This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

The reason for what Andreas Malm—a Swedish expert on the history of coal—describes as “the early 21st Century emissions explosion” is straightforward enough. When China became the “workshop of the world” it also became the coal-spewing “chimney of the world.” By 2007, China was responsible for two thirds of the annual increase in global emissions. Some of that was the result of China’s own internal development—bringing electricity to rural areas, and building roads. But a lot of it was directly tied to foreign trade: according to one study, between 2002 and 2008, 48 percent of China’s total emissions was related to producing goods for export.37 “One of the reasons why we’re in the climate crisis is because of this model of globalization,” says Margrete Strand Rangnes, executive vice president at Public Citizen, a Washington-based policy institute that has been at the forefront of the fight against free trade. And that, she says, is a problem that requires “a pretty fundamental re-formation of our economy, if we’re going to do this right.”38