This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

The harnessing of fossil fuel power seemed, for a couple of centuries at least, to have freed large parts of humanity from the need to be in constant dialogue with nature, having to adjust its plans, ambitions, and schedules to natural fluctuations and topographies. Coal and oil, precisely because they were fossilized, seemed entirely possessable forms of energy. They did not behave independently—not like wind, or water, or, for that matter, workers. Just as Watt’s engine promised, once purchased, they produced power wherever and whenever their owners wished—the ultimate nonreciprocal relationship. But what we have learned from atmospheric science is that the give-and-take, call-and-response that is the essence of all relationships in nature was not eliminated with fossil fuels, it was merely delayed, all the while gaining force and velocity. Now the cumulative effect of those centuries of burned carbon is in the process of unleashing the most ferocious natural tempers of all.