This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the Climate

Naomi Klein This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the Climate New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014Aside from eternal ethical and existential issues, our species is currently bedeviled by two main problems. One is of sufficient significance to constitute a foundational threat to what pass for contemporary human civilizations. The other is far greater, for it poses a manifest threat to our species. Neither one can be indefinitely ignored. Neither is apt to be solved if we maintain our current patterns of belief and behaviour.One is economic and the other is ecological. We have known something about economic problems at least since Adam Smith (1723-1790) told us how to account for the wealth of nations in 1776. We have had hints about ecological issues at least since 1798 when Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) warned us against unrestricted population growth. Seldom, however, have we systematically addressed the relationship between the two. In fact, we have been misled into thinking that these are separate problems or, worse, when we did discern a connection, we believed that potential solutions to one involve disregarding or discounting and thereby exacerbating the other.In good times, of course, we are downright sentimental about wildlife and wilderness conservation. We go out of our way to enjoy natural beauty, praise national parks and voluntarily pick up trash in public places. Even now, many of us dutifully separate our garbage in the hope that paper, bottles, plastic wrappers and organic waste will be properly recycled. These are not, however, especially good times and we are becoming willfully careless.Saving the planet is now conventionally described as a threat to Jobs! and, since most people's social consciousness is determined by the size and the source of their paychecks, the invitation to trade steady employment for the safety of a polar bear, a spotted owl or a stand of ancient timber is most often politely declined; and, if that doesn't work, it is impolitely rejected. In extremis, as in Canada today, environmental activists-especially if they are or are too closely associated with the struggle of aboriginal peoples to assert their legitimate native land claims-are shouted down as the current federal government labels them as terrorists. But let me deal with economics first.The Economic ProblemAs we lurch through the early decades of the twenty-first century, we can set aside various panics over such crises de jour as illicit drugs, viral pandemics and even terrorism for a moment. They are symptoms, not diseases per se. There are fundamental causes of all three that are rarely recognized by perceptive observers and analysts. They lie largely in the domain of what Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) famously called the dismal science; namely, economics.Most people don't like to discuss economics except in the banal and mischievous terms that are bandied about in the Business sections of daily newspapers and current affairs programs on cable television.One reason for our reluctance is that people aren't doing as well as they think they should and talking about money exposes them to criticism and to self-criticism-stated or implied-about why they have so little of it or, worse, why they owe so much. Although they have heard a great deal about American and European bank failures and bail-outs, manufacturing collapses, government debt, toxic assets, various investment bubbles, criminally fixed interest rates and high-tech skimming and scamming, these abstractions don't readily translate into lapsed mortgage payments or the price of bananas and lettuce. In the process, we experience a sense of failure, betrayal and despair.Unemployment is well understood (especially by people who do not have jobs), but making the link between personal bank accounts and mainstream macroeconomics is difficult, especially when the noted experts in the field use arcane language and unfathomable statistics to explain the obvious in terms that make no sense to ordinary citizens or to recommend policies the only possible outcome of which is to make matters worse. …

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