This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

several of the largest zones targeted for sacrifice are located in some of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world. For instance, Daniel Yergin, energy industry consultant (and author of The Prize), euphorically described the newfound capacity to extract oil from “tight rock” formations—usually shale—as being akin to discovering whole new petrostates: “This is like adding another Venezuela or Kuwait by 2020, except these tight oil fields are in the United States.”40 And of course it’s not just the communities next to these new oil fields that are asked to sacrifice. So much oil is now being extracted in the U.S. (or “Saudi America,” as some market watchers call it) that the number of rail cars carrying oil has increased by 4111 percent in just five years, from 9,500 cars in 2008 to an estimated 400,000 in 2013.