Book review: \"This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate\" by Naomi Klein PDF

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Book review of "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate" by Naomi Klein...

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“This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate” Naomi Klein

Book Review

by Davide Sciuto

15/16: OWT.230: Management and the Natural Environment: Ethics and Sustainability Module Convenor: Dr. Alison Stowell Lancaster University 25th January 2016

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There is no more time for waiting; the world needs a radical shift to “change everything” (p.28) and replace the current societal model to the end of solving the climate change problem. “Our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life” (p.21), says Naomi Klein when she accuses the modern economic model based on a strong capitalistic ideology to be an issue that influences the Earth from not only an environmental but also a social perspective. Indeed, after the Industrial Revolution, society has become much more profit-driven and fossil fuel-dependent misleading people to believe they are able to control the Earth’s assets. These new feelings have transformed the human approach towards sustainability and caused an ecological climate change that, according to Stead J. & Stead W. (2009) is quickly depleting the world’s natural resources and discharging wastes. This adverse relationship between the capitalistic model of the modern economy and the environment, for which the former is destroying the latter, is the basic theory the author uses in presenting her book. According to this, the fossil fuel-based economy and the resulting carbon dioxide emissions are considered the main causes of the unsustainable pollution and the decreasing of the natural resources. The author is extremely clear when she explains why these conditions are still common in the contemporary society: “we have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism” (p.18). Hence, capitalism is more than a simple model; indeed, it is the model from which the most powerful corporations obtain profits and the ideology is the dominant factor in this modern society’s values. Despite this model being extremely prevalent within the society, the author thinks there are still many possibilities to replace it with a more sustainable and liveable world, in which the aim is not to extract the resources from the ground, but to create new opportunities for the communities, adopting the proposed “none-of-the-below” (p.305) approach. This explains why she says, “this book is about those radical changes on the social side, as well as on the political, economic, and cultural sides” (p.24), and this assumption is linked with the Funtowicz and Ravetz (2001) view about the people’s commitment to discharge the ideal role Descartes proposed for humans as “masters and possessors of Nature” (Descartes 1638) for managing, accommodating and adjusting the environmental problem. The author hopes those changes might happen but she is aware they cannot be realised without a “powerful mass movement” (p.8). Indeed, the ambition of the book is to sensitise people about this dramatic situation using the urgency of the

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climate crisis to make them able to hear this “civilizational wake-up call” (p.25). This can create a movement that “would connect communities in all the parts of the world ” (p.347) in order to “move the ideological pole far away from the stifling market fundamentalism that has become the greatest enemy to planetary health” (p.8). This specific willingness to move the ideology in different communities around the world shows why the author does not refer the reading to a specific social profile. However, she mostly emphasises the crucial need to restore an “historical reconciliation” (p.380) between Indigenous peoples and non-Natives, because the former can exercise their “powerful” (p.375) land and treaty rights for constituting a “barrier for the extractive industries” (p.370), while the latter can provide the financial and political support to cover the gap between “what governments say (and sign) and what they do” (p.377). The book claims the recognition of these rights and it considers them “the last line of defense” (p.384) for avoiding the exploitation of poor lands, also called “sacrifice zones” (p.310), by the major extractive companies. The author relates corporations’ influence on society to “capitalism”; in particular, she argues their position of power is the direct consequence of the “extractivism” (p.169), an economic model “based on removing ever more raw material from the Earth” (p.169) , which derives from the fossil-fuel dependence typical of the capitalistic society. Moreover, the writer acknowledges this economic ideology was first proposed by the philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon (1623) when he convinced “Britain’s elites” (p.170) about the “ideas of a completely knowable and controllable Earth” (p.170). From that point, “extractivism” has built the path for communities based on the burning of fossil fuels, so that companies operating in that sector feel free to extract as many natural resources as they want, manipulating the climate and the territorial structure. This manipulation is perfectly in line with the Steffen (2011) concept of “Anthropocene”, which identifies the Industrial Revolution as the start of a new geological era characterized by geophysical modifications due to the human’s impacts on the ecosystems. Hence, the human’s relationship with the Earth has become “nonreciprocal dominance-based” (p.169) and pervaded by carelessness for the environment, which has led communities to suffer from high carbon dioxide emissions and terrible wastes. Indeed, the author criticises this approach has catalysed the “environmental crisis” (p.153) that has to be tackled now to prevent leaving future generations at risk. Interestingly, the writer identifies this crisis as the “climate moment” (p.153) that “supercharges each one of them

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[the most pressing political and economic causes] with existential urgency” (p.153), and it is precisely this urgent call that has to “unite the entire world” (p.291) and “become part of the grand project of building a nontoxic, shockproof economy” (p.154). In particular, the author defines “Blockadia” (p.294) as a “not specific location on a map but rather a roving transnational conflict zone” (p.294) formed by the places where movements around the world have heard the environment call and now are fighting against the capitalism and extractivism. The need of this universal movement is the thesis the author explicitly supports throughout the three main sections of the book: first, “Bad Timing” (p.31), which criticises the continuous “procrastination” (p.55) about the climate problem that is going to worsen the impacts on the ecosystem; second, “Magical Thinking” (p.189), which refers to people’s beliefs that a last-minute technological innovation, ironically defines as “techno wizardry” (p.255), will save the ecosystem, discrediting also the theory for which “The Green Billionaires” (p.230) will refuse profits for helping the planet; third, “Starting Anyway” (p.291), which emphasises the empowerment that is affecting the activist movements’ values, now became more solid and “universal” (p.303), along with acknowledging several victories obtained by the environmental groups. The book’s structure and thesis is supported by several scientific and empirical data about the emission’s problem, presented through sentences like “between 2000 and 2008, the [emission’s] growth rate reached 3.4 percent” (p.80); together with practical and concrete examples related to historical events, such as the Industrial Revolution (p.177), personal experiences like the “three-day retreat about geoengineering” (p.256) she attended, and political statements, such as the quote, “money is no object in this [climate change] relief. Whatever money is needed for it will be spent” (p.7) by the British Prime Minister Davide Cameron. Notably, the author demonstrates a strong emotional approach when she explains the relationship between the climate crisis and her life, making the book extremely touching, as the quote “I had become so convinced that we were headed toward a grim ecological collapse that I was losing my capacity to enjoy my time in nature” (p.419) indicates. Nonetheless, this close contact with the environment does not affect the critical view of the author; rather she always provides objective views regarding her ideas, especially when she attacks capitalism. Paired with providing the environmental movement as the primary solution to the capitalistic and climate problem, the author raises two other main topics for further

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discussion. Firstly, the combination between science and technology as a response to the “lack of progress on emission reduction” (p.256). Interestingly, this argument is linked to the Ahmad (2011) idea of “ecological modernization”, which applies this combination for improving the human welfare. According to this, the author identifies “geoengineering” (p.256) as the connection between those two sciences, but she acknowledges it is a “shock doctrine” (p.277) because, as proposed by the Royal Society (2009), “for many might be essential to protect […], for others it is a mad, bad and dangerous idea” . Secondly, the enlargement of the “sacrifice zones” (p.310) due to the continuous expansion of the fossil fuel business and the related search for territories to exploit. Indeed, the author leaves open the discussion about the possibility that also developed countries might suffer from the extractive projects’ growth stating that recently “the sacrifice zones have gotten a great deal larger, swallowing ever more territory and putting many people who thought they were safe at risk” (p.310). The urgent question of the contemporary society along with the great ambition of creating a movement capable of changing the modern paradigm of capitalism dismisses the reader’s certainties and common beliefs regarding the climate change issue. The argumentations, strengthened by setting the crisis within the current stressed social context, clearly identify the crash between the capitalism and the climate representatives. From one perspective, there is the capitalistic society based on the exploitation of the Earth’s natural resources and pervaded by corruption and hypocrisies within the political and economic sectors that do not provide the basis for a solution. On the other hand, there are the activist movements defined by shared values of integrity and devotion toward the environment that do believe in the chance of a radical shift capable of saving the planet. So what about the role of the people who liaise between those two sides, who are born and raised in a capitalistic system, and, therefore, thankful to that, but aware of the need of a solution to the climate problem? To what extent does the capital-based model overwhelm the willingness to solve the environmental crisis, discouraging the creation of mass movements? Again, are the activists’ victories powerful enough to move people’s ideology? These questions have to be answered in order to “change everything”.

Word Count: 1650

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References Ahmad, W. et al (2011) Strategic Thinking on Sustainability: challenges & sectoral roles, Environment Development & Sustainability, 13. Bacon, F. (1623) De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum, Works , Spedding, Ellis, Heath, Vol. 4, 296. Descartes, R. (1638) Discours de la Method, Part IV. Funtowicz, S. & Ravetz, J. (2001) Post-Normal Science-Environmental Policy under Conditions of Uncertainty, NUSAP.net. Klein, N. (2014) This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Penguin. Royal Society (2009) Geoengineering the climate: science, governance and uncertainty , London, The Royal Society. Stead, J. & Stead, W. (2009) Management for a Small Planet, Sharpe, 1, 3-18. Steffen, W. et al (2011) The Anthropocene: Conceptual and historical perspectives, Phil. Trans R Soc, vol. 369 no.1938 pp.842-867....