Capitalism vs. The Climate - This Changes Everything

This is one of the most comprehensive books about how the economy affects our environment I've ever read, as well as very clearly written, with stories about individuals, corporations, governments and movements. Very easy to read, full of information.

Naomi Klein's book places climate change front and center of every world challenge from continual wars, to globalization, to massive human rights violations and increasing natural disasters; Capitalism's mad, super-extractivism of irreplaceable natural resources is undeniably heating up the planet. But this doesn't have to be. Klein's is a call to action and the right of every person to breathe clean air, drink unpolluted water, and have ia healthy future on this planet.

Whatever we can do to raise awareness and connect as a community, form alliances, and work together to transform fossil capitalism into a sustainable, life giving economy ... And "This Changes Everything" is timely support on every page. Highly recommended.

Utterly comprehensive, highly researched analysis of Climate Change politics, much of it quite disturbing but with some shreds of hope in the protests and blocking tactics of the Native Americans and others who can see how serious the situation has become.

Kline once again nails it. This book should be mandatory reading for everyone. My hope for a more equitable and sustainable future was headed for the rocks before I read "This Changes Everything". Now I'm energized to to throw my hard-won expertise into the fray.

It is difficult to grasp that there are forces in nature that once unbalanced will make all life as we know it, unsustainable. Most of us just can't believe that humanity has that kind of power, we outsource our responsibility to deities, to governments, to corporations, that they will all step in and come up with a fix, a rescue....we are as a society mostly waiting for Godot. Naomi Klein, joins the 'canaries in the coal mine' because her extensive research has taken her to a very dark place, that we must change what makes our web of interconnected life into an exploitable resource is the source of the problem, and like lemmings our lack of willingness to stop making everything about extracting everything to sustain our status quo, is the inevitable end to how we survive. We lack imagination that the system we are enslaved too is the only and best way to organize society. Money is a human manufacture. If it remains the only currency in which we find our value as human beings, if it assigns us to poverty, disease, etc. it is only because we have made it a golden cow. This is a book that may be rejected by the majority of readers, because what it asks of us seems impossible. And yet, that is the great evolution we must embrace.

It a socialis perspective on issues of global importance and shines a light into area worhy of close scrutiny .The problem with the theme of the book is that it is full of negative critic but low on positive solutions.Like all neo-Marxists they aim to destroy without building a positive alternative narrative.

Well researched, well written, weaving threads of the horrors of climate change as well as the successes of people in opposing extractive processes, this is a must read. l cannot recommend it highly enough.

Brilliant analysis of where we stand now in terms of wealth inequality and any coherent effort to slow, mitigate or modify our trajectory into catastrophic climate change-- from a well-known and respected documentarian and writer.

What needs to change? She tells that too. Small government can't accomplish the job. This changes everything.

The writing style is immediately accessible and lucid, suitable even for high school seniors yet without any disrespect to anyone's intelligence or loss of scope and depth. Klein is an ace communicator.

Klein covers much of the same ground as did Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato Si with the same condemnation of capitalism's suicidal rigidity in dealing with the climate crisis as well as our human duty to go beyond Free Market economics to change staggering inequality. In its own way the book is a moral document but without the religious overtones.

What the writer adds that is unique are astute insights into the threat free marketeers/climate deniers feel to their very identities posed by the reality of global warming. They must deny, ignore, and deminish reality or suffer terrifying ego loss..

All climate change deniers (other than corporate america because they know exactly what they are doing) should read this. It connects the dots as it lays down the parameters of climate change along with ample scientific and capitalists practices, providing proof as to how and why this danger to our planet exists. If you do not believe in climate change because of the deliberate corporate plan to deceive you for their own profit, please give this a shot. There really isn't a lot of time left before the 2 degree rise and irreversible change takes place. Understand this dreadful malady is man made. Too many people don't understand how they are being duped. Don't believe it? I challenge you to educate yourself and stop drinking the Kool-Aid.

While most of us have recognized the acceleration of climate change, there has not been much in the way of realistic alternatives. and while this book does propose some possible solutions they seem quite unrealistic. I do hope that something does happen to make us really face climate change but I do think it is already way too late.

This book is a remarkable exploration of global warming from a social, economic, political, and historical perspective. The author discusses the roots of the climate crisis, what we can do about it, and a bit of her own personal experiences and realizations along the way. Her ability to weave these otherwise dry and depressing facts into a compelling story is a major part of what sells the book. The only reason that I gave it 4/5 stars is because the structure suffers a bit from this approach, jumping back and forth between topics with some repetition. For new readers who are just learning this material, though, her enthusiasm and the vital importance of this information will more than make up for the meandering nature of the narrative.

The very best book about climate change what needs to change if we have any hope of saving the planet we know and love. A must read for anyone who wants to be able to intelligently engage in the environmental policy debates that are sure to dominate the next twenty years.

This book was required to read at my college, and for one thing I can say is that it is very mind opening. You become wary of all the global warming repression. I cannot understand why would someone say this book wasn't informative enough because it was for me!

Brilliant first half, but wimps out afterward. Changes the focus from 'capitalism' to 'unregulated capitalism', thus undermining the insights she expresses at the beginning. As with left liberals everywhere, she eschews a truly systemic critique and personalizes the problem.

Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything was a more than transformative book for me. Ms. Klein's clear and cogent explanation of how we got ourselves in this climate mess and what we need to do IMMEDIATELY was revelatory. I am angry and I finally feel there is a glimmer of hope. EVERYONE should be exposed to her arguments regarding the need for profound social change to help us survive as a planet. Thank you, Ms. Klein, for all your work. You changed me, a 62 year old grandmother of three.

As a millennial, this book was eye-opening. I never knew any other economic model other than neoliberal capitalism, and seeing how destructive a force that it could be was painful in parts. This is an extremely important book, especially when the anti-environment crowd is pushing harder than ever.

This book is a classic critique and questioning of the current ascendant American value system, which places untrammeled capitalism and "free market" economics as the only things to be considered in forming both our personal values and the rules and principles of our society. In particular, Naomi Klein shows, with frightening clarity, the natural disaster and eventual catastrophe that will happen if we continue to pursue the highly constricted "Ebenezer Scrooge", narrowly exploitive attitude toward the natural world and our fellow man. We, as a whole, are better people than this. But I am not so sure about our economic and political, so-called "Leaders".

This book is easy to read and understand, is profoundly important, and should be read and seriously considered by everyone.

I hope more people in government and authority read this book. Every time I hear an ignorant person, especially a congressman or tea-partyer say that climate change is a hoax, I cringe and become sadder. Ms. Klein expresses my feelings over and over in this well-researched book. She produces copious evidence to show how the public is being deliberately misled by capitalists in industry and their lobbyists and paid-for government officials into believing that there is no urgent problem, and if there is, well, rich people and the industries' own scientists will solve it. Meanwhile, time is fast running out and business as usual will soon be impossible and irreparable damage will be done to the only planet we have. In the last section of the book, a citizen-led movement she calls "Blockadia" is leading the fight against the extraction industry. This appears to be our only hope. I am watching the current controversy over the Keystone XL pipeline to see if this may be a fight we environmentalists can win.

Klein's polemic is well-researched and filled with points of brilliant discussion and exposition mixed with chapters that seem to continue long after the point was made. Great content and important message for everyone regarding the challenge of our time: climate change. Would recommend you read (and skim at times).

This book really put the reality of the climate change problem in perspective for me. Combating the acidifying oceans, rising sea levels, increasingly prevalent droughts and natural disasters, and many other factors that stem from rising temperatures, requires far more than dramatically reducing emissions. We need to completely restructure our cultural values on a scale that I'm not entirely sure is possible. Naomi Klein's solution is a "Marshall Plan for the Earth" which includes massive public investment in green energy, public transportation, infrastructure, and disaster relief measures on a scale not seen since the New Deal. She proposes that this would initially be funded by reinvesting all of the profits made by oil and natural gas companies into these public programs, in addition to cutting their federal subsidies. Furthermore, she would encourage the re-communalization of the energy grid, giving residents collective ownership of their energy systems; something that German cities have been doing successfully for years. These ideas conflict with our core free market ideologies, and we must ultimately unlearn them in order to fight back against the oligarchic rule which currently infects our political and social systems. Powerful corporations have highjacked our democracy, they have bought the institutions meant to regulate them, they own most of the media outlets, and they have manipulated public opinion to support the current systems. These corrupted systems have failed to deliver on their promises; free market capitalism has only succeeded in the unsustainable exploitation of the Earth and its people. It has fostered the idea of the domination of nature, an idea which has led us to accept the destruction of natural systems for short term wealth creation. A social movement is required to undue this damage, to preserve life for ourselves and our posterity, a movement much larger than that for civil rights, woman's rights, or gay and lesbian rights. And we're running out of time to act...

This could be the most important book of the 21st century. I bought on my Kindle, then bought a separate paper copy just so I could loan it to friends and colleagues. Klein's insight is keen, and her writing is flawless.

Be warned, this is a very depressing book. It is also more than a little repetitive. It has value in the reporting on the environmental movements complacency and the climate change denial movement. There is also something to be said for the "technology will save us" conclusions (it won't.) Unfortunately, the net result of the effort to report on what has failed and the staggering force of the political interests against actions that would destroy the powerful status quo leaves one with a feeling of total helplessness. The take away: Do what you can and encourage others to do the same; just don't expect it to solve the problem or change the inevitable outcomes. Read the Sixth Extinction by E. Kolbert. It will help with the understanding that domination is what our species does and we will destroy our host like all parasites incapable of establishing synergy.

Naomi is trying to raise consciousness and she certainly has the writing skills to do that but ... why didn't she examine the level of consciousness as reflected in investments that corporations have been making to create carbon-free energy? Two of the giants in the business are Siemens and GE. They in particular have been making the huge windmills which have been springing up in landscapes and seascapes. But the industry is increasingly recognizing a problem with those windmills, viz., the cost of transmitting that electrical energy is so large that investors/builders... are being encouraged (w falling prices) to put solar collectors on rooftops.

Ford motor company has also invested in solar energy as they put solar collectors on some of their new cars but ... the area required to collect energy for running a car needs to be larger than the car's rooftop. So why do they continue to make this investment when sales volumes are small? Because consumer consciousness is rather high, surely higher than Naomi seems to think. There are also some cargo ships with solar collectors sufficient to cross oceans.

Naomi is surely having some success in raising consciousness but she has certainly overlooked the industrial giants who have already put megabucks on the line which tells me that consciousness is already rather high as those industrial giants are selling their products to the public or to government personnel whose jobs are beholden to public consciousness.

An argument that I had hoped she would make is to counter the notion (put forward by US Senator Mark Udall) that we have to have more NUCLEAR energy to have electric cars. Solar on more residential and commercial rooftops should address this problem as old-fashion-gas-stations install more solar collectors.

Finally, why is the author so negative towards capitalism when huge firms like GE and Siemens have invested so heavily in creating carbon free energy? There are lots of complaints that she and I probably share about capitalism, but these guys are ahead of the curve and just waiting for more buyers for their carbon free energies which will in turn provide the time and capital to get carbon-free energy to be less costly to bring to the market. Corporations with pockets less deep that GE and Siemens need, imo, to wait for government & major industrial players to sort out the problems before they can afford to join this imperative crusade to save the planet.

A very deep and thought provoking analysis. Very serious and can border on demoralizing. Also brilliant and makes you think seriously about our planet, our humanity, and the very nature of government, leadership, and cooperation on a grand scale.

Naomi Klein has her finger on the pulse again! Very insightful book on the realities of Climate change, the "boondoggle" attempts to address this ( esp. the Virgin CEO's actions) & once again the forces of crisis capitalism trying to profit at all of our expense. Klein is a brilliant writer, in my humble opinion, and a must read.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

by Naomi Klein

The economic catastrophe of the 1930s reshaped the excesses of the Guilded Age into the more egalitarian era ushered in by The New Deal. The transformation continued after WW II, as enthusiastic voters supported sweeping social programs like Social Security, subsidized housing, public funding for the arts and, in the rest of the developed world, health care. The global warming and climate change caused by mankind’s use of fossil fuels is rapidly developing into a crisis of much greater magnitude, and the thesis of This Changes Everything is that successfully adapting to the resulting environmental changes will require a correspondingly, even grander metamorphosis of human culture.

However, a redesign of the social order that protects humanity from both a savagely unjust economic system and a destabilized climate system is not the only possible outcome.

Ms. Klein understands how corporate interests capitalize on the fear and uncertainty that accompany catastrophe. This provides the perfect climate for instituting policies designed to enrich a small elite, as demonstrated by the US response to 911 and the banking crisis of 2008. Times of turmoil provide opportunities for “lifting regulations, cutting social spending and forcing large-scale privatizations of the public sphere. They have also been the excuse for extreme crackdowns on civil liberties and chilling human rights violations.”

Humanity is failing to respond as the climate crisis rapidly gains momentum. The book explains how this is one symptom of a global economy dominated by deregulated capitalism. Privatization is rapidly dismantling and selling off the public resources needed for massive investment in low carbon infrastructure, like public transportation. As corporate control metastasizes into all levels of government, it is able to insure that deregulation and reduced taxation continue to subsidize the extraction of coal, oil and gas by the fossil fuel industry. In addition, although enormous losses in corporate tax revenue place a heavier burden on the poor and middle class, continuing growth in government subsidies for business requires additional revenue. This is extracted from the budgets of programs identified by the those on the political Right as remnants of the failed socialist model, like public school and social services programs. Meanwhile, global trade deals like NAFTA, CAFTA and the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) are insuring a global governance system designed for and assembled by transnational corporate interests.

She notes that, unfortunately for mankind, there was an effective corporate grip on world governance and the economy by the time that scientists like James Hansen had determined the importance of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to prevent global warming. The immediate response of fossil fuel interests was to discredit these findings by following the tobacco industry model of sowing public doubt about the dangers of climate change, a strategy that has successfully blunted any attempt to limit fossil fuel use for about four decades. As a result, the global atmospheric and oceanic systems responsible for maintaining a viable world are rapidly approaching a point where the human capacity for change will no longer be able to avert a devastating climate catastrophe.

Any serious reader will find this book fascinating, frightening, and informative. Extensive notations and references are found in the back of the book, along with a fine index. These features also make it an excellent general reference for climate-related issues.

Naomi Klein is a new mother who knows that dealing with the coming climate catastrophe and assuring the future for all children requires cooperation on a global scale. Although there is no guarantee of a favorable outcome, she is optimistic about the potential for our success. Her book explains the reasons for this hopeful outlook, including how each of us can best contribute to the likelihood of our common success.

Understanding Ms Klein’s optimism may be the best possible motivation for reading the book. Everyone can benefit from understanding how This Changes Everything.

An excellent book, extremely well written and researched. It opened my eyes to how Corporates massage information and appear to have little in the way of morals when it comes to putting themselves first. Any genuine climate change sceptics should read this book.

Excellent book with huge amount of information. Clear arguements and conclusions; Naomi Klein has the great overview, which is essential to understand all aspects and consequences of climate change. If you want to read only one book about climate change, definitely this should be the one.

I wish the subtitle was "Unregulated capitalism vs. the climate", because that would have been a more accurate description of the book's thesis. Klein makes a compelling case that the way we in the US now practice capitalism (with great deference to corporate interests and minimal regulation) is antithetical to solving the climate problem. Externalities require government intervention, there's no two ways about it. Once you acknowledge (as all sensible people must) that government intervention is needed, the key question becomes "What kind of intervention will most effectively solve the problem at lowest cost to society?". That's where the debate should be today, not on manufactured controversies about climate science, which is about as solid as any science we've got (that's why the US National Academy of Sciences summarized as "settled facts" the idea that the climate was warming and that human actions are primarily responsible).

I absolutely love this book, it had everything that I wanted to learn about the war going on between capitalism and the climate. I drive an all-electric car and it was interesting to see what Naomi Klein had to say about capitalism and how it correlates to the climate. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking to gain an insight on the war that has been going on for a long time.

Socialist economist Naomi Klein speaks truth to power once more in her recent book, This Changes Everything, Capitalism vs. The Climate. She is convinced that climate scientists are correct in their predictions that our current course of unbridled carbon pollution will threaten both the natural environment and the civilization built upon the favorable conditions of the past several thousand years. She proposes that the struggle against environmental destruction and the struggle against poverty are one in the same.

Klein attempts to mainstream the combination of these two concepts into the term “climate justice.” Two news reports in January 2015 lend this idea support. A NOAA/NASA analysis shows 2014 as the globally warmest year in recorded history. The charity Oxfam presented evidence at the World Economic Forum conference in Switzerland that 1% of the world’s population will come to control 50% of the world’s wealth in 2015. Wealth-producing carbon pollution wrecks the atmosphere and impoverishes people at the same time.

Conservatives, a.k.a, free market capitalists, a.k.a. “neoliberals,” continue their concentration of wealth and the CO/2 level continues to rise. Neoliberals breathe the same air as the rest of us, so what are they missing? Klein speculates that the ideology of low tax, low regulation libertarianism has become so ingrained that the right wingers fundamentally cannot admit the truth of global climate change. To do so would challenge their identity.

Climate disruption cannot be addressed solely by individuals or even by entire countries. “Global warming” is already creating disasters everywhere and will only get worse. The response to this must be one of hyper-regulation and internationalism on a previously unknown scale. Which is to say that if Klein’s hypothesis is correct, then the neoliberals are not only wrong, but more than wrong. If global warming is true, then their entire belief system (and thus their personal and ideological identity) is demonstratively false. The destruction of America (and the world, for that matter) is preferable to admitting that their beliefs and lives are a sham.

Corporate interests putting profits about patriotism is nothing new, but the stakes are very high. What will happen to democratic government when climate disasters pile up in an overwhelming way?

Rather crazily, the renewable energy technology to significantly mitigate climate change already exists and putting that technology into place would create far more jobs than the ones produced the carbon industry now. Thus saving the environment plus economic opportunity for an ever great number of people equals social justice.

Arrayed against common sense is the well financed greed of the carbon industry. That wealth is used to buy media, politicians and elections. And where that isn’t enough, industry shills have infiltrated several once effective environmental organizations (The Nature Conservancy, et. al.) to effectively neutralize much of the threat those organizations might pose to our corporate overlords.

Klein’s well researched book thoroughly explores these and other issues, but I will skip to the Now What? question. Having exposed the fearsome forces arrayed against us who believe that saving nature and civilization is a higher value than continuing on a course of neo-fascism and corporate corruption, Klein proposes a surprising remedy. Her solution seems to reside in faith that “Blockadia,” small unit citizen action, has a chance of prevailing against greedy, destructive corporations. Yet at the very beginning of the book she makes the opposite argument that the small scale actions of recycling, driving less, etc. is of minor consequence compared to the scale of the environmental disasters facing us.

If her premise that we are facing certain destruction is correct, then her solution of grass roots citizen action, while admirable, doesn’t seem to rise to the level of the problem. She rightly accuses many of us, corporate-types and social activists alike, of not taking the problem of carbon pollution seriously enough, leading both billionaires and conservationists to propose easy solutions that ultimately won’t work. She suggests that many of us don’t have the courage of our convictions, and doubtless this is true.

But if admitting to the likelihood of an apocalyptic future is a first step in avoiding that future, then voting for a green candidate or boycotting a local mining operation just will not be enough. Klein’s well documented criticisms of our current economic and political system call not for wishy-washy actions (Occupy Wall Street, etc.) but for a thorough anti-corporate, anti-carbon revolution. She is an economist, not a political theorist, so maybe economic analysis goes only so far. She does warn, however, that the longer we wait to address the issues of social justice, the more draconian will be the remedies once we admit to having no choice but to change or die.

Well-written, dense yet readable. If you can possibly overcome any pre-conceived political leanings, please read this important book. Yes, it is scary. Yes, we are all contributing to eventual doomsday (and Ms. Klein admits she is guilty, too, no sanctimonious preaching here). I'm not sure after reading this thoughtful manuscript that I can personally help apply the brakes to the world's downward trajectory but I'm sure going to try more.

The most important book ever on the environment. We must face the reality that Capitalism is at the root cause of environmental destruction and externalizing the cost of pollution. Naomi Klein is the only author who gets this but also explains in detail how grassroots' action is working to confront the economic and political imbalance of power. Our social problems are all connected. Corporate dominance through actions like the "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision contributes to low quality food, pay imbalance, discrimination toward the poor and minorities, a failure to adequately tax wealthy individuals and corporations and corruption in politics. Fundamental change is necessary to put our nations' citizens priorities back in order.