Naomi Klein.
This Changes Everything. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014. 566 p. $30.00.
A book review by Dan Riker
According to Thomas Piketty in Capital
in the Twenty-First Century the rich are going to get much richer and more
powerful, and there is not much we can do about it. However, if we don't stop
the Earth from heating up in the next ten years, there may not be a world that
even the rich can enjoy, writes Naomi Klein in her powerful new book, This
Changes Everything.
Until now, Piketty's book probably
was the most influential and controversial book of the year - maybe in quite a
few years. However, Klein arguably has trumped Piketty, by describing in terms
that anyone can understand the almost immediate crisis the world faces with
climate change and what needs to be done about it. And by so doing she provides
accelerant to a climate change movement re-ignited by the recent massive march
in New York City.
Klein, a Canadian journalist, has
had two previous bestsellers, The Shock Doctrine and No Logo, and
This Changes Everything already has made the bestseller lists.
While not highly technical, this is
a well-documented book, with 100 pages of notes. She doesn't dwell on the
climate science, but the data she cites is all that is needed. The amount of
carbon in the Earth's atmosphere is increasing, mostly because of the burning
of fossil fuels, oil, gasoline, natural gas and coal. The use of those fuels is
increasing, rather than decreasing, and the carbon emissions, trapped in the
atmosphere, are causing the temperature of the Earth to rise. Klein quotes a
2012 report by the World Bank discussing the projection for ten years from now:
"(A)s
global warming approaches and exceeds 2-degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees
Fahrenheit), there is a risk of triggering nonlinear tipping elements. Examples
include the disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet leading to more
rapid sea-level rise, or large-scale Amazon dieback drastically affecting
ecosystems, rivers, agriculture, energy production, and livelihoods. This would
further add to 21st Century global warming and impact entire continents."
Klein adds, "In other words,
once we allow temperatures to climb past a certain point, where the mercury
stops is not in our control." The World Bank went on to write, "we're
on track for a 4 degree C warmer world (by century's end) marked by extreme
heat waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity,
and life-threatening sea level rise."
And she points out that recent data
indicates the track now is actually for a 6 degree C rise, which would cause
uncontrollable catastrophes that are likely to make the Earth uninhabitable.
This is something that could happen in the lifetimes of people now alive.
Temperature rises have to be stropped before they exceed 2 degrees Celsius in
the next ten years.
There is no valid scientific data
to refute these projections. Those who have made denying climate change a
profitable profession, due to financial support from the fossil fuel industry,
have been roundly defeated in public discourse, and by hard evidence. But the
fossil fuel industry - and its minions in the Republican Party - promote
denial, and try to convince the unwary, and uninformed, of its validity. And
they have been successful in preventing American government action against
climate change.
While the national government may
not be doing anything, Klein writes, the industry's frenetic efforts to extract
as much fossil fuel as possible, as fast as possible, are generating increasing
citizen opposition. Fracking is a good example.
Fracking has become such a massive
user - and destroyer - of fresh water that it is endangering water supplies in
many parched and drought-stricken areas in the United States and in other
countries. In one year the amount of water used in fracking in the U.S. could
cover Washington, DC to a depth of 22 feet. In addition to creating massive amounts
of wastewater, fracking also causes earthquakes, pollutes fresh water sources
and releases large amounts of methane into the atmosphere, immediately
contributing to global warming.
The battle to save water is a
battle people all over the world, according to Klein, are willing to fight,
even to die for.
"We can't drink oil," is
a refrain she writes is often heard.
As a result, opposition to fracking
is growing. France, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and the Czech Republican have
moratoria on fracking in place. In North America so do Vermont, New York,
Quebec, Labrador and Newfoundland.
Klein writes about a very
frightening topic, but she does it with a style that is personal, warm and
gentle, not strident or preachy. She communicates to the reader almost as she
would to a close friend, or relative. And she demonstrated that same style in
her talk to an overflow, standing room only crowd Wednesday night at a Powell's
bookstore in the Portland, Oregon, suburb of Beaverton. She talked as if all
the people in the room were friends, or family - reinforcing the message of
inclusion in her book - that in trying to save the world, we are all together.
But while her style is gentle and
friendly, her message is not muted, or ambiguous.
"All non-radical changes are
off the table," she said to the crowd. "We have to change a system
that already has failed...this is the best chance to demand and build a better
world."
And the principal part of her
message is that the climate change movement can galvanize other reform movements
into one major effort to bring about true economic equality and opportunity,
and greater freedom. And as a centerpiece of a united movement she proposes
that the government guarantee a minimum income to all citizens, something that
Switzerland recent has done.
And in This Changes Everything,
she leaves no doubt as to the urgency of such a movement.
"(O)nly a mass social movement
can save us now. Because we know where the current system, left unchecked, is
headed," she writes, adding later,
"(C)limate change does not need
some shiny new movement that will magically succeed where others failed.
Rather, as the furthest-reaching crisis created by the extractivist worldview,
and one that puts humanity on a firm and unyielding deadline, climate change can
be the force - the grand push - that will bring together all of these still
living movements. A rushing river fed by countless streams, gathering
collective force to finally reach the sea....
Climate change is our chance to right
those festering wrongs at last - the unfinished business of liberation."
She departs from much of the
environmental movement. There is no time left for incremental changes or for
compromise. There simply is only one answer to the fossil fuel industry: No. No
more mines. No more drilling licenses. No more pipelines. No more coal or oil
terminals. No more fracking. Its growth must stop, and eventually, not too long
from now, its business must end, or be dramatically curtailed.
And that is an enormous task.
According to a study she quotes in the book, the existing holdings of oil, gas
and coal, of the fossil fuel industry would emit five times more carbon than
the earth's atmosphere can safely absorb, and are worth in present value
somewhere in the range of $27 trillion. And they are looking for more sources.
To save the world, they are going to have to be forced to give up 80% of that
$27 trillion and severely limit, or shut down, their businesses. This is not
something they will do very willingly.
She portrays the struggle as one between
capitalism and the climate, but it really is a struggle with that key element
of capitalism, which always has been its greatest problem - the drive for
greater and greater growth and profits. Unfettered capitalism always has been
its own worst enemy, but now it is the world's worst enemy. Unless it is
stopped, the fossil fuel industry will destroy the world.
Progressive governments in the past
reined in capitalism's worst aspects, and, ultimately, it will take government
action to rein in the extraction industry and stop climate change. But we do
not have a progressive government today - far from it. For that to happen,
there must be a huge mobilization among the people, and it is something that
has happened in the past. Can it happen again?
She begins the book by describing
the problem, and she got me hooked in the Introduction, when she wrote about
reading Have You Ever Seen a Moose? to her young son, and remembering a
recent article in Scientific American, "Rapid Changes Turn North
Woods into Moose Graveyard." It seems the moose in Alberta and nearby
areas are dying off and it is believed to be because of the toxic chemicals
released from the massive tar sands extraction project.
She wrote: "Will he ever see a
moose?"
Her personal style once again is
demonstrated later in the book when she describes her difficulties trying to
get pregnant and then discovering that she was pregnant while in New Orleans
and in the oily and toxic water caused by the BP disaster. It turned out to be
an ectopic pregnancy (when the embryo implants outside the uterus), but before
that she worried that she had damaged her baby by being in the toxic water. And
she provides plenty of evidence from many places in the world where babies have
been severely damaged because of the pollution of the fossil fuel industry.
In the first part of the book she
criticizes international trade agreements and many environmental groups for
supporting them, as well as most governments, including that headed by
President Barack Obama because of his support for every method of fossil fuel
extraction. As an example of the negative effects these treaties have on
efforts to curb climate change, she describes how Quebec was stopped from
providing support to a local solar power company because such an effort would
discriminate against companies in other countries.
She contrasts North American
policies with those of Germany, where many cities operate their own public
utilities and where more than half of the nation's electricity now comes from
solar and wind power. She quotes a number of studies showing that, if we chose
to make the necessary changes in our power generating systems and businesses,
existing types of renewable sources of energy could provide a majority of
America's power in just the next 15 years. One, by a Stanford group, says that
all of New York City's electricity could be so provided. But there are huge
obstacles to such progress.
She writes:
"(T)he three policy pillars of
the neoliberal age - privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the
corporate sector, and the lowering of income and corporate taxes, paid for with
cuts to public spending - are each incompatible with many of the actions we
must take to bring our emissions to safe levels. And together these pillars
form an ideological wall that has blocked a serious response to climate change
for decades."
In Part Two, titled "Magical
Thinking," she criticizes most major environmental groups for failing to
move the ball at all on climate change. In addition to supporting trade agreements,
many environmental groups have co-opted themselves by becoming too close to the
industry, or in the case of The Nature Conservancy, becoming the industry.
Mobil Oil donated some Texas land known as a breeding ground for the endangered
prairie chicken to the Nature Conservancy. The Conservancy later put oil wells
on the property. The oil wells still are there, but the prairie chickens are
gone.
The Royal Academy convened a
meeting of what she called "mad scientists" to discuss means by which
the sun's heat could be diverted, including schemes such as squirting chemicals
into the atmosphere to block the sun's rays. She wrote that Bill Gates actually
invested in one outfit attempting to develop such technology, proof that having
billions of dollars does not necessarily mean having common sense.
The meat of the book is Part Three,
where she describes the efforts by groups of people all over the world to
combat fossil fuel extraction that threatens their towns, homes and families,
calling their actions, "Blockadia." Even though most governments are
doing little to combat climate change, that does not mean that citizen action
is not being taken, and some of it is starting to be successful.
The Cherokee have stalled the
Keystone XL Pipeline because it violates their treaty-covered lands. Similarly,
native people in Canada are challenging the destruction of lands in Alberta
that, under treaty, they have a right to use, and are fighting a proposed
pipeline and oil terminal in British Columbia on land the government does not
have a right to use.
As an example of how citizen action
can succeed, she points out that China is beginning to reduce its use of coal,
and will have lower future demand. Activist challenges to new coal facilities
that delay their implementation may eliminate their business viability.
With This Changes Everything,
Noami Klein very effectively describes the problem we face, the difficulty of
solving it, but ways in which it can be effectively attacked. It should help to
inspire the movement that will be necessary to force the major changes we, the
people of Earth, need for our very survival.
