135 pages • 4 hours read
Naomi KleinThis Changes Everything
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Climate Change and Climate Denial
For a book on climate change, it’s curious how little time Klein spends discussing the science or engaging with the arguments of climate change deniers. She clearly states this is not a book about climate science (many of these have already been written) but about the politics of climate change and how we respond to the challenges it poses.
She states the position of 97% of the scientific community, who accept that on current projections, we are headed for a global temperature rise of over 2 degrees by the end of this century, with 4 degrees (or more) being cited as very likely in reputable studies. This would trigger irreversible climate change phenomena with a huge impact on human and natural life, including the disruption of weather and seasonal patterns causing droughts and famines, a significant increase in extreme weather conditions, and rising sea levels making low-lying lands uninhabitable. As Klein puts it, “climate change has become an existential crisis for the human species” (15).
The research has been widely done and corroborated by the scientific community, and that authority is good enough for Klein to accept as the starting point of her own political and cultural study.
Defining the scope of her book in this way is legitimate, and it allows her to focus her critical attention on the political and cultural dimensions of the situation, but it does mean that someone unconvinced or uncertain about the truth of climate change is not likely to be persuaded by what they read here. In this respect, Klein’s assumed readers are people who likely accept the scientific consensus, as we tend to do on most things about which we are not experts.
A question might be raised here about how far we accept scientific authority on certain matters.
Klein is clear, too, that climate change denial does not grow out of a scientific perspective. It might style itself as criticism of experts, or even of a liberal status quo. However, for Klein, its purpose is (often self-avowedly) political. It grew from people with a vested interest in maintaining the economic and political status quo, and who saw climate change (and the environmentalist policies that follow from it) as a serious challenge.
The Transition to Green Energy
It’s not just fossil fuel companies that make huge profits from extracting and selling. Nations have generated wealth by selling the right to mine fossil fuel-rich lands, but also on an individual level, and many people (certainly in Western developed countries) have grown accustomed to the way of life fossil fuels enable: the freedom that comes with driving a car, having light or heat at the flick of a switch, having access to a wide range of fairly cheap consumer goods, and being able to take a flight for a trip or holiday. That’s not to say at least a fair portion of this wouldn’t be possible with alternative energy sources, but there’s no doubt that right now fossil fuels are easier, cheaper, and more powerful: this is another reason why climate change evasion or denial has its appeal. Certainly, the transition to a renewable-energy-powered economy would not leave all of that freedom intact, even while it brought new benefits of its own.
Individually and culturally, weaning ourselves off the easy option of fossil fuel will require change, reflection and sacrifice. As Klein points out, what’s needed is an alternative vision for a way of life in a post-fossil fuel world, a narrative that people can get behind, and one that shows the limitations of our current cultural narratives.
Klein argues that we already have the renewable technologies and policy ideas there to shift our economies to a green model, and cites studies that have started to put this picture together (see Chapter 3).
These technologies, if invested in, could be made cheaply and with greater efficiency, and the solutions could be implemented locally and provide a model of self-sustainability and local democratic control.
Neoliberalism and Free Market Capitalism
Klein’s analysis could be described as broadly Marxist, in the very loosest sense of the word. She sees our failure on a political and international level to respond to the dangers of climate change as one that’s rooted in our economic model. It’s less about the moral decisions of individuals (though that also factors into it) and more about the driving forces of our economy: the profit principle, growth, and competition.
Klein explains repeatedly that the prevailing form of free market capitalism we all live under is simply incompatible with the kind of changes that are required to begin to deal with climate change. These changes involve government regulation; increased taxation on wealth and polluting businesses; regulation of business and industry; tariffs and protectionism to safeguard developing green enterprise and local industry; investment in clean public services and transport; and redistribution of global wealth to support green economic development in poorer countries. On the level of values, it involves a shift from an individualistic to a collective worldview.
It’s not hard to imagine how this recipe for change would go down with the world’s political and business elites, wedded as they are to the principles of the free market and neoliberalism. Nor does it seem there is a happy middle road. For several years, this has been tried, with various market-orientated environmental solutions and pro-corporate green groups, and emissions have continued to soar.
Again, for Klein, the point is one of structural conflict. These companies’ priority is to profit, grow, and expand their market share. Especially concerning fossil fuel companies, this isn’t compatible with saving the environment. And whenever these two interests clash, the top priority will always win. Richard Branson’s foray into the world of environmentalism is a good example of this conflict in practice (see Chapter 7).
This leaves a fundamental opposition between our existing economic model and what’s required to avoid climate change disaster. For Klein, it comes down to a fundamental choice: free market capitalism or the planet. The rhetorical force of her book is to put this choice before us.
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