This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

There are, moreover, large parts of the green movement that have never engaged in these types of arrangements—they don’t have endowments to invest or they have clear policies prohibiting fossil fuel holdings, and some have equally clear policies against taking donations from polluters. These groups, not coincidentally, tend also to be the ones with track records of going head-to-head with big oil and coal: Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace have been battling Shell’s and Chevron’s alleged complicity with horrific human rights abuses in the Niger Delta since the early 1990s (though Shell has agreed to pay out $15.5 million to settle a case involving these claims, it continues to deny wrongdoing, as does Chevron); Rainforest Action Network has been at the forefront of the international campaign against Chevron for the disaster left behind in the Ecuadorian Amazon; Food & Water Watch has helped secure big victories against fracking; 350.org helped launch the fossil fuel divestment movement and has been at the forefront of the national mobilization against the Keystone XL pipeline. The Sierra Club is a more complex case: it has also been a part of these campaigns and is the bane of the U.S. coal industry—but between 2007 and 2010, the group secretly took millions from a natural gas company. But under new leadership—and facing pressure from the grass roots—it has cut ties with the fossil fuel sector.19