Due for release in September, the anticipated new work by Canadian journalist, activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein has now been previewed in a video trailer that appears to lay out its main themes and central argument.
"In December of 2012, a complex systems scientists walked up to the podium at the American Geophysics Union to present a paper," the narrator of the video - Klein herself - says as footage begins of urban high rise developments and burnt out croplands.
And the voice-over continues:
Watch:The paper was titled, "Is the Earth Fucked?" His answer was: "Yeah. Pretty much."
That's where the road we're on is taking us, but that has less to do with carbon than with capitalism.
Our economic model is at war with life on Earth.
We can't change the laws of nature, but we can change our broken economy.
And that's why climate change isn't just a disaster. It's also our best chance to demand - and build - a better world.
Change or be changed. But make no mistake... this changes everything.
According to Klein's U.S. publisher Simon & Schuster, This Changes Everything is 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."
Described as more important and further-reaching than her previous best-seller, The Shock Doctrine, Klein's new book will argue
Those arguments won't be new to those who have followed Klein's work - and the similar arguments of many others in recent years - but the expectation is that as with her previous exploration of modern capitalism in the Shock Doctrine, Klein will present her most rounded and complete vision for the predicament of the moment and her vision for the future.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.
In a speech to one of Canada's largest labor unions last year, Klein told the members of UNIFOR that it was well past time that working people and industrial interests get their minds around what the climate science is dictating to humanity about the current economic model of corporate-dominated global capitalism. She also discussed her idea that climate change should not be framed as a disaster, but as an enormous opportunity to reshape the political paradigm and the fight for global justice. She told the crowd of workers:
"Climate change," she added, is "not an 'issue' for you to add to the list of things to worry about it. It is a civilizational wake up call."The case I want to make to you is that climate change - when its full economic and moral implications are understood - is the most powerful weapon progressives have ever had in the fight for equality and social justice.
But first, we have to stop running away from the climate crisis, stop leaving it to the environmentalist, and look at it. Let ourselves absorb the fact that the industrial revolution that led to our society's prosperity is now destabilizing the natural systems on which all of life depends.
Reader Comments
Yes, indeed, opportunity knocks and tragedy will be averted.
Don't ever say anything different.
The first thing you have to do is convince wealthy investors that there is a profit to be had, a golden opportunity for the -uhhh- 'correct change' ($$$). Also remember: Ordinary people don't count, they will follow.
Change ($$$) is important, it is vital. Change (opportunity) gets every president and other politician elected, every time. Change/opportunity is done by writing books published by well known, (connected) publishers and by posting popular articles and conducting polls on the good ol' internet, at the most widely read (connected) websites run by the right (connected) people, belonging to the correct (connected) group. Seminars at great (connected) universities also help, as do speeches to a carefully monitored and selected (connected) audience.
Common Dreams and Naomi Klein and Simon & Schuster will definitely lead the way. Ordinary (poor and unconnected, so to speak) people WILL follow. Or else!
Same old.
Same old.
Same old 'progressive' ($$$) B.S. story.
DUH.
-the end-
ned, out
Naomi Klein is a sharp lady and The Shock Doctrine is a great book, but... apparently she's fallen under the spell of the 'anthropogenic global warming', er, 'climate change' charlatans masquerading as 'scientists' and their fantastic global atmosphere CO2 driven computer models of supposedly impending climate disaster. Therefore, she's simply wrong.
Or rather, she's half wrong. Modern international finance 'capitalism' run by private central banks is inimical to the entire world and all its species including human beings, but the problem isn't so-called 'climate change'.
At least, not 'climate change' as the greedy grant funded pied pipers of the IPCC envision it in their rigged and inaccurate computer models of global warming, which can't even explain the recent past and don't have a prayer of producing useful predictions about the coming century or so.
The global climate hasn't gotten any warmer for going on 15 years now, but instead has been cooling. This cooling trend looks likely to continue throughout at least the rest of this solar cycle and, if it doesn't reverse in the next one, perhaps for several, or maybe many, coming solar cycles.
Since we're at the height of the solar cycle right now, but the sun is very quiet, we can expect that the coming 11-year phase will be even cooler, and that might continue. We could be in for a 30-year cooling trend, or one that lasts 150 years, or more. We might even be approaching the leading edge of the next Ice Age, and those last on the order of 10,000 years. Make no mistake, CO2 doesn't drive earth's climate, it's the sun.
So Naomi Klein is wrong, and 'climate change' might indeed become a problem but not as she expects, as 'global warming' supposedly driven by CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels. Instead, the problems we will face in the next 30 years or more will be those caused by global cooling leading to lower agricultural production, widespread famine, and almost certainly wars for energy, other precious resources and most of all, food.
However, she's right, too, in saying that modern 'capitalism' is inimical to responsible management of the earth and all its ecosystems and all species of life on earth, including ourselves. We need a better system.