This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

This is not the treatise against capitalism that some people have made it out to be, or that I was hoping for. I’m honestly pretty torn on what I think about it. On the one hand, Klein’s focus on direct action is both necessary and inspiring, and I think this is an important step in challenging liberals to step outside their ineffective comfort zone of signing petitions, writing the occasional check to a green org, and calling their absolutely useless representatives who will never, ever listen to them. On the other hand, I was disappointed that despite the title, she doesn’t dig deep enough on the subject of capitalism. She makes a lot of really, really great points, but falls short of arriving at the conclusions that logically stem from those points. I think she actually might be doing some damage by dancing carefully around the subject of capitalism. By referring to it constantly as “deregulated capitalism”, she has actually given people the false sense that capitalism itself is not the problem. She lays waste to major parts of capitalist theory then gives those who aren’t open-minded enough to really question capitalism an escape route. After reading a number of reviews in which people flat out say that she shows that “capitalism itself isn’t the problem, we just need to regulate it”, it’s painfully clear that her treatment of capitalism was too soft and that the right message isn’t getting through to people.

For starters, this is less focused on capitalism and more on the human desire to conquer nature as opposed to learning to live in harmony with nature, which is all well and good, but I felt like she repeated this point way too much. In close to 500 pages of writing, she manages to frequently rephrase the same points while failing to expand on others that are very important. For example, she spends a whopping 2 paragraphs each on the food system and militarism, even though they represent a large portion of overall emissions and are huge climate-linked problems we need to tackle. Her points on these subjects were very compelling and I got really excited when she got to them, only to be disappointed when she quickly moved on to something else.

It would also be nice if she at least touched on the subject of resource depletion. I know that it is considered a separate topic from climate change, but it shouldn’t be. Both climate change and resource depletion are the result of a constantly growing, profit-driven economic system that knows no bounds. If the goal of the book is to present evidence that capitalism is incompatible with stopping climate change (I’m beginning to wonder if that really was her goal here), why not put one more giant nail in the coffin? I personally think it’s an extremely compelling argument that even in the absence of climate change, capitalism is driving us off an ecological cliff. Anyone who cares about the environment, or the fate of the human race for that matter, should also care that we are putting huge reserves of natural resources at risk of disappearing. There will be no clean energy if we use up all the nonrenewable metals to manufacture ipads and killer drones, or if we wait until oil is even harder and more expensive to extract to build out renewables. That’s a very powerful, irrefutable point that she easily could have made.

Furthermore, given the title, I was expecting a more detailed argument against capitalism and more discussion of possible economic alternatives. Klein does an absolutely great job of illustrating how some of the big green organizations betrayed their own goals by getting into bed with the fossil fuel industry. That is perhaps the most important points she makes. In doing so, she hits on a critical point regarding the corrupting nature of profit-driven markets. She does a fantastic job of explaining how the profit motive is failing us. However, she stops short of reaching the conclusion that if the profit motive doesn’t produce what’s best for society, if it actually produces a lot of things that hurt us, then we need to move away from it. It would have made sense at this point to discuss cooperatively owned and managed businesses, cooperative networks/markets, or participatory democracy/economics. It would have made sense to discuss ANY alternatives to capitalism at this point, but she didn’t. I can’t tell if this was a choice on her part to be soft on the issue of capitalism for fear of pushing people too hard, or if Klein herself still hasn’t overcome her own cognitive dissonance. After all, how else can a person discuss how growth is killing us and how the profit motive only leads to greed without calling for a different system that doesn’t center on those things? Taxing polluters and regulating emissions, while an important step in the right direction, is not a solution to these particular problems.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more confused I am by her conclusions. She demonstrates how destructive capitalism is, both environmentally and socially (she even discusses the colonial nature of capitalism), but doesn’t seem to go beyond the typical liberal solutions of taxing and regulating. She calls for radical, direct action to demand a transition away from fossil fuels, but not for labor organizing to demand any of the economic changes that she says we need (but doesn’t really talk about). I was surprised that in a book that confronts capitalism and calls for a “Green New Deal” there was no discussion at all about the labor organizing and strikes that brought us the first New Deal. I think this was a glaring omission.

Another very important point Klein makes is that decentralized, local clean power networks are a necessary part of the solution that will be fought tooth and nail by profit-seeking utility companies because such systems aren’t profitable for them. The type of decentralized system she proposes, with public ownership and oversight, is actually the basis of what a new economy might look like, but again, she stops short of making this connection. She even asserts the need for economic planning (which is what has so many conservatives all riled up), but without getting into more detail on how this might be accomplished in an equitable, truly democratic way, she is likely scaring off a lot of people by giving the impression that we should trust our completely corrupt leaders to make those decisions for us. In general, I feel like all her references to a new economic paradigm are too vague. She could have easily made these connections, between decentralized systems and democratic management, and pointed people toward a real way forward, but instead, she leaves us with one vague notion after another. I didn’t expect her to delve deeply into any particular economic solutions (there are already entire books dedicated to the subject), but she should have at least mentioned some. People are getting tired of hearing that we need change without presenting specific ideas of what that might entail. And without specific examples of what it might look like, promoting economic planning sounds an awful lot like central planning, which scares people for good reason.

I get the impression that Klein herself has only begun to realize the systemic problems of capitalism and may have written this book before she was adequately prepared to do so. Even after describing one way after another in which the market fails us, Klein falls right back into the market fallacies by saying things like this: “It’s true that the market is great at generating technological innovation…” No, that’s not “true” at all. It’s a belief. It’s not a fact. And I expect someone who does research-based writing to know the difference. While she goes on to talk about how the market also drives a lot of terrible behavior, there is no need to walk on eggshells like this. She needs to stop pretending the market is a tool that can be wielded for good, because all the evidence in the world suggests it’s not. Plenty of the evidence she herself presents flies in the face of this completely unsubstantiated, ideological claim. I think she has a long way to go with her own understanding of what capitalism is and the difference between regulating it and changing the rules to create something totally new.

Given that her main audience seems to be liberal environmentalists who aren’t open-minded enough or brave enough to really question capitalism, I think this book could serve a useful purpose. Most people are completely brainwashed into believing that capitalism is some law of nature or god that we dare not question and I give her a lot of credit for taking on such a controversial topic. Religious-like beliefs like that are hard to chip away at. People don’t drastically change strong, ideological views over night and they need steps along the way. Hopefully, this provides a big step in the right direction for those people. Overall, she makes some really great points, pokes some giant holes in capitalist theory (whether she or her readers realize it or not), and offers a somewhat radical and very hopeful outlook on a subject that usually leaves people feeling utter despair. For that, I think she deserves a lot of credit. But for those who have already overcome those ideological barriers, there’s nothing new here. The only exception is her discussion of Blockadia, but even that is just the latest in a long, global history of resistance movements that employ direct action. That part of the book at least left me hopeful. If someone with the reach of Naomi Klein can make an effective call for direct action and disobedience, maybe (hopefully) we will finally reach the critical mass needed to start turning things around.