In her
seminal This Changes Everything Naomi
Klein is looking for the force that will do just that, politically and
economically, before business as usual changes everything about the climate and
the world’s ecosystems. She finds
answers in a coalescence of the past two centuries’ great progressive movements,
all of which have “the intrinsic value of life . . . at the heart . . .“ Climate can be the driver that
completes the unfinished business of those movements, Klein writes.
The
movement to abandon use of fossil fuels parallels the 19th
century movement for abolition of slavery and the 20th century
movement for independence of former European colonies. “Both of these transformative movements
forced ruling elites to relinquish practices that were extraordinarily
profitable, much as fossil fuel extraction is today,” Klein notes. Even the
value of the slaves that were freed in the Civil War roughly equates to the
value of coal, oil and natural gas that must be left in the ground to avert
catastrophic climate disruption and ocean acidification – around $10 trillion.
But these
progressive revolutions left unfinished business. The freed slaves never received 40 acres and
a mule. The economic disempowerment of African America remains a stark fact
today. Redistribution of lands and
wealth did not follow colonial independence.
Postcolonial governments that tried to redistribute wealth were
undermined by coups, assassinations and bank-imposed austerity schemes.
Heroic
social justice movements have secured legal rights and won cultural battles,
Klein writes, notably civil, women’s and gay and lesbian movements. But they have been less successful on the
economic front. The New Deal labor
movement is an exception, as are social movements that built strong public
services. But these are being pushed
back. Klein looks to a turnaround and advance in a new
progressive coalescence that secures economic justice by addressing climate
necessities.
Klein’s
fundamental point in This Changes
Everything is that the time for gradual change in economies has
passed. Humanity has dumped too much
climate disrupting carbon in the air.
Emissions reductions of 8-10 percent annually are needed in
industrialized countries to stabilize an increasingly turbulent climate. This will require deep changes in economic
systems. Making these changes offers a
chance to complete the unfinished work of economic justice. Klein frames this as a Marshall Plan for
Earth.
“The
massive global investments required to respond to the climate threat – to adapt
humanely and equitably to the heavy weather we have already locked in, and to
avert the truly catastrophic warming we can still avoid – is a chance . . . to get it right this time.”
Winning
means beating the foe of all movements for the “intrinsic value of life” including
climate, the extractivist worldview that sees land, waters and people only as
opportunities to extract wealth. The
contrast is an economy that regenerates life. She gives many examples,
prominently initiatives for clean energy and green jobs at local levels from
Native reservations to German municipalities.
Bringing resources back to communities, enabling them to build their own
sources of sustenance, is the key. That
can come in land redistribution, restored public services and institutions, and
good housing, as well as solar panels and wind turbines.
“So climate
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 these still living
movements.”
Indeed,
Climate Movement 2.0 seems on arrival. Climate Movement 1.0 was driven
primarily by environmental groups and scientists. A more diverse range is coming to Climate
Movement 2.0. More ethnic, more working
class, younger.
Climate
Movement 1.0 culminated in the unsuccessful push for a federal carbon cap in
2009-10. The climate bill was stuffed
with nuclear and “clean coal” subsidies and tied to a carbon offset market that
would have allowed polluters to substantially avoid direct emissions reductions
into the 2020s. Even support for
offshore oil drilling came into the Senate bill. Klein correctly concludes that failure to pass
that bill “should not be seen, as it often is, as the climate movement’s
greatest defeat, but rather as a narrowly dodged bullet.”
Klein
skewers the process that created the bill, the U.S. Climate Action Partnership
of Big Green groups such as Environmental Defense Fund and big polluters. The severely compromised legislation gave a
free pass to 90% of power plant carbon pollution and set carbon caps far short
of what it would take to avert disastrous global warming. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
would have been barred from regulating power plant pollution. Ironically, EPA is now moving to do just that
as the result of a U.S. Supreme Court decision.
In the end, the polluters jumped ship when they saw the legislation
crippled by lack of Obama Administration support.
Despite
spending nearly a half billion of Green funder money to support the
legislation, the climate movement also lacked much of a grassroots base, Klein
writes. It was more focused on elites.
She quotes Harvard University sociologist Theda Skocpol. “To counter fierce political opposition,
reformers will have to build political networks across the country, and they
will need to orchestrate sustained political efforts that stretch far beyond
friendly Congressional offices, comfy boardrooms, and posh retreats.”
In other
words, the climate movement would have to move beyond the suites and out onto
the streets. Notes Klein, “a resurgent
grassroots climate movement has now arrived and is doing precisely that – and
it is winning a series of startling victories against the fossil fuel sector as
a result.“ This more grassroots and democratic movement is where Klein sees
hope.
“When I
despair of the prospects for change, I think back on some of what I have
witnessed in the five years of writing this book,” Klein says.
“When I
started this journey, most of the resistance movements standing in the way of
the fossil fuel frenzy did not exist or were a fraction of their current size.
All were significantly more isolated from one another than they are today.”
Now, resistance
to extreme fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure, to tar sands, fracking,
coal ports, oil trains, etc., draws in Native people, farmers, faith
communities, local public officials and civic groups. The direct action movement Klein dubs
Blockadia is sprouting across the map, “’friction’ to slow down an economic
system that is careening out of control.”
Universities, cities and foundations are facing and responding to
determined citizen movements demanding divestment from fossil fuel stocks. In Germany hundreds of municipalities have
de-privatized electric utilities, restoring public control and driving one of
the world’s most rapid shifts to renewable energy.
That last
trend exemplifies one of Klein’s most important points, the urgent need to push
back the attack on the public sphere by the market fundamentalism that has
prevailed since the 1980s – the philosophy that government can do no right and
the market can do no wrong. From
responding to disasters such as Katrina or Sandy to rapidly advancing clean
energy, a rebuilt public sector is crucial, she says. Klein’s subtitle, “Capitalism vs. the
Climate,” has spurred criticism and misunderstanding that she is calling for an
end to capitalism as the precursor to solving the climate crisis. Klein’s real point is that we must begin
changing the balance of power.
“There is
plenty of room to make a profit in a zero-carbon economy; but the profit motive
is not going to be the midwife for that great transformation,” she writes.
Instead, a
turn back to communitarian values will be the motive force: “. . . any attempt to rise to the climate
challenge will be fruitless unless it is understood as part of a much broader
battle of worldviews, a process of rebuilding and reinventing the very idea of
the collective, the communal, the commons, the civil, and the civic, after so
many decades of attack and neglect.”
In a season
that has seen the People’s Climate Mobilization in New York and around the
world, with a visibly broader spectrum coming to the climate cause, Klein’s This Changes Everything is the book of
the moment. Klein has sighted the path
to climate victory in integration with a larger progressive movement, and
victory for the historic thrust of progressive movements in a unifying focus on
climate. The struggle will be long and
difficult, but working together there is a chance to build the better world of
centuries’ aspiration. Klein has drawn a
prospect of immense hope out of a deep crisis that can so easily induce
despair. That is the genius of this
book. Read it.
The This Changes Everything site
is here, including Naomi’s book blog. Buy the book here or at an independent
bookseller.