This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

I'm sympathetic to the message Naomi Klein is putting across in this book - that action is needed on climate change that goes beyond pinning our hopes on a technological fix being found. I was hoping to come away from reading it able to cite compelling approaches to tackling the issue. But the book largely rehashes the same old solutions that the Left has been putting forward for years. That is fine, but my issue is with the opaque style they are presented in. For a start, the book is extremely long-winded (467 pages excluding end notes), repetitive in places, and with unnecessary diversions all over the place making it hard to follow a clear train of thought and tedious to read. The gimmicky chapter headings don't help. A more concise telling of the impressive research that's clearly gone into the book would have been much more impactful and compelling.

Sadly, I doubt this book is going to change any minds. The evidence backing up claims is patchy. Some segments are well referenced, but others are more rant-like and unbalanced.

The best this book can hope to achieve is to reignite the fire in the belly of those who already agree with its premise. Though even that is a push. It's so tedious to read I'm resenting it for stealing an enormous amount of time to extract the gems inside it.

The book is a classic victim of over-hype. I find it difficult to believe that all those giving it a five star review have read more than a couple of chapters. My advice would be to save yourself a disappoint and look for a video where Naomi sets out her key points instead.

Wherever Naomi Klein sets her sights, a wealth of information and progressive principles are revealed. Most notably, this is a book about the detrimental impacts of the extractivist ideology that comes as a package deal with the kind of deregulated free-market systems that Klein slams throughout the book.

However, my main gripe with the book, and it's quite a big one, is that it completely skirts over the environmental impact of farming livestock. Considering that the farming of livestock leads to the consumption of an estimated 70% of all the worlds farmed land and, as such, a huge amount of water (15 k litres to every kg of beef), and considering the fact that an estimated 91% of all deforestation that has occurred thus far has occurred due to the need to clear land to house and feed livestock, I'd say that this was a monumental error on Klein's behalf. Had the rest of the text not been so thorough in its exposition, I would have rated this as 3 stars. I don't know if this was wilful or accidental ignorance, either way it's the major shortcoming of the book.

Before I review this, let me be clear, my political persuasion is most probably left of centre and I absolutely believe in climate change. In addition, I try and live my life in a way which reduces the impact of my carbon foot and I am reasonably passionate about climate change. Overall, I thought this was a fascinating book and Klein does well to lay out the arguments here and there was a lot I learnt or there was a lot to enhance my understanding. This includes the level of corruption within governments and so called green organisations, the level of profit and power these companies hold and the new fuels that are escalating the pollution and climate warming. I think i also learnt quite a bit why those of a more right wing nature adds so scared of climate change being real and why everyone who doesn't agree with the right is a 'leftie'. Finally the second to last chapter gave me some hope (if not much) for the future. However, there were some things that rankled with me a bit. Most of Klein's solutions to all this is to move towards an extreme left wing mantra: stop privatisation, give the power back to governments, start up more co-op etc, to the point that sometimes I wondered whether the tail was wagging the dog rather than the other way round. Also, this will just put those right wing believers right off. In addition, this book isn't capitalism vs the climate ; it is the energy companies vs the climate and there is a difference. Klein doesn't even touch upon farming (particularly the consumption of animals) or the other top pollutants (individuals who have children or pets which is always the elephant in the room). Overall though this.was informative and interesting.

I have read this from cover to cover, but in many short bursts. It is well researched, balanced in its approach (plenty of citations) and not too gloomy. Indeed it is quite upbeat at times. I was familiar with much of the material but it was still interesting to put the science into context - from a macro-economic perspective. I recommend that everyone should read at least some of this book- if only the first 20 pages (introduction). It is an urgent 'call to arms' that politicians and senior business leaders must read.

This remarkable book rounds up with wide-ranging detail and references the positions, pressures and movements around the issues of global warming and fossil fuel extraction and, in the present state of affairs, whether or not compromise can still afford to replace confrontation. It starts with the premise that global warming is man-made because over 90% of scientists agree it to be the case (John Kerry is quoted as equating climate change to a weapon of mass destruction). It exposes the considerable vested interests in fossil fuel extraction and exploitation that have the power to rival governments, the collusions and purchases of influence between these and governments, and even environmental groups, not to mention some even more disastrous track records of authoritarian supposedly leftist regimes. The growing trend towards international trade agreements allows corporations to sue governments who prevent their commercial activities related to the extraction of fossil fuels. Naomi Klein reminds us of the daunting fact that fossil fuel companies presently hold in reserve about five times what it would take to raise global temperatures by 2 degrees. It exposes apprehension over the need for big government to stand up to the massive resources of fossil fuel-dependent industries always fighting for survival and profits in the race for increasingly inaccessible resources, and the bravery of impoverished movements such as various Indigenous nations in the Americas and elsewhere in fighting to prevent extraction on their lands. It enters into the grim business of the corruption of environmental progress caused by revolving doors, cronyism, collusions to slow down green solutions, the distorting of facts and creating myths and ignoring findings such the one that the methane leakage associated with fracking makes its overall environmental impact rank with coal. It highlights the reductions in emissions dubiously achieved by developed countries through their exporting of polluting industries under the banner of global trade. The proven weaknesses of incentive schemes such as taxation and carbon trading are discussed. In terms of physical abatement, known carbon capture technologies have failed to break through and there are the horrific implications of using geoengineering to mask the sun (whereby certain susceptible regions would climatically become disaster zones). We learn about carbon cowboys, transition towns, solar warriors, and Blockadia movements, the use of ‘shock doctrine’ to transform places damaged by the effects of global warming into exemplary green energy projects, and the pre-emptive launching of such projects in areas targeted by the fossil fuel companies. Financial abatement efforts include encouraging divestment in fossil fuel companies and paying poorer countries to leave their fossil fuels in the ground and be able to invest in green energy. For the purpose of countries agreeing to emissions reductions, the notion of historical ecological debt of advanced economies has to be taken into consideration; Greenhouse Development Rights have been established to fairly account for past and present contributions of global warming in order to determine relative responsibilities for mitigation. The penultimate chapter moves away from the greenhouse effect to cite recent work that has found linkages between extraction and processing industries, including fracking, and local health issues. The reader wonders where all this is headed and whether, in view of the massive commercial interests involved and struggle for countries to avoid damaging decline by neutering parts of their economies, the 2015 Paris accords have the ability to survive.