THIS Changes Everything is an accessible, powerful, and timely contribution to the public discourse on climate change that deserves a wide readership, particularly amongst a younger reading audience (teachers and professors: take note). In her latest book, Toronto activist and journalist Naomi Klein takes her critique of capitalism — a theme that carries over from her earlier and justifiably popular No Logo (1999) and The Shock Doctrine (2007) — to illustrate how governments, the corporate machinery, and powerful lobby groups, often acting in tandem, have pushed humanity to the brink of an environmental catastrophe.

Despite the fact that Klein remains ever-suspicious of power, and relentlessly calls out those who would profit at the loss of others, This Changes Everything is her least ideological book to date; sentimental, yes: ideological, no. Although the book is not without its weaknesses, at one level or another, This Changes Everything should strike a chord with all readers (bonus: the writing is lively and engaging). Popular discourses on climate change gravitate towards the fallacy that the jury is still out on whether climate change actually exists, and if so, whether humanity is responsible for it. Klein dispenses with this muddled middle ground, stating categorically: “97 per cent of active climate scientists believe humans are a major cause of climate change.” Climate change deniers — big oil, lobbyists, politicians (who invariably focus on the short term), or even researchers with financial ties to the energy sector — have vested interests in maintaining the status quo: the lack of binding legislature on controlling emissions.

This status quo is sustained by a steady stream of stealth funding from energy companies and oil barons, in the form of campaign donations, scientific research grants, and think tank funding, all of which dutifully cast doubt on the science behind climate change. In the West, this investment in the status quo maps politically and regionally. For example, Republicans overwhelmingly deny climate change, and Barack Obama’s environmental policies have been steadily criticised along partisan lines; in Alberta, Canada, where the provincial wealth is based on oil extraction, less than half the residents believe that humans contribute to climate change. “The bottom line is that we are all inclined to denial when the truth is too costly — whether emotionally, intellectually, or financially,” Klein observes. Climate change, then, does not sit well with capitalism and its ethos of continuous profit maximisation.

For a quarter of a century, non-binding multilateral agreements have resulted in government inaction on climate change, resulting in steadily rising global temperatures. At the moment, the world is likely on track for a four degree Celsius warming in global temperature by the end of the century. Seems benign? Not according to the experts. Klein quotes UK’s leading climate scientist, Kevin Anderson: “[Four degrees Celsius warming is] incompatible with any reasonable characterisation of an organised, equitable and civilised global community.” Translation: extreme heat waves that could kill tens of thousands of people, up to 50 per cent reduction in agricultural output (while the earth’s population soars), disappearance of biodiversity and ecosystems, erratic and unpredictable weather, coupled with the sea level rising between one and two metres which would drown the Maldives and Tuvalu, and inundate coastal areas from the Americas to Europe to Southeast Asia. These “calamitous” predictions are based on two best-case-scenario assumptions: (1) That global warming trends shall plateau at the current four degree trajectory, of which there is no certainty at the moment; and, (2) that before humanity reaches this threshold, global warming shall not escalate in an uncontrollable spiral.

Is humanity already doomed? Not quite, although Klein is categorical that the time to act is now. This Changes Everything gives us three crucial takeaways.

Takeaway number one: there is no silver bullet, and no messiah is going to save us. To put it bluntly, there is no technological cure, replicable at anything close to an operation scale, that can clean the environment. Carbon once emitted cannot be captured and neutralised; emissions released today are here to stay, and over the coming centuries shall wreck havoc on the planet. Additionally, no philanthropist billionaire can get humanity out of this mess. Klein chastises billionaire, software engineer-turned-philanthropist Bill Gates as chasing after “energy miracles” while remaining “dismissive of the potential of existing renewable technologies” (in addition to which, as of December 2013, $1.3 billion of the Gates Foundation was invested in BP and ExxonMobil).

Klein also criticises Richard Branson, the flashy, billionaire owner of the Virgin Group who, in 2006, pledged three billion dollars to develop biofuels and clean energy. Fast forward to the present, and not only has the money not been spent — Branson pleads lack of liquidity while his fortunes have approximately doubled since the pledge — but the Virgin Group continues to increase its carbon emissions through its expanding ventures, especially in air travel.

Takeaway number two: if there is no technological cure, and no messiah, two things must be done immediately: investment in renewable energy must increase and humanity must consume less. Instead of oil and coal, the emphasis needs to shift to solar and wind power. As Klein points out, more and more communities in Europe are switching to renewable energy. Renewable energy is viable as Europe is demonstrating (although as Klein points out, the consumption of clean energy in Europe does not mean that Europe has washed its hands of dirty energy). The old adage, “take what you need and leave the rest” must become humanity’s credo at the state, community, and household level. Takeaway number three: Klein illustrates how First Nations communities of North America have mobilised against big oil whether against the shameful Alberta tar sands extraction (“the earth skinned alive,” as the author graphically describes), or the Keystone XL pipeline that is proposed to run between Alberta and Texas, a cross-continental project that poses significant environmental hazards.

As Klein shows, First Nations activism is motivated by an awareness and affinity for the earth, and non-governmental organisations are now finding themselves under surveillance by private corporations and security forces. In addition, the distinction between the two blur as government agencies and employees can find themselves working hand in hand with big oil in Canada, Europe and the United States. The government-big-oil merger sees environmental activism as an “overburden” that must be cast aside. “Like trees, soil, rocks, and clay that the industries machines scrape up, masticate, and pile into great slag heaps, democracy is getting torn into rubble too, chewed up and tossed aside to make way for the bulldozers,” is Klein’s damning indictment. Yet, in spite of these odds, around the world, communities are taking on the largest and most powerful corporations. There is a lesson here for all of us.

There is, of course, much, much more here: extensive discussion of fracking and the anti-fracking movement; revelations why the Green movement is not as Green as it would appear; an exploration of theoretical scientific solutions (anyone for dimming the sun?); a critique of carbon trading; a close look into the world of right-wing think tanks such as ardent climate-change denier, The Heartland Institute, and the arguments they deploy.

At nearly 500 pages this is a big book, literally and figuratively. Given the vastness of the topic, critics shall find fault with the book, some of which shall stem from the fact that Naomi Klein is a polarising figure: too radical for conservatives, and not theoretical enough for academics and Marxists. My own background as a student of history, and recently, ecology, alerted me to the absence of a stronger environmental history perspective (and a clearer link between climate change and the environment).

There was room for more introspection on how modern human history got us here. Likewise, recent scholarship by political ecologists place the environment at the intersection of power, politics, transnationalism, state-making and conflict. Despite the critique of capital and big oil in This Changes Everything, the book didn’t really engage with either the rich scholarship or insights from ecology. But never mind: I am not going to criticise Klein for the book that she didn’t write; rather, there is much to appreciate in the one that she did give us.

A high point for the environmental movement in the last decade was Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (2006), that oddball marriage of high politics and environmentalism. Overnight, the rich and powerful, Hollywood stars, and celebrities became environment-walahs; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. That moment has now passed. In popular discourse in the West today one may be just as likely hear a comment about winter being followed by a wisecrack in favour of global warming. In Pakistan, mired in the age of terror, climate change is on no agenda and elite students in this country litter shamelessly, fueled by the notion that their trash is invisible, shall be cleaned by others, or, my favourite, is “biodegradable.” In the midst of apathy about the environment and ignorance towards ecology, the power of This Changes Everything is that Naomi Klein tells us how people, no different from us, are changing our world for the better this very moment guided by the realisation that humanity must act now. As Klein observes: “A broken bank is a crisis we can fix; a broken Arctic we cannot.”

Reflecting on This Changes Everything I found it impossible not to be reminded of the late Howard Zinn’s call to action. “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world … If we remember those times and places when people have behaved magnificently,” the activist and historian reminds us, “it gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.”

The reviewer is an Assistant Professor of History at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

(CLIMATE CHANGE)

By Naomi Klein

Simon & Schuster, US

ISBN 978-1451697384

576pp.