See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/282962057

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi

Klein

Article  in  Enterprise and Society · January 2015

DOI: 10.1353/ens.2015.0038

CITATIONS READS

0 9,108

1 author:

Sherrie Steiner
Purdue University Fort Wayne
61 PUBLICATIONS   61 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Testing Moss for Fugitive Dust Heavy Metal Contamination in a Neighborhood View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Sherrie Steiner on 15 November 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.





 



!
""
#
$"%&%

'
( $

) *"+*
 "+
%+,
 * "*"$+$*" -


 
.*
**+ "-

&(
**,+
",
 *&
**$,
*+
" %$+$*
 &

&.*


**/,+%
" %  +** %


"+*

**  

, $
""
&

&(
%
*"   ,+%
+
*
"

*&0 %
,*  
%
 +"&( $
,$ 
%"1 


*
 &

&.*
 ",   

* "
 %+
%+

%
+
"*  $

+   &2,

*
"$3( 
"4
+*,

,*+ ,
,  
,   " *, ,+"+&

!&

 







*'
'
5""
#
$"%&%6&
&7
**,,
 
*
"," +*
% 
" "%
*








$,1+
*-
'
'

8
*." 
(
$"%9 ,.
 



"+ ,
 *
+ " +,+*
(
$"%
9 ,0+ 2"(  * 
-&"
& : +:


,,++
  +&

; *,
'
'

; ."  )"
 

 Author Queries

QA There are no queries for this article.

1 Reviews
2
3
4
5 Naomi Klein. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2014. 566 pp. ISBN 978-1-4516-9738-4, $30.00 (hardcover).
6
7
8 Political ecology analysis of the “out of control juggernaut” of global-
9 ization as a changeable political position is almost unintelligible
10 outside academia (for example, Peter Newell, Globalization and the
11 Environment, 2012). The international economic organizations (such
12 as the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, and
13 World Bank) that govern trade, production, and finance are critical to
14 the possibilities of effective environmental governance, but they are
15 not typically thought of as environmental regimes—and yet, these
16 organizations have substantive environmental profiles in terms of
17 the authority they exercise over resource access, use, and environ-
18 mental impact. Reified categories that separate the global from the
19 national or the political from the economic interfere with effective
20 environmental analysis. Until reified categories are challenged and
21 what counts as “environmental” is broadened, political solutions
22 can be framed only within a business-as-usual approach that is
23 headed in an unsustainable direction (Newell). Once claims to
24 political impotency are demystified, the discourse that absolves
25 governments from blame for the consequences of reckless invest-
26 ment and irresponsible speculation can be challenged, and the global-
27 ization dynamics can no longer be used as an excuse for the lack of
28 a project for political reform (Newell). Political ecology scholars
29 seek to identify indicators of real political activity that do not
30 overstate their potential for political reform, and indicators of real
31 ecological disruption that do not understate the potential for eco-
32 logical collapse. Once the indicators are identified, one can easily
33 appreciate the desire for inspiring political reform by making causal
34 inferences, but the co-evolution of globalization in our biosphere
35 represents a singular case study that constitutes an inadequate basis
36 for generalizing about the process.
37 Agendas for reform are just as subject to the distorting influences of
38 deterministic assumptions as are the reified categories associated with
39 major institutions or nations. The scholarly challenge is to decon-
40 struct reified categorizations that block political reform without
41
42
43 © The Author 2015. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the
44 Business History Conference.

1
2 ENTERPRISE & SOCIETY

1 socially constructing a political agenda that generates “big conclusions

2 from small samples” lest our methodological needs generate the theory,
3 rather than vice versa (Stanley Lieberson, Small N’s and Big Con-
4 clusions, 1991). Unfortunately, the very process that makes a study
5 more academically sound (for instance, contextualization, qualification,
6 measurement error, interaction effects, and multicausality) often renders
7 it unintelligible to a broader audience. This itself becomes problematic
8 if the proposed political solution involves popular democratic reform.
9 Overcoming these identification challenges with an accessible writ-
10 ing style that investigates complicated interconnections in a mean-
11 ingful way contributes to our understanding of a political ecology
12 approach to macroeconomics. In This Changes Everything: Capitalism
13 vs. The Climate, Naomi Klein uses a story-based inquiry method
14 of investigative journalism to delve deeply into the relationship
15 between capitalism and climate change. She believes that the global
16 community is entering a new historic moment, dubbed “decade zero,”
17 of widespread public recognition that we are in a crisis of our own
18 making that threatens our existence, the outcome of which will
19 change everything (p. 452). She deconstructs the underlying politics
20 of business-as-usual decision-making behavior, demystifies belief
21 in technological fixes and messianic saviors, challenges reckless
22 behavior and political irresponsibility, and calls for a just transition
23 to a responsible future.
24 Klein begins with a political analysis of factors that support unreg-
25 ulated capitalism, documenting political decisions in which “trade
26 has repeatedly been allowed to trump climate, but under no circum-
27 stances would climate be permitted to trump trade” (p. 78). The first
28 section unmasks hyper-extractivism as a political strategy sabotaging
29 a collective response to climate change just when it is most needed
30 (p. 130). Inadequate oversight and regulation of natural gas fracking is
31 linked to fossil fuel industry lobbying efforts and changeable polit-
32 ical regulatory decisions (p. 145). Political delay only radicalizes the
33 economic changes that must be made if adaptation to environmental
34 changes are to have any hope of success, so starving the public sphere
35 at the very moment when it is needed most is argued to be a politi-
36 cally untenable position (p. 106).
37 The second section is dedicated to demystifying three types of
38 magical thinking that Klein believes contribute to popular support
39 of business as usual: (1) that environmental nongovernmental orga-
40 nizations will influence capitalism to adapt to climate change; (2) that
41 influential “green” capitalists will redirect the economy toward sus-
42 tainability; and (3) that geoengineering solutions will insulate us
43 from the effects of climate change. She offers evidence of how fossil
44 fuel funding has shaped parts of the environmental movement to
 Reviews 3

1 offer solutions (for example, natural gas or tar sands) that are suffi-
2 ciently compromised to result in “catastrophic levels of warming”
3 (p. 199). Similarly, the green leadership of ‘converted’ billionaires
4 are too financially compromised to offer the needed leadership for
5 adaptive change (p. 231). Even when green leaders make uncompro-
6 mised efforts, their serious attempts can be counterproductive if the
7 degree of hope they inspire contributes to further denial about the
8 regulatory changes called for by science. According to Klein,
9
10 The idea that capitalism and only capitalism can save the world
11 from a crisis created by capitalism is no longer an abstract theory;
12 it’s a hypothesis that has been tested and retested in the real world. …
There is plenty of room to make a profit in a zero-carbon economy;
13
but the profit motive is not going to be the midwife for that great
14
transformation. (p. 252)
15
16
Finally, Klein demystifies belief in geoengineering management of
17
climate change as justification for continuing with unregulated capi-
18
talism (p. 258). Solar radiation management, for example, might help
19
slow glacial melting, but it would likely induce widespread drought
20
and reduced freshwater supplies (p. 275), and it does nothing about
21
the ocean acidification that threatens the aquatic food chain (p. 259).
22
Klein writes,
23
24
You would think that turning down the sun for every person on
25 earth is a more intrusive form of big government than asking citi-
26 zens to change their light bulbs. Indeed you would think that pretty
27 much any policy option would be less intrusive. But that is to miss
28 the point: for the fossil fuel companies and their paid champions,
29 anything is preferable to regulating ExxonMobil, including attempt-
30 ing to regulate the sun. (p. 283, emphasis in original)
31
32 Political decision making that risks ecocide is foolish when viable
33 alternatives exist, but responsible solutions will require engaging in
34 the hard work of making radical changes to the way we currently live
35 (p. 289).
36 The remainder of the book identifies a pattern of local, regional,
37 national, and international grassroots political mobilizations that
38 simultaneously block new carbon frontiers (such as fracking and coal
39 mines) and reorganize toward sustainability (for instance, renewable
40 energy plans and community-owned businesses) (p. 364). Finan-
41 cially, this takes the form of the “Divest-Invest” movement, in which
42 foundations, colleges and universities take the funds that they divest
43 from fossil fuel companies and reinvest them in green initiatives,
44 such as the clean tech sector and affordable green housing (p. 401).
 4 ENTERPRISE & SOCIETY

1 Klein describes a “constructive movement” that must fuse resistance

2 with the development of alternatives to build an alternative econ-
3 omy within the existing one that is so “treacherous that nowhere is
4 safe” (p. 405). Klein suggests that financing for a “Marshall Plan for
5 the Earth” be conducted within a “Greenhouse Development Rights”
6 framework to ensure a just transition that incorporates a country’s
7 responsibility for historical emissions and the country’s capacity to
8 contribute based on their level of development (p. 417). Funds for the
9 transition could come from a combination of strategies such as erasing
10 foreign debt, imposing a financial transaction tax, or elimination of
11 fossil fuel company subsidies (p. 418).
12 Klein’s most interesting contribution to popular political ecology is
13 also the portion most easily dismissed because of her shift to personal
14 storytelling about private matters. As Betty Friedan noted, however,
15 the personal is political. Klein writes of her own problems with infer-
16 tility, then links unregulated capitalism to changes to the regenerative
17 health of ecosystems. She notes how industrial risk assessment reports
18 are conducted under the assumption that “we live in a world where all
19 creatures are already fully grown” (p. 431). Reports note that marine
20 mammals might experience some stress, but “conspicuously absent
21 from the report are the words ‘eggs,’ ‘larvae,’ ‘fetus,’ and ‘juvenile’”
22 (p. 432). To the extent that environmental impact assessments do not
23 take into account reproductive impairment when identifying accept-
24 able levels of environmental pollution, they may be seriously under-
25 estimating the interactive effects between climate change and species
26 extinction—what Klein refers to as “disappearing babies in a warming
27 world” (p. 434).
28 Although Klein’s deepest insights derive from her experience of
29 “becoming a mother in an age of extinction” (p. 419), her successful
30 achievement of motherhood while conducting investigative journalism
31 may also contribute to an overstatement of the possibilities for political
32 reform and an understatement of the potential for unfettered capitalism
33 to induce ecological collapse. The time has come, she believes, for
34 climate activists to take a clear moral stance, yet she acknowledges that
35 the “raw terror of ecocide” continues to “suppress the full reality of the
36 climate crisis” through the muting influence of denial (p. 462). Klein
37 has written about capitalism and climate, but the pressing decision
38 she ultimately describes concerns politics and ecology.
39
40 Sherrie Steiner
41 Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne

42 doi:10.1017/eso.2015.8
43
44

View publication stats