This Changes Everything

This book would be a lot more impactful if it was shorter and tighter. The facts are exhaustively listed and cited, but it just comes off as more exhausting than thorough. You're likely to learn something new, probably something horrifying, but this is unlikely to change any minds. It is also particularly frustrating to read this years after it was published, and see that so little has changed in the intervening years.

I can't see this changing anyone's mind. It presents the overwhelming facts of climate change that everyone already knows, and which any denialist has already come to terms with ignoring.

Klein is so committed to her approach of listing off facts, that in a rare paragraph where she discusses her own feelings, rather than make any effort to communicate those feelings, she simply enumerates the scenarios: "I felt some things when I saw XYZ, and I also felt some things when I saw ABC, and I also felt some things when I saw DEF..." No effort is made to explain what she feels, and definitely not to help the reader feel those things alongside the author.

Naomi Klein's "This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus The Climate" does a marvelous job at distilling the factors that have inhibited action on climate change. Klein's strength as an author is her ability to be able to explain very complex things without a) getting trapped in jargon, b) pursuing faux objectivity, and c) condescending to her audience. Her essential thesis is that our growing awareness of the climate crisis has emerged just as trends in politics and economics (i.e., neo-liberalism, free-market economics, political populism, globalization, industrialization, a worship of technological progress) have developed to make action on this awareness difficult if not impossible. Climate change has the potential to change everything about our societies and resistance to climate change action is precisely for this reason: action fundamentally alters everything that underpins a neoliberal, capitalist economy and political system. Klein also shows that solutions centered around technology (i.e., bio fuels, carbon capture technology, and the horrifying proposals to manipulate the climate through technological innovation) and the benevolence of billionaires will not work. Instead, the solution is going to come from activism from the ground up that will be able to challenge things. I feel that Klein is stronger on the prognosis than the solutions but overall, the book is an essential read in the library of any person thinking about climate change and concerns around the environment.

Great update to Klein's research and thinking on the clash between neoliberalism/globalization and the world. I wish this were a shorter book, it gets its weight from solid story upon scary story rather than strong argument and call to action, but the message is ultimately clear and simple and well-stated for this moment: 1. We have to leave a lot of oil, coal, and gas in the ground starting right now. 2. This will destroy a lot of current wealth and power, as well as the logic of a consumptive/global/growth economy. 3. So those in power, but also the current environmental-focused groups and billionaire technologists, won't save us - the status quo is too bent in their direction. 4. We need direct action, divestment, and embracing the unity of the left's economic demands. This isn't an environmental issue in isolation, and the structural changes and societal support the climate disaster demands share so much in common with global equity, racial equity, and a strong support net that the right is closer to reality in seeing this as a perfect issue for advancing a socialist hell than the left is in hoping for a green tech silver bullet that won't inconvenience the current structures of power.

Naomi Klein's monster of a book took me a while to read. And it was a wild ride of emotions.
I started it before I knew a movie would be made from it. I liked the title and the attitude, but knew very little else about it. I progressed slowly through it, swinging from amazement and joy of learning stuff I didn't even imagine, to depression and fear because, well we seem to be so doomed.
I read quite a few other books simultaneously, just to catch a breath of fiction that would keep me from despair at humanity's bleak future. But I also returned to it to find sparks of light and hope that would make me believe that there is a way out of this hole we have dug ourselves into.
Now the movie has come out, I have watched and enjoed it, although it falls a bit short when compared to the book. (Surprising... haha)
This truly changes everything... we need to rethink and reinvent our roles as inhabitants of this planet. We need to re make the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. We need to return to ancient knowledge and add it to our modern one. We need to rebuild on top of the rubble that this modern capitalism has left us with.
We stand in front of the biggest crisis our species has ever faced. No option is off the table. No certeainty can be left unquestioned.
Of course, the book doesn't provide the answers to all the problems. No one could ever do that. But it points in the right directions, it asks the right questions. I would say it is a necessary book for our society and times.
I know I will return to this book. I don't know when, but I know I've highlighted a large percentage of the book. And it has inspired to look for more information. To make a stand and collaborate in hopes of a better future. It has made me realise that I am not alone in the fear and despair that invades me with the news every day. I am not alone in the hope that we can create a better, fairer reality for all of us. There are more of us everyday and we WILL be heard.
Change is coming. There is no other way, and it is good to know that we can stand together in Blockadia, to rebuild a better world. One with life in the center, instead of profit.