This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

This deeply flawed system has created a vastly distorted picture of the drivers of global emissions. It has allowed rapidly de-industrializing wealthy states to claim that their emissions have stabilized or even gone down when, in fact, the emissions embedded in their consumption have soared during the free trade era. For instance, in 2011, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study of the emissions from industrialized countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol. It found that while their emissions had stopped growing, that was partly because international trade had allowed these countries to move their dirty production overseas. The researchers concluded that the rise in emissions from goods produced in developing countries but consumed in industrialized ones was six times greater than the emissions savings of industrialized countries.