This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

thinking they were playing a savvy inside game, Big Green was outmaneuvered on a grand scale. The environmentalists who participated in USCAP disastrously misread the political landscape. They chose a stunningly convoluted approach to tackling climate change, one that would have blocked far more effective strategies, specifically because it was more appealing to big emitters—only to discover that the most appealing climate policy to polluters remained none at all. Worse, once their corporate partners fled the coalition, they had no shortage of ammo to fire at their former friends. The climate bill was a boondoggle, they claimed (it was), filled with handouts and subsidies (absolutely), and it would pass on higher energy costs to cash-strapped consumers (likely).IX To top it all off, as pro-oil Republican congressman Joe Barton put it, “The environmental benefit is nonexistent” (as the left flank of the green movement had been saying all along).84