This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

by Naomi Klein

a 2012 study from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives compared the public value from a $5 billion pipeline—the rough cost of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway—and the value that could be derived from investing the same amount in green economic alternatives. It found that if $5 billion is spent on a pipeline, it produces mostly short-term construction jobs, big private sector profits, and heavy public costs for future environmental damage. But if $5 billion is spent on public transit, building retrofits, and renewable energy, economies can gain, at the very least, three times as many jobs in the short term, while simultaneously helping to reduce the chances of catastrophic warming in the long term. In fact, the number of jobs could be many times more than that, according to the institute’s modeling. At the highest end, green investment could create thirty-four times more jobs than just building another pipeline.