Naomi Klein has a new book, This Changes Everything, which I have not yet read – but which has gotten a lot of ink, in particular for its supposed theme that capitalism is somehow incompatible with a healthy climate. I’m told that this is not a fair reading of the book, and in the interview above, Klein seems to target a particularly virulent, Koch Brothers, John Birch Society version of capitalism in which any regulations or limits on corporate power are considered violations of “freedom”.
That said, the book trailer, below, seems designed to play into the worst fears and stereotypes of the Fox News crowd, with lots of scary non-caucasions doing scary things, like walking around, talking, linking arms, dancing and drumming and stuff.
In other words, the root of the carbon problem is capitalism, says Klein. Or at least the kind of unfettered, absolutist “disaster capitalism” that was the target of her previous effort, “The Shock Doctrine.” In that sense, the aptly titled “This Changes Everything” might be seen as the third volume in Klein’s controversial and thoroughly researched challenge to neoliberal ideology.
The essence of her argument is that taking on climate change is a fleeting opportunity to right structural wrongs in political and socioeconomic systems that have stood largely unchallenged for decades. Given the problem’s size, Klein says, the only way forward is radical change. So the political right’s willingness to sow doubt about long-settled science and denounce climate moderates as nefarious communists belies not a willful ignorance so much as a recognition of the issue’s real scope.
–Klein’s very premise will elicit scoffs from some modern environmentalists, many of whom see in capitalism history’s most efficient engine of social change. Indeed there has been massive growth in renewable energy investment and deployment in the past two decades, and — perhaps tellingly — Klein does not take down clean tech capitalists and entrepreneurs the way she so skillfully dissects big green groups and celebrity billionaires championing their cause du jour. That’s a notable exception in a book that in its subtitle pits “capitalism vs. the climate.”
But clearly something is impeding the movement’s progress. Implicit in this book’s thesis is a battle for the future of environmentalism: Is it in basically good hands, or is the status quo broken beyond repair?
Meanwhile, the reliably right wing Daily Caller points out that among the groups who will be part of this weekends big climate demo in New York, are a number of communist, socialist, and lefty types – making this demonstration exactly like every other civil rights, women’s rights, workers rights, environmental, gay rights, anti-war, or any other kind of remotely lib-to-left demonstration of the last 80 years. A penetrating and astute observation, indeed.
Continue reading “Klein: Can Climate and Capitalism CoExist?”
