse gases as late-capitalist abstractions to be traded, bundled, speculated upon, and moved around the globe like currency or subprime debt. And many of these same groups have championed one of the main fossil fuels—natural gas—as a supposed solution to climate change, despite mounting evidence that in the coming decades, the methane it releases, particularly through the fracking process, has the potential to help lock us into catastrophic levels of warming (as explained in chapter four). In some cases, large foundations have collaborated to explicitly direct the U.S. green movement toward these policies.