Book Review: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

Posted by National Housing Institute on May 18, 2015

This Book Changes Everything
Book Review: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

By Ted Wysocki Posted on March 11, 2015

“Because the thing about a crisis this big, this all-encompassing, is that it changes everything. It changes what we can do, what we can hope for, what we can demand from ourselves and our leaders.” – Naomi Klein

Forget about blue states and red states or Democrats versus Republicans. There is only one distinction to be made going forward: Do you support an “extractivist” or “regenerative” energy policy? You can’t equivocate. There’s no time.

In her book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, Naomi Klein has made the convincing argument that we have now reached “Decade Zero” of the climate crisis. Planet Earth cannot endure temperatures rising more than two degrees Celsius as a result of further carbon emissions. The door to reach two degrees is closing—not in the next decade, but in 2017 it will be closed forever with no room for any additional increase in emissions.

“In short, it means changing everything about how we think about the economy,” Klein underscores, “so that our pollution doesn’t change everything about our physical world.” Klein challenges us to live “nonextractively” by relying overwhelmingly on resources that can be continuously regenerated. Renewable energy is a prime alternative, yet governments throughout the world continue to subsidize fossil fuels directly or indirectly as oil and utility companies play lip service to investing in it.

http://www.shelterforce.org/article/4066/this_book_changes_everything/