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This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

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'This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate' by Naomi Klein is a deeply researched and eye-opening exploration of the urgent need to address climate change within the context of capitalism. Klein delves into the complexities of the forces behind climate change denialism, highlighting the disastrous effects of the combination of climate change and neoliberalism. Through well-researched arguments and personal journalism, Klein emphasizes the incompatibility of current capitalist practices with solving climate issues, pointing towards the elite minority obstructing necessary actions for the benefit of the vast majority. skillfully weaves together the interrelatedness of political, economic, and pseudo-scientific factors, advocating for significant social and political transformations to combat the impending climate crisis.

Writing/Prose:

The prose is characterized by its academic rigor, urgency, and emotional appeal, engaging readers while remaining heavily documented.

Plot/Storyline:

The plot centers on the intersection of capitalism and climate change, advocating for a critical reevaluation of existing economic structures to ensure planetary survival.

Setting:

The setting reflects the global scale of climate change struggles intertwined with local activist movements.

Pacing:

The book's pacing varies, with some sections feeling drawn out due to extensive research, while others deliver compelling commentary.
“Climate scientists agree: climate change is happening here and now. Based on well-established evidence, about 97 percent of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happe...

Notes:

The title of the book, 'This Changes Everything,' is a powerful and reflective six-syllable haiku.
The book positions climate change as a historic and geological event that challenges our progressivism.
Klein argues that capitalism, as it exists today, is fundamentally at war with life on Earth.
The author emphasizes that climate change is not just a problem of the poor and indigenous, but a threat to all life.
Klein suggests that our current economic system is the root cause of climate change, rather than a simple byproduct of human actions.
She points out that corporate elites often prioritize economic growth over environmental sustainability.
Klein's research reveals the interconnectedness of the climate crisis with colonialism and historical injustices.
The book critiques the effectiveness of international agreements like COP21, emphasizing their lack of enforcement.
Klein argues that geoengineering solutions are often unrealistic and could cause more harm than good.
She calls for grassroots movements to challenge corporate influences on environmental policy.
The book highlights the relevance of Indigenous resistance movements in the fight against climate change.
According to Klein, the fundamental changes needed to combat climate change challenge the core principles of current capitalism: growth and profit.
Klein identifies both the political left and the environmental left as having differing views on climate change solutions.
The text discusses unresolved issues like overpopulation and consumption patterns as crucial to understanding the climate crisis.
Klein explores the role of the fossil fuel industry in perpetuating climate change denial and inaction.
She urges for a serious reassessment of our consumption habits and economic priorities to address climate change effectively.

Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings

Content warnings include discussions of environmental destruction, social injustices, and critiques of capitalism, which may be distressing to some readers.

From The Publisher:

The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core "free market" ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems.

In short, either we embrace radical change ourselves or radical changes will be visited upon our physical world. The status quo is no longer an option.

In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn't just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It's an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not-and cannot-fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.

Klein argues that the changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should not be viewed as grim penance, but rather as a kind of gift-a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. And she documents the inspiring movements that have already begun this process: communities that are not just refusing to be sites of further fossil fuel extraction but are building the next, regeneration-based economies right now.

Can we pull off these changes in time? Nothing is certain. Nothing except that climate change changes everything. And for a very brief time, the nature of that change is still up to us.

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About the Author:

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and author of the New York Times and international bestsellers The Shock Doctrine, No Logo, This Changes Everything, and No Is Not Enough. A Senior Correspondent for The Intercept, reporter for Rolling Stone, and contributor for both The Nation and The Guardian, Klein is the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University. She is cofounder of the climate justice organization The Leap.

 
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