This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the
climate
Naomi Klein
Allen Lane £20
(978-1-846-14505-6)
Church Times Bookshop £18 (Use code CT292
)
THE Canadian author Naomi Klein pulls no punches in her wake-up
call about climate change. We are in a war between the attempt to
avert environmental catastrophe and the future of neo-liberal
capitalism. Do we sustain the illusion of limitless economic
growth, or do we sustain future life on earth? Too many - even
environmentalists - have wanted both for too long. But the door on
a two-degree rise is closing fast: 2017 marks a cut-off point for a
serious reduction in carbon emissions.
Klein's targets include unscrupulous industrial expansion, which
places profit above sustainability, and fails to understand the
deep love that people have for their homes and natural environment,
or the dependence that we all have on a sustainable earth; unjust
trade-laws that encourage both polluters and the weak governments
that hide behind them; and coal and oil companies that assume that
governments will not curb carbon emissions, and so just keep
drilling.
She attacks the "reigning ideology" of "extractivism" (a
"dominance-based" relationship to the earth which goes back to
Francis Bacon), and the capitalist fundamentalism built on it. Our
economic system fetishises GDP growth, regardless of the human or
ecological consequences, failing to value things that we cherish -
a decent standard of living, security, and relationships. We need a
visionary shift to an alternative world-view embedded in
interdependence, reciprocity, and co-operation.
Klein is angry about the violation of land rights of
comparatively powerless Indigenous people. She is scathing about
the $100,000-a-day oil-company CEO who protests against fracking
activities near his $5-million Texas house, claiming that it would
lower property values, and about Richard Branson's flamboyant
£3-billion pledge in 2006 to help us get off oil-dependency, of
which scarcely anything has so far been seen. She is shocked to
find the world's largest green group itself drilling for oil.
Klein visits the US Heartland Institute, a group part-funded by
oil companies, whose purpose is to spread doubt about climate
science. In fact, many "Heartlanders" understand the science all
too well - but realise that, if climate change is real, the
implications for our economic and social systems are profound.
Climate change "detonates the ideological scaffolding" on which
contemporary economics, politics, and much of the media rest.
She underlines the heavy responsibility on the rich North to
enable the global South to produce efficient low carbon energy -
not just because it is right, but because our collective survival
depends on it.
But all is not lost. This is a positive and hopeful book.
Climate change represents huge opportunities to spur political and
economic transformation, improve lives, reduce inequality, create
jobs, block harmful trade, reinvigorate local democracy, and invest
in public services. There is still time to avoid catastrophe, but
not within the rules of capitalism as currently constructed.
It will be costly, because of the carbon left in the ground, and
because of the regulations, taxes, and social programmes needed for
the required transformation; but not as costly as doing
nothing.
Klein sees hope in "Blockadia" - a growing, broadly based mass
movement of resistance to high-risk carbon extraction. The failure
of politicians means that action will have to come "from the ground
up". Klein celebrates local renewable-energy initiatives, as at
Balcombe, and the rapidly growing campaign among Churches,
universities, and financial foundations to disinvest from
fossil-fuel extraction, and invest instead in clean energy and
life-giving projects.
The book, with a primarily North American focus, is extensively
researched and challengingly written. A kindly editor should have
said that it was too long (466 pages, with another 100 for notes),
and pointed out some sweeping generalisations. But its power is in
its central point: what the climate needs to avoid collapse is to
stop burning fossil fuels; however, what our present economic model
demands is unlimited growth in extraction and consumption. We do
have a choice, but there is not much time to get this right.
Dr David Atkinson is Honorary Assistant Bishop in the
diocese of Southwark.