November 9, 2014 – You may not agree with her left-wing political activism, but you cannot deny that her hypothesis that capitalism as usual is no longer possible if we are to successfully deal with climate change. In her book, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate,” she argues that the timing of the climate change crisis couldn’t be worse but nevertheless not addressing it is tantamount to victimizing a large percentage of humanity and the other life on this planet to increasing catastrophe that will eventually impact all.
In a LinkedIn comment raised in the Global Issues group a few weeks ago I argued that every politician, and every CEO of a fossil fuel and energy company should read Klein’s book, and hopefully, take its message to heart. Where Elon Musk sees Mars as a way out of planet-ending extinction, Klein argues that Earth is where we are and we have just enough time to meet the climate crisis before it gets out of hand. She sees fear as the prime reason we are holding back. That our free-market ideology and the governments we are currently electing are delaying tackling the challenge. And that social movements akin in scale to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the anti-apartheid conviction by national governments in the 1980s are necessary for humanity to address global warming.
Klein takes us on her life journey and on visits to a Heartland Institute conference of climate change deniers bankrolled by business interests, an academic think tank focused on designing geo-engineering solutions to block sunlight or dump particulate matter in the stratosphere, and United Nations-sponsored conferences where delegates break down crying because of lack of consensus on what to do.
She acknowledges that to defeat climate change we must break “so many rules at once – rules written into national laws and trade agreements, as well as powerful unwritten rules that tell us that no government can increase taxes and stay in power.”
Where she and I disagree is on immediate solutions. She would forgo a carbon tax, a first stage remedy in my opinion. and tackle climate change by introducing guaranteed minimum incomes for everyone. This solution of income redistribution would then foster a spirit of cooperation for all humanity to tackle climate change both at a personal and national level. It is her steadfast belief that those dispossessed, the wretched of the Earth as Franz Fanon described them, would then be given a voice in government decision making, and with that voice they would rescue the planet from “ecocide.”
The term ecocide was first introduced in the 1970s when some of us began to realize that the patterns of the past were no longer the norm when looking at climate, when we were observing an accelerating downward trend in biodiversity in the oceans, on land and in the air. Defined as ecocide we were acknowledging that humanity was playing a part in this ecosystem destruction. As a result, today, ten countries have enshrined laws of ecocide as crimes against humanity and the planet.
To me Klein is a wonderful idealist and that her solution although appealing doesn’t take into consideration human nature. I agree with her that addressing climate change as a moral issue is an absolute. She draws analogies to the 19th century actions that finally led to the abolition of slavery in the Western World and quotes Adam Smith in his book “The Wealth of Nations” describing capitalism’s reason for ending the abhorrent practice based on pragmatic financial arguments rather than moral ones. She then goes on to note that Smith’s approach did nothing to end slavery and it wasn’t until emotion rather than pragmatism entered the picture that slavery was abolished. It took polarizing rhetoric and a civil war.
Klein notes parallels between the institution of slavery and unfettered capitalism, the latter which she blames for global warming. She sees the need for a collective moral and emotional uprising on the world stage as the means to overcome our collective fear to act. She believes we can unwrite the last 150 years of the Industrial Revolution driven by James Watt’s invention of the steam engine and its voracious descendants with their demand for more and more energy. She argues that humanity’s march away from a dependence on the natural world to sustain us can then be revisited and the high-risk behaviours associated with fossil fuel extraction can finally end. Only in this way will we address climate change.
I, on the other hand, believe that we can institute a progressive carbon tax across all governments across the planet. That these taxes would be focused on extractive industries and polluters, and that the money raised would be put into projects to mitigate risk from climate change. Through a carbon tax I believe we can accomplish, to a degree, the redistribution of wealth that Klein argues is the answer. That by lowering income taxes for those most impacted by global warming we can make our democracy more inclusive. And that through carbon tax wealth redistribution we can provide the necessary financial assistance to help other nations most at risk from extreme weather events and rising sea levels. Interestingly, The Globe and Mail, a national newspaper here in Canada that has a strong business orientation came out with a similar proposal on its editorial pages on November 7th.. Let’s hope our political leaders take note.
Related articles across the web
Related Posts
Climate News On The Eve Of Denier Trump Taking Office
One Thing Is Certain – When It Comes To Cosmology And The Universe Nothing Is Certain
Ingredient In Over-the-Counter Cough Medicine May Be More Than A Placebo
Climate Change, RFK Jr., Agriculture and Food Security
Zebrafish Protein Repairs Heart Tissue – A Possible Heart Attack Therapy
Solar Energy Technology Is Going “Perovskite”
Asteroid Bennu Samples Reveal Abundant Signs-of-Life Molecules
Revolutionizing Health Care: How Process Flows Optimize Clinical Decision-Making
