Naomi Klein has produced one of the most provocative
books yet on the evolving tale of our planet’s inevitable warming: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. She provides a detailed look at the roles the
various participants have played in the global warming arena as we have edged
ever closer to what appears to be a point of no return. Few are left unscathed.
We have the somewhat arbitrary goal of limiting emissions
to the point that global warming will not exceed 2 degrees Celsius, but the
world has no clear path to attaining that goal, and we are, in fact, on
schedule to reach 4 degrees of warming by the end of this century.
“In Copenhagen, the major
polluting governments—including the United States and China—signed a nonbinding
agreement pledging to keep temperatures from increasing more than 2 degrees
Celsius above where they were before we started powering our economies with
coal. (That converts to an increase of
3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.)
Predicting exactly what effects a given temperature rise
will cause is uncertain, but it is clear that major changes in the environment
are on the way. Complex systems such as
the earth’s can produce nonlinear excursions that are difficult to predict and
impossible to counter.
“In a 2012 report, the World
Bank laid out the gamble implied by that target. ‘As global warming approaches and exceeds 2 degrees
Celsius, there is a risk of triggering nonlinear tipping elements. Examples include the disintegration of the
West Antarctic ice sheet leading to more rapid sea-level rise, or large scale
Amazon dieback drastically affecting ecosystems, rivers, agriculture, energy
production, and livelihoods….’ In other
words, once we allow temperatures to climb past a certain point, where the
mercury stops is not in our control.”
“The World Bank also warned when
it released its report that ‘we’re on track for a 4˚C warmer world [by century’s end] marked by extreme
heat waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity,
and life-threatening sea level rise.’
And the report cautioned that ‘there is also no certainty that adaption
to a 4˚C world is
possible.’ Kevin Anderson….of the
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research….is even blunter; he says 4 degrees
Celsius warming—7.2 degrees Fahrenheit—is ‘incompatible with any reasonable
characterization of an organized, equitable and civilized global community’.”
Opinions vary as to how much time is left before action
to curb carbon emissions will be too little and too late. Klein selects this one:
“….so much carbon has been allowed
to accumulate in the atmosphere over the past two decades that now our only
hope of keeping warming below the internationally agreed-upon target of 2
degrees Celsius is for wealthy countries to cut their emissions by somewhere in
the neighborhood of 8-10 percent a year….this level of emission reduction has
happened only in the context of economic collapse or deep depressions.”
Given a situation so dire, how can so many people reside
comfortably in a state of denial over humanity’s role in climate change? Psychologists can provide many explanations
for why people are able to ignore facts that counter firmly-held beliefs. Klein describes those whose beliefs are most
threatened as those with the most to lose if global warming was accepted as
truth: free-market capitalists.
“….their deep fear that if the
free market system really has set in motion physical and chemical processes
that, if allowed to continue unchecked, threaten large parts of humanity at an
existential level, then their entire crusade to morally redeem capitalism has
been for naught. With stakes like these,
clearly greed is not so good after all.
And that is what is behind the abrupt rise in climate change denial among
hardcore conservatives: they have come to understand that as soon as they admit
that climate change is real, they will lose the central ideological battle of
our time—whether we need to plan and manage our societies to reflect our goals
and values, or whether that can be left to the magic of the market.”
“Climate change detonates the ideological
scaffolding on which contemporary conservatism rests. A belief system that vilifies collective
action and declares war on all corporate regulation and all things public
simply cannot be reconciled with a problem that demands collective action on an
unprecedented scale and a dramatic reining in of the market forces that are
largely responsible for creating and deepening the crisis.”
Klein also directs criticism at many of the traditional
environmentalists—referring to them as “warmists”—who collaborate with climate
deniers by propagating the belief that incremental measures can address our
difficulties.
“So here’s my inconvenient truth:
I think these hard-core ideologues understand the real significance of climate
change better than most of the ‘warmists’ in the political center, the ones who
are still insisting that the response can be gradual and painless and that we
don’t need to go to war with anybody, including the fossil fuel companies.”
In other words, if the free-market ideologues see global
warming as an excuse for a social revolution, they are correct. Klein believes that social and economic
revolutions are not only necessary, but also desirable.
Klein spends much of her book describing the ever more
environmentally damaging attempts to gain access to ever more fossil fuel
supplies—even as the earth bakes from past carbon emissions—as evidence that
nothing of significance can be accomplished under our current oligarchic
system. The energy companies have always
created “sacrifice” zones where fuels were to be extracted. The environment could be destroyed and people
harmed as long as such things took place in remote locations where the inhabitants
were powerless. But now the whole world
is in danger of becoming a sacrifice zone.
Fracking takes place in our back yards.
Canada has given over enormous sections of its wilderness to destruction
in order to generate more excess fossil fuels.
Companies wish to subject Arctic waters to the threat of oil spills.
Too many people now see their homes and livelihoods
threatened and they have begun to fight back. Klein covers the protests that extreme
extractive practices have generated among indigenous peoples and others around
the globe. She sees within these growing
protests a level of resolve that she believes could form the foundation for a
social movement broad enough to enact the necessary changes.
“….only mass social movements
can save us now. Because we know where
the current system, left unchecked, is headed.
We also know, I would add, how that system will deal with the reality of
serial climate-related disasters: with profiteering, and escalating barbarism
to segregate the losers from the winners.
To arrive at that dystopia, all we need to do is keep barreling down the
road we are on. The only remaining
variable is whether some countervailing power will emerge to block the road,
and simultaneously clear some alternate pathways to destinations that are safer. If that happens, well, it changes everything [emphasis mine].”
Global warming thus can be converted from a tragedy to an
opportunity to remake society and correct its accumulated defects. Klein makes valid arguments that restricting
globalized trade, moving from fossil fuel power to renewable power, and relying
more on local production of food would entail dramatic change. Decentralizing economic power and distributing
it to many more players could significantly alter the inequality that has
characterized our current situation.
However, Klein takes this notion of an opportunity for change quite a
bit too far. She notes that major movements
of the past have yet to reach their goals: decolonization, civil rights for
minorities, feminism, and sovereignty for Indigenous peoples. She suggests that the remnants of these
movements might coalesce into something truly productive.
“So climate change does not need
some shiny new movement that will magically succeed where others failed. Rather, as the furthest-reaching crisis
created by the extractivist worldview, and one that puts humanity on a firm and
unyielding deadline, climate change can be the force—the grand push—that will
bring together all of these still living movements. A rushing river fed by countless streams,
gathering collective force to finally reach the sea.”
Combining a well-constructed plea for dramatic action to
battle global warming with a collection of social thrusts that appear orthogonal
to the problem at hand seems like a ridiculous strategy. Many of those who might be convinced to
become an activist on the issue of climate change would likely be turned off by
one or more of the items on her version of a wish list. Most people would be uncomfortable with a
movement that “changes everything.”
Most reviewers of Klein’s book justifiably give her
credit for her research and the completeness of her assessment of the climate
change issue. They part company with her
when she gets to the point where she describes this grand social movement that will
change everything. They have little
faith that people will be willing to give up much in the way of customary
creature comforts in order to save the planet and succumb to gloom and doom.
Klein is so exercised by the anticipated big-energy
generated global havoc that she spends little time considering technical
developments that could be critical in the global warming arena. She addresses the one thrust easiest to shoot
down: the mad scientists who want to accommodate ever increasing levels of
carbon dioxide by dimming the sunlight reaching earth. What could possibly go wrong there!
Klein also makes the mistake of equating capitalism as a
system with capitalism as it currently exists—a system run by oligarchs to
serve their wishes. Within the context
of regulated capitalism and planned social goals, there is much that can be
done to dramatically lower usage of fossil fuels.
Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler have produced a book
titled Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think. They provide a tour through a number of
promising technologies, some available now, some imminent, and some still far
off. They make the point that energy
generation, water usage, and food production are all areas that could look
dramatically different in the near future.
Whether or not these technologies will come to fruition and address
climate change on a reasonable timescale is unclear, but these authors
certainly believe they will.
An even more interesting approach has been documented by
Amory B. Lovins in an article in Foreign Affairs: A Farewell to Fossil Fuels. His
energy plan incorporates a continuing growth in renewable energy sources, but
the main focus is on using energy, whatever the source, more efficiently. The potential energy savings are
stunning. He points out that such
savings have been taking place for decades driven by the motivations of
capitalism.
“Underlying this shift in supply
is the inexorable shrinkage in the energy needed to create $1 of GDP. In 1976,
I heretically suggested in these pages that this ‘energy intensity’
could fall by two-thirds by 2025. By 2010, it had fallen by half,
driven by no central plan or visionary intent but only by the perennial quest
for profit, security, and health. Still-newer methods, without further
inventions, could reduce U.S. energy intensity by another two-thirds over
the next four decades, with huge economic benefits.
In fact, as Reinventing Fire,
the new book from my organization, Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), details, a U.S. economy
that has grown by 158 percent by 2050 could need no oil, no coal, no nuclear
energy, and one-third less natural gas -- and cost $5 trillion less than
business as usual, ignoring all hidden costs. Today’s fossil carbon emissions could
also fall by more than four-fifths without
even putting a price on them.”
“This transformation requires pursuing three
agendas. First, radical automotive efficiency can make electric propulsion
affordable; heavy vehicles, too, can save
most of their fuel; and all vehicles can be used more productively. Second, new
designs can make buildings and factories several times as efficient as they are
now. Third, modernizing the electric system to make it diverse, distributed,
and renewable can also make it clean, reliable, and secure.”
“This transition will require no
technological miracles or social engineering -- only the systematic application
of many available, straightforward techniques. It could be led by business for
profit and sped up by revenue-neutral policies enacted by U.S. states or
federal agencies, and it would need from Congress no new taxes, subsidies,
mandates, or laws. The United States’ most effective institutions -- the
private sector, civil society, and the military -- could bypass its least
effective institutions. At last, Americans could make energy do their work
without working their undoing.”
Lovins’s plan was described in an era of high energy
prices. Should the current low prices
persist, the motivation to move in this direction might diminish without the
application of some sort of carbon tax.
Such a tax, gradually increased, could also serve as the mechanism for shortening
the time scale for implementing these energy efficiencies and thus addressing
global warming in a more timely manner.
The tax could also be used to encourage the transition with credits and
subsidize those who might be temporarily harmed by higher energy prices.
And as for the energy companies who seem determined to
burn every ounce of fossil fuel they can get their hands on, welcome to “creative
destruction.” It couldn’t happen to a
more deserving bunch.
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