This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

The danger is not so much that these visions will be realized; geoengineering the earth is a long shot, never mind terraforming Mars. Yet as Branson’s own emissions illustrate so elegantly, these fantasies are already doing real damage in the here and now. As environmental author Kenneth Brower writes, “The notion that science will save us is the chimera that allows the present generation to consume all the resources it wants, as if no generations will follow. It is the sedative that allows civilization to march so steadfastly toward environmental catastrophe. It forestalls the real solution, which will be in the hard, nontechnical work of changing human behavior.” And worst of all, it tells us that, “should the fix fail, we have someplace else to go.”63 We know this escape story all too well, from Noah’s Ark to the Rapture. What we need are stories that tell us something very different: that this planet is our only home, and that what goes around comes around (and what goes up, stays up for a very long time, so we’d better be careful what we put there).