This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

Naomi Klein, Publisher : Simon & Schuster, September 2014

With strong first-hand reporting and an original, provocative thesis, Klein returns with a must-read on how the climate crisis must spur transformational political change.

We seem to have given up on any serious effort to prevent catastrophic climate change. Despite mounting scientific evidence, denialism is surging in many wealthy countries, and extreme fossil-fuel extraction gathers pace. Exposing the work of ideologues on the right who know the challenge this poses to the free market all too well, Klein also challenges the failing strategies of environmental groups. She argues that the deep changes required should not be viewed as punishments to fear, but as a kind of gift. It’s time to stop running from the full implications of the crisis and begin to embrace them.

“Naomi Klein’s analysis of climate change is a full-blooded offensive against free-market fundamentalism and elite money-players, but key questions are left unanswered. Political arguments are not won by nuanced scientific claims, nor by clever point-scoring devices: they are won by telling stories – human stories – that resonate powerfully and persuasively with their audience. […] Following Klein’s earlier books No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, it will be no surprise that her climate change story is a full-blooded offensive against capitalism, the ideology of free-market fundamentalism and the elite money-players who breathe life into it. […] The book is powerfully and uncompromisingly written, the impassioned polemic we have come to expect from Klein, mixing first-hand accounts of events around the world and withering political analysis. If this narrative appeals to you, then you must read This Changes Everything today. […] But what if this narrative does not accord with how you see the world? […] Well, you too should read the book and discover whether this story of climate change resonates, whether it is persuasive. But there are many people for whom it will not. […] So the problem for Klein remains twofold. What is it that causes someone’s worldview to change, and, for those who share her worldview, from where is the new moral energy for action to be drawn? A clear answer to either of these questions is lacking in the book.

576 pages

The author

Naomi Klein (born May 8, 1970) is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization and of corporate capitalism. She is best known for No Logo, a book that went on to become an international bestseller, and The Shock Doctrine, a critical analysis of the history of neoliberal economics.

Official Book website : www.thischangeseverything.org