This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

by Naomi Klein

As previously mentioned, after the province of Quebec successfully banned fracking, the U.S.-incorporated oil and gas company Lone Pine Resources announced plans to sue Canada for at least $230 million under the North American Free Trade Agreement’s rules on expropriation and “fair and equitable treatment.” In arbitration documents, Lone Pine complained that the moratorium imposed by a democratically elected government amounted to an “arbitrary, capricious, and illegal revocation of the Enterprise’s valuable right to mine for oil and gas under the St. Lawrence River.” It also claimed (rather incredibly) that this occurred “with no cognizable public purpose”—not to mention “without a penny of compensation.”