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This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The…
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This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (original 2015; edition 2015)

by Naomi Klein (Author)

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2,221517,053 (4.14)56
Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything” is an exceptional book. It is a deeply researched book. She is, evidently, committed to the cause of protecting our environment. If not, she would not have written a hard-hitting book like this one.
“This Changes Everything” is not an easy book to read. There is a lot of information! I will take time to process this. She has gone over much ground in the book and has also forced me to re-test my assessment of some well-known people. I am glad that she shattered some myths because we have a tendency to give divine status on people who we admire.
Naomi has covered many aspects of the battle for the earth, but her underlying theme is corporate greed. I am glad about this because it has exposed me to another aspect of climate change outside the science. I am always astonished by blind greed and ask myself the point of our education. ( )
  RajivC | Aug 31, 2020 |
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Very well written and thought provoking book on the definitively most important topic of our times. Naomi challenges many standard issue assumptions about our economic system and puts the screws not only to the extraction and carbon industries, but "Big Green" and some of the weak/empty actions and arguments that seem to be in the right direction but are not sufficient to get the job done. Very interesting and hugely important stuff here. ( )
  wsampson13 | Mar 2, 2024 |
It took me 2 and a half months to read it and it was worth the time. I couldn't have absorbed as much as I did in less time. Klein succeeds in proving climate change as a human edonimic problem, but offers a way forward that offers transformation and hope. If I could afford it I would buy a few copies and give it to anyone who says, "yeah, I've been wanting to get that..." ( )
  chailatte | Feb 5, 2024 |
This is an incredible book—not just the best book on climate change I've read, but one of the most important works of nonfiction, period.

If you're a person in this world and care about the welfare of other human beings and/or are planning on being alive for the next 30 years, you need to read this book. If you want the Cliff Notes, read some Bill McKibben first, but then you should probably still read this book.

I haven't read Klein before and was seriously impressed by the meticulousness of her research and clarity of her writing. She synthesizes an impressive amount of information about the science and politics of climate change. Whether or not you subscribe to her flavor of social justice-informed politics, she tells a very clear and powerful story of the mess we are in and the smokescreens that are obscuring the possible solutions. I feel much better equipped to think critically about the spectrum of arguments out there about the politics and logistics of climate change.

I'm afraid I'm pretty pessimistic about our ability to mitigate this disaster, although I am optimistic about the power of communities to weather the storm as best they can. It's possible that out of disaster will spring a climate justice revolution, as Klein predicts in her powerful conclusion, but I worry it will be as incomplete as the social revolutions that preceded it.

Still, I was rereading the first volume of The Lord of the Rings while I tackled this book, and if there was ever a narrative to inform our predicament, there it is (for all its valuation of war and kingship). And journeying into Mordor, against the wishes of powerful interests who tell us the system can save us, is in turn a bit like walking away from Omelas. It may be a fool's errand but it's the only ethical choice we've got.

In other words, if I happen to get arrested at an environmental protest in the next few years, you can blame Tolkien. :) ( )
  raschneid | Dec 19, 2023 |
A must read for anyone concerned with climate change. Scary parallels between the resistance to correction and inertia described here with that described in Jared diamonds Collapse. ( )
  BBrookes | Dec 12, 2023 |
Klein's best book. ( )
  therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
green
  GHA.Library | Apr 29, 2023 |
I am sure the author is a carnist, because not once did she mention factory farming in this book about how capitalism is more important to capitalists than having our planet be livable past 2050. She goes into detail about all the things that pollute the planet, but strangely leaves out this huge cause of pollution and destroyer of rain forests. Loser, along with all the people living past 2025. ( )
  burritapal | Oct 23, 2022 |
The most important book you will read this year. ( )
  btbell_lt | Aug 1, 2022 |
Klein drops brutal facts and undeniably calls us to act. At the same time, she assures us that the path to climate salvation lies not through nebulous future innovation, but a recommitment to existing social movements: only socialism can save the species.

I buy it: the profit motive's profligate ignorance of the actual cost of doing business is a gross, deliberate oversight. Wherever we build ourselves up at the expense of the commons — without regenerative compensation — we steal and murder. Klein's argument demonstrates how free-market capitalism is both immoral, and unsustainable. If we do not subdue it, and replace it we will die badly, and with our neighbors' blood on our hands.

I'm currently a full-blown capitalist capitulator, deriving my disproportionate security from the lucre of exploitative consumerism. This book provides me with inspiration to look not for a more lucrative position, but a more equitable one — or else I'll deserve every ounce of social retribution with which I meet.

We need everyone behind these efforts to dismantle patriarchal, hierarchical machines of destruction. ( )
  quavmo | Jun 26, 2022 |
A grand analysis of the climate change scenario, nothing less than a "Silent Spring" for this century. The author traces the climate conundrum to the excesses of capitalist forces, and shows that the problem cannot be addressed unless communities wrest control of the way natural resources are used, especially the extraction of fossil carbon (coal, petroleum, gas), minerals, water, etc. She ends on a note of optimism, drawing connections between the struggles of the poor and dispossessed in western economies with the pushback by developing countries as a class. How reasonable this optimism has proved to be, can be tested by looking at the developments over the intervening years in the extractive sectors, and the progress of climate negotiations. ( )
  Dilip-Kumar | May 3, 2022 |
I was looking for something that focused more on the potential futures, the known and speculated effects of climate change, and a history of how different corporations and governments are driving that change. What I got instead was less "facts first" and more motivated polemic.

I can't argue the conclusions, really, but I wish the presentation hadn't been like this. When I'm presented with an opinion, then a solution, and at the end finally a few facts-- the writing feels very agenda driven.

It's unfortunate, because I really believe climate change to be an existential threat to the human race. I just want to know what we're in for and how we got here. This book touches on those topics, but only in between sections filled with emotional appeals, what-jf hypotheticals and grass-roots-will-fix-this hyperbole. ( )
  MCBacon | Aug 2, 2021 |
I found Naomi Klein's book, "This Changes Everything" somewhat difficult to get through. I could easily sense her passion for the subject, and she indicated that she spent five years researching and writing the book. But taking five years to write a book doesn't mean that every story, situation and example you documented over that period actually needs to be included in the book. At almost 600 pages, I started to glaze over significant sections of the book, especially when she seemed to drift off subject, such as when describing her challenges in having a child.
Also, when it comes to Climate Change, Klein comes across as an alarmist's alarmist. When some reject the actions suggested by climate activists because those steps are considered too "radical" or "excessive", they're probably referring to some of the ideas contained in this book. I understand that people may be more likely spurred to action by fear, by emphasizing the most negative aspects of a policy, and that a calm discussion of dry science and statistics don't grab most people or move them to action. But if it's true that half the people in our Country are unconvinced about the science behind climate change, then I don't feel there was enough in Klein's book to (1) first convince them of the science of climate change, and (2) then move them to action. That's especially true if the action she recommends is to stop using all fossil fuels immediately. Despite her suggestion that renewable energy sources can replace fossil fuels NOW, most experts tend to feel that's still an impractical solution for today, and interim steps will still be required as we wean ourselves off coal and push toward that goal.
In emphasizing the need for immediate action and not making the case to support her claims with sufficient facts and data, I felt that the book fell flat and may lose many who she's trying to convince. Her call to action may be music to the ears of her fellow believers, but those on the bubble or uncertain of the science are unlikely (in my opinion) to give up their SUV's or install solar panels on their roofs without a little more convincing.
Seeds of doubt about the science proliferate on blogs, talk radio, and much of the media, and anyone who's been impacted by those influences probably will need to hear a convincing counter argument before they'll be prodded to take all the immediate actions recommended by the author. On the other hand, those who already are convinced that continued carbon emissions will have catastrophic consequences in the immediate future should find the book a useful call to action.


( )
  rsutto22 | Jul 15, 2021 |
Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything” is an exceptional book. It is a deeply researched book. She is, evidently, committed to the cause of protecting our environment. If not, she would not have written a hard-hitting book like this one.
“This Changes Everything” is not an easy book to read. There is a lot of information! I will take time to process this. She has gone over much ground in the book and has also forced me to re-test my assessment of some well-known people. I am glad that she shattered some myths because we have a tendency to give divine status on people who we admire.
Naomi has covered many aspects of the battle for the earth, but her underlying theme is corporate greed. I am glad about this because it has exposed me to another aspect of climate change outside the science. I am always astonished by blind greed and ask myself the point of our education. ( )
  RajivC | Aug 31, 2020 |
Excellently written, dark account of climate change and neoliberalism, and how these two forces combine to disasterous effect. As Klein points out, many of us walk around with at least one eye closed to the effects of large-scale pollution on our climate, and here she tries to open both eyes. Sometimes prone to hyperbole, and the reference list is occasionally incomplete when looking for further information, but Klein includes a personal tone in her journalism and weaves a coherent story, eventually outlining the positivity behind the movement toward clean energy and community activism. ( )
  ephemeral_future | Aug 20, 2020 |
Overwhelming. So much, that I need to read the paperback now (so far, I listened to the audiobook, and it was great).
Reading will enable me to make notes and hopefully put down a better review than this one. The book is definitely worth reading for everyone who is worried about our world. ( )
  MissYowlYY | Jun 12, 2020 |
I have read to of Klein's other books and will admit none of them read as well as Shock Doctrine. This Changes Everything reads more like a thesis than a marketed book. Nearly half of the book is documentation and source material. If Klein says it, she backs it up.

My thoughts: The problem is not so much capitalism, but what capitalism has become. Capitalism has had its problems from sweatshops to slavery. America prides itself on being a capitalist nation, but that in itself is a misnomer. Roads, police, air space, food, education, snow removal, water and sewage are all controlled by one of the several layers of government and paid for by public funds. Many people hate socialism, unless it is their water, their children's education, their roads with potholes.

Klein's view of capitalism is the current system we are experiencing. Not to sound archaic but the system was much more local in the past. Local areas provided are fairly closed loop. You bought something and you expected it to last. You visited bakers, butchers, and farmers markets. This system worked well until people found that bigger was better. Bigger stores meant cheaper prices. Chains grew Walmart came into play. Things still went ok because things were still made at home. The next step was imports, which were cheaper, but not produced at home -- this cost jobs. America started to think free trade might not be in its interest. Protective tariffs tried to save industry, but industry moved overseas. WTO and NAFTA came about to insure free (or fair) trade. The move was to globalization. This was the system of efficiency. Let each nation build what it builds best and trade. Win-win for everyone.

The problem with increased efficiency is there are much more finished goods being produced everyone bought what they needed. What to do after everyone has what they need? How many televisions, cars, or pairs of shoes does one person need? Advertise, make cosmetic changes, create a want and when that doesn't work planned obsolesce. More manufacturing, more power consumption, more cars, and a new cell phone every two years. More waste, more coal power plants. It's ok to be poor, you have an Iphone.

The system puts a strain on the planet. Ninety-seven percent of the scientist agree that man made climate change is real. The dissent does not present much of a case, except for things like if you live in Montana global warming will give better crop yields and longer growing seasons. It is mostly the poor that will need to adapt because the poor live in hot climates. (This Texas resident really questions that logic).

A big part of the problem is the politicization of the problem. In the 1990s, both parties recognized the problem. Newt Gingrich spoke on needing to change our ways. That has all changed and the issue has become partisan, much like school vouchers or tax cuts. Climate change, however, cannot be legislated away. If science is right, there will be a tipping point where no matter what we do, we won't be able to fix, stop, or slow climate change.

When countries move to become green they are attacked. In 2010 United States challenged China wind power program because it was protectionist. Likewise, the Indian Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission was challenged because it encouraged local industry. Even more outrageous was the US challenge against Quebec legislation banning fracking. It was challenged on the grounds that it cut off gas resources to potential industries. These actions may sound a bit odd, but it is little different from colonization. National sovereignty is becoming a thing of the past.

Mass transportation systems are another topic mentioned in cutting greenhouse gasses. America calls investing in public transportation subsidies, but using tax money to build new roads is called an investment.

Change can come, but it needs to be a movement. Slavery was not crisis for the American elites, until abolition became a movement. Civil rights was not an issue for many until Northerners saw the dogs and fire hoses turned on American citizens. The First Nation peoples of Canada are making progress in stopping pipelines, tar fields, and mining on their lands. It seems to be making a difference.

Klein uses environmental issues to attack the "capitalism" we have today. This book is filled with documented information. The reading can be a bit dry and even burdensome at times but well worth the read. Klein tackles both the environment (and she does not hesitate to call out the failures of environmental organizations) and the economy. This Changes Everything is a call to remember when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you need to do is stop digging. ( )
  evil_cyclist | Mar 16, 2020 |
Naomi's political lens is so focused that it's blinding. This is less a book about climate change than it is about why climate change is now the perfect excuse to do everything she's always wanted to do anyway (eg. scrap globalization, redistribute wealth), which is fine, but she ignores any contrary evidence. For example, she has a brief section on the brief flourishing and untimely death of Ontario's green energy economy, which she blames 100% on the WTO's decision on domestic content. The waffling and delays of government regulators on applications, the constant changes in direction, and the dead-set-contrarian politics of the mostly rural ridings where wind energy projects were to be sited were completely overlooked, but as anyone who actually went through the process can tell you, the domestic content reg change was the least of any developer's worries, and came after years and years of frustrations brought about by the public sector.

She spends a great deal of time criticizing anyone else whose political perspectives change how they perceive climate science and solutions, but is much, much worse herself in this book. No information penetrates unless it conforms with her pre-existing beliefs. But the global carbon cycle is not sentient. It doesn't care how carbon emissions are reduced; it doesn't even care if they are reduced at all. It does not vote and has no political preferences. WE do; and so it's up to us to make some decisions about if and how we're going to turn things around, but the important thing is that emissions go down. It should be a mark of deep shame to any thinking citizen in a democratic society that authoritarian China is pulling so far ahead in the transition to a renewable economy.

This is a terrible book on climate change. You'd be better off reading almost anything else on the subject. ( )
  andrea_mcd | Mar 10, 2020 |
Not sure how to sum up how I felt about this book, but it's very well written and supremely well researched and just heartbreaking and inspiring. I don't know what to do next or how to react, but the book itself is wonderful, and our planet is going to die. ( )
  theosakakoneko | Feb 15, 2020 |
Naomi Klein's international bestseller This Changes Everything is a must-read on our future, one of the defining and most hopeful books of this era.
Forget everything you think you know about global warming. It's not about carbon - it's about capitalism. The good news is that we can seize this crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better.
Once a decade, Naomi Klein writes a book that redefines its era. No Logo did so for globalization. The Shock Doctrine changed the way we think about austerity. In This Changes Everything, her most provocative and optimistic book yet, Naomi Klein has upended the debate about the stormy era already upon us, exposing the myths that are clouding the climate debate.
You have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. You have been told it's impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it - it just requires breaking every rule in the "free-market" playbook. You have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight back is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring.
It's about changing the world, before the world changes so drastically that no one is safe. Either we leap - or we sink. This Changes Everything is a book that will redefine our era.
'The most important book I've read all year - perhaps in a decade ... crucially, she leaves the reader with a sense of optimism' Stephanie Merritt, Observer, Books of the Year
'A book of such ambition and consequence it is almost unreviewable ... The most momentous and contentious environmental book since Silent Spring' Rob Nixon, The New York Times
'Naomi is like a great doctor - she can diagnose problems nobody else sees' Alfonso Cuarón
  ExeterQuakers | Jul 28, 2019 |
She said the same thing that Dr. King in [b:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?|211888|Where Do We Go from Here Chaos or Community?|Martin Luther King Jr.|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1358780869s/211888.jpg|2686535] said, shocking me by calling for both Universal Health Care and a Universal Basic Income, but based on the need to stop Climate Chaos. Pity it was not based on the need to Pursue Justice (Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof...) and Tikkun Olam for it's own (Repairing the World's) sake.

I personally feel that whether we manage this climate crisis or not, we need Social Justice for All.
But better late (or climate-based) than never. Nonetheless, for it's references to many works of research as well as her own new research, this book is worth owning as a reference, imho. ( )
  FourFreedoms | May 17, 2019 |
Before I read it, a friend referred to this book as "life-changing" - and it is, at least I hope it is for all who read it. It's also a very unsettling, daunting but ultimately inspiring read - like all the best manifestoes and calls for action. I regard myself as well-informed about the climate crisis facing us all, but most importantly, Naomi Klein reveals the extreme complexity and inter-relatedness of the forces, political, economic and pseudo-scientific - behind climate change denialism, and points to the disasters, already gathering force, if the climate-deniers are not kicked out of their positions of political and economic power. The global power of free-market capitalism is clearly the main block to achieving a just and equitable solution to this immense challenge, and this message will seem just too daunting or depressing to many . However, in drawing the many threads of her argument together in the last chapter, Naomi Klein points to huge social and political transformations that resulted from mass-mobilizations in the past - from the defeat of slavery, to universal suffrage, post-colonial independence, economic and social rights regulation arising from the depression and world war two, feminism and many others. It can happen again - and must.
  noellib | Apr 11, 2019 |
She said the same thing that Dr. King in [b:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?|211888|Where Do We Go from Here Chaos or Community?|Martin Luther King Jr.|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1358780869s/211888.jpg|2686535] said, shocking me by calling for both Universal Health Care and a Universal Basic Income, but based on the need to stop Climate Chaos. Pity it was not based on the need to Pursue Justice (Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof...) and Tikkun Olam for it's own (Repairing the World's) sake.

I personally feel that whether we manage this climate crisis or not, we need Social Justice for All.
But better late (or climate-based) than never. Nonetheless, for it's references to many works of research as well as her own new research, this book is worth owning as a reference, imho. ( )
  ShiraDest | Mar 6, 2019 |
This is one of those books that should be conserved for our grandchildren or their children. They will look at this book and say either "good that we avoided the catastrophe, it was this close!", or "oh, so this is how we ended up in this mess".

The book manages to be very gloomy and full of hope at he same time. You realize how difficult it is to fight against the most powerful entities in the world and the industrial legacy of the last few hundred years, yet, Klein also shows how some loosely coupled, distributed resistance pops up in many different geographies.

The power of the book lies in masterfully demonstrating how politics, economy, our way of living, our style of taking so many things for granted, and climate science intersect in a unique period of history. It is a tour de force showing the reader different type of climate change skeptics, their funding channels, inter-group conflicts, as well as the historical tension between developed and developing countries, and difficulties in setting up policies that can efficiently work on a global scale.

It is of course not possible to talk about every aspect and detail of a topic as globally complex as climate change in a few hundred pages, but I consider Klein's attempt at this as the best introductory example that I can recommend to anyone about the possible futures awaiting our planet and our lives, as well as inspiration to be drawn from the native populations of North America, and grassroots resistance happening in Europe and elsewhere. ( )
  EmreSevinc | Apr 9, 2018 |
I loved this book. It pulls together so many things that have been bothering me over the past ten years: climate change, social inequality, the industrialized food system and the historical injustices to colonized peoples. I wholeheartedly hope that the current crop of humans can mobilize to do something about our future on the planet, although there are so many causes for pessimism as governments and corporations continue to plug their ears to the bad news and "la la la" their way to continued resource depletion and fossil-fuel reliance.

I found the comparison with the abolition of the slave trade interesting - although that too is a little depressing, because it was the slave-owners, rather than their former slaves, who received economic compensation for the required changes. I just can't see anyone in a position of power agreeing to share resources with the rest of world to right the wrongs of the past three centuries. ( )
  AJBraithwaite | Aug 14, 2017 |
This needs to be red by anyone seriously concerned about climate change. The first part of the book is a bit discouraging, but the solutions proposed and some of the environmental triumphs that have happened are heartening. One notable thing made abundantly clear in this book, and I concur, is that capitalism, as currently being implemented, is incompatible with solving out climate problems. It remains to be wehther the changes neded will occur in time. ( )
  bness2 | May 23, 2017 |
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