#270 / Everything

Naomi Klein's new book is titled This Changes Everything. It was reviewed in the print edition of the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, September 21st. This seems fitting, since on that day a People's Climate March took place, centered on New York City in this country, but with local analogues all over the United States and global analogues all over the world.

For the last several years, Klein has been tying climate change to capitalism, and she has been very clear that "science is telling us to revolt." Klein has also not been seduced by appeals to find "bridging fuels" that are "less bad" than coal and oil, though it was another Naomi, Naomi Oreskes, who came up with the phrase that I think best characterizes this feel-good concept, calling the plan to use natural gas as an acceptable hydrocarbon fuel the "Green Bridge to Hell."

If we care to minimize the climate crisis that we ourselves have made, and that we now confront as our own runaway creation, we need to update the "First Rule of Holes." In this case, the Imperative Rule For Global Warming Survival is: "Stop Burning."

From the perspective of this Two Worlds blog, I particularly liked the following statement in the Chronicle review: 

Because of its focus on the economic system, “This Changes Everything” stands out from most books on climate change. Klein has spent the past couple of decades steeped in the fight against corporate power and free-market ideology, writing two best-selling books, “No Logo” and “The Shock Doctrine.” She shows how free-market, growth-above-all ideology has been built around World Trade Organization deals that stymie local action on cutting emissions, and into laws and norms that make corporations obligated to continue extracting more fossil fuels, as long as there’s profit in it. “The bottom line,” Klein writes, is that “our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. … Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature.”

Image Credit:
http://www.willowbrookcentral.org/page/4