This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

The lesson from all this is not that people won’t sacrifice in the face of the climate crisis. It’s that they have had it with our culture of lopsided sacrifice, in which individuals are asked to pay higher prices for supposedly green choices while large corporations dodge regulation and not only refuse to change their behavior, but charge ahead with ever more polluting activities. Witnessing this, it is perfectly sensible for people to shed much of the keener enthusiasm that marked the early days of the climate movement, and to make it clear that no more sacrifice will be made until the policy solutions on the table are perceived as just. This does not mean the middle class is off the hook. To fund the kind of social programs that will make a just transition possible, taxes will have to rise for everyone but the poor. But if the funds raised go toward social programs and services that reduce inequality and make lives far less insecure and precarious, then public attitudes toward taxation would very likely shift as well.