This Changes Everything

“The Atmospheric Commons and the Power of Paying Our Debts” (Pages 388-393)

Klein tells of the struggle of the Northern Cheyenne tribe in Montana against plans to expand the coal industry in that region. A rich belt of coal lay under and near their reservation, and the Northern Cheyenne had been fighting off mining companies since the early 1970s. They broke legal ground by arguing that part of their treatise rights to maintain their traditional way of life included breathing clean air, but by 2010, things weren’t looking good. Otter Creek was the biggest new coal mine under consideration in the US, and it seemed certain to go ahead, as did the rail lines alongside the reservation built to transport the coal.

The problem was also internal. With poverty, unemployment, and substance abuse high on the reservation, some of the tribe argued it was time to make a deal with the coal company and use the money to support the community. Charlene Alden, director of the tribe’s Environmental Protection Office, thought otherwise. She argued that taking the coal money would only drive their people further away from their identity and cause more misery. She knew they needed another way out of poverty and started investigating green development projects that might provide jobs and essential infrastructure for the community, including building energy-efficient housing and installing renewable energy alternatives.

A year later, Klein heard from Alden that the tribe had received funding from the Environmental Protection Agency for a new project training people to install solar heaters on their reservation homes.

“The Sun Comes Out” (Pages 393-401)

Klein was invited back to Montana to see how things were going on the reservation in the spring of 2011. She saw an inspirational teacher named Red Cloud train a group of young people about solar panels, weaving technical knowledge with Indigenous wisdom. He told them how “solar power was always part of Indigenous ways of life […] everything followed the life giving force of the sun” (393). He showed them how to find the best spot to install the solar panels, which depended on adapting to the situation, shade, and best spots for sunlight. For some houses, alternative solutions would be required.

Klein reflects on how this is the opposite of the extractivist approach; renewables like solar energy demand that we adapt ourselves again to the rhythm of nature. It requires both humility and ingenuity. Fossil fuels give people the illusion of freedom from these rhythms and a source of energy that can be called on at will. She reflects “it is this powerfully seductive illusion of total control that a great many boosters of extractive energy are so reluctant to relinquish” (394). The Indigenous approach represents a shift in power relations between humanity and the natural world, an acceptance that natural forces can be harnessed but never possessed; we find ourselves back where we started—in dialogue with nature. Klein says that we have “to unlearn the myth that we are masters of nature” (394).

However, with our technology, “we know enough to find ingenious ways to amplify the systems provided by nature” in what Klein refers to as a “partnership ethic” (395). Klein notes the signs of this ethic growing in the young people learning with Red Cloud. She tells how in the coming months, they continued and developed their work but also became part of a new generation of “solar warriors” who fought eloquently and passionately against the plans for coal mines on their lands. The situation in that fight was much better, with the planned railway lines the coal company depended on being blocked. This shows that “there is no more potent weapon in the battle against fossil fuels than the creation of real alternatives” (398). Hope for something new is needed to fight against what’s wrong.

Klein stresses the importance of green developments, renewable energy, and investment in these things, which could bring long-term jobs, training, revenue, and renewed fight and spirit into impoverished communities. She stresses that these projects must be run by and for the communities, not just airlifted in. She also argues that it is the responsibility of our more prosperous society to support this as part of a historic debt owed to Indigenous peoples. Klein goes on to say the same solution holds true for deprived and struggling communities in general, be it rural communities or manufacturing towns. Often, where there is poverty and a lack of options, the lure of fossil fuel money and jobs is too great. In these situations, people have to worry about feeding themselves and their families first before worrying about the future. However, what’s needed is a political fight for green options.

She cites a study that shows that investing in green economic alternatives such as public transport infrastructure and renewable energy developments creates far more jobs than a similar level of investment in the fossil fuel industry (the projected $5 billion spent on the Enbridge Northern Gateway is the example used here). The study claims that comparable green investment could create three times as many jobs in the short term while simultaneously reducing the chance of catastrophic global warming in the long term. That’s why “we have to both say no, while fighting for a series of transformative yeses” (401).

“Don’t Just Divest, Reinvest” (Pages 401-407)

Resources for the transition to a green economy must come from the state and be collected from the profits of the large companies that pollute. However, that requires a major political shift, and before that happens, Klein points out, there are things we can do to start funding the transition now.

The divestment movement isn’t just calling on public institutions to sell their holding in fossil fuels but rather to reinvest that wealth in green projects and social developments. Klein cites a study that says 5% of the money held collectively in these public institutions adds up to around $440 billion, more than enough to make a real difference and stimulate climate solutions.

Investing in the green tech sector is one thing, but Klein argues investors should look further to funding cutting-edge projects that combine green and social elements to support local economies, improve crucial public services, and bolster the communities at the front line of the struggle against fossil fuel extraction. They should ask, “how can their money maximize the transition to a new sustainable economy?” (402). In doing this, they can give the green sector a real chance against fossil fuels and influence other investors to think similarly.

Klein points out that previous social movements were split between political activists and those who sought to set up a new way of life in a different space, like the hippie communes of the 1960s. The present predicament allows for no such distinction. Now there are no safe havens for alternative lifestyles; in the shadow of climate change, we are all at risk. Equally, some of the very best ideas for alternative green solutions and lifestyles “are being forged in the flames of resistance on the front lines” of Blockadia (404). These communities have discovered they can’t fend off the advance of fossil fuels unless they simultaneously build and present constructive alternatives for people to invest and believe in.

Klein cites the example of a solar-and-wind-powered barn in Nebraska that farmers built on the land planned to be cut through by the Keystone pipeline and the community wind farm in Pungesti, Romania, which was set up in the fight against fracking. Klein argues we have to both build inspiring alternatives and fight to change a failing socioeconomic model at the same time. She quotes environmentalist John Jordan, who says resistance and alternatives are “the twin strands of the DNA of social change. One without the other is useless” (405). For Klein, Blockadia weaves the two together.

Klein goes on to argue that climate disasters can have some constructive effects when responded to in the right way: an inversion of the “shock doctrine” (406). They can bring people together and “activate the latent and broadly shared generosity that capitalism works so hard to deny.” (406) They also create an opportunity to rethink and rebuild to a different model. When public money is provided to help with rebuilding efforts, it can be used to transform villages, towns, and cities along green lines. Klein cites the example of the town of Greensburg in Vermont, which was rebuilt by the community as a model green town after a super tornado devastated the area in 2007. Klein also argues that disasters can equally lead in the opposite direction and become hotbeds of “disaster capitalism,” as in the case of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina (407).

“From Local to Global Debts” (Pages 408-413)

During her time with the Northern Cheyenne, Klein recalls how the idea of climate debt and a plan that was pioneered in Ecuador was raised as a possible alternative to taking coal money. In Ecuador, the idea was called the Yasuni Plan and arose due to the vast oil reserves buried under the Ecuadorian rainforest. Around $7 billion of crude oil lies in that region, and oil companies are keen to get their hands on it. A proposal was put forward that Ecuador should be compensated by the wealthy nations and heavy polluters for not selling the oil and keeping it in the ground, as it would be for the global environmental good for them to do so. Compensation funds would go directly into funding green and renewable developments in Ecuador to support the transition to a green economy.

The plan was based on the notion of climate debt. In other words, the wealthy nations that have polluted the most over the past 200 years are more responsible for the current climate crisis and have benefited from their ability to pollute, so they should shoulder more of the costs of finding a climate solution and cut their emissions sooner. They should provide financial support to those poorer countries that have contributed little to the climate crisis and yet are likely to be hardest hit by it. The funding they provide would support these countries in developing green economies and provide a clear incentive to avoid the fossil fuel-based economic development that began this mess. Klein references the idea in the Introduction to this book as a “Marshall Plan for the Earth” (409).

The principal Klein argues is sound; in a 1992 Convention on Climate Change, the UN even ratified the similar notion of “common but differentiated responsibilities” (410). However, making this a reality is another matter. The Yasuni Plan in Ecuador was launched internationally but has since stalled, and the President of Ecuador has allowed drilling to begin in the rainforest, which has been met with Blockadia-style resistance. Klein takes this as a sign of how the search for a viable climate change plan is stalling on an international level. Yasuni, she argues, raises questions we need to address urgently about how to distribute the cost of change and make the wealthiest and biggest polluters pay their fair share.

The problem is complicated by the rise of new industrial powers like China, India, and Brazil. Thanks to offshoring production, emission levels in Europe and the US are not growing at present, but this is more than made up for by the soaring emission levels of quickly industrializing areas of the Global South. The planet simply cannot sustain the developing world going through a fossil fuel-based industrial revolution like the Western powers did.

Klein points out that the real climate battle will be won and lost not in the West but in the rapidly developing nations of the Global South. It will be lost or won by those movements that are fighting their own Blockadia-style struggles and demanding their own clean energy revolutions and green jobs. However, they are up against powerful forces within their own countries that want to adopt the same fossil fuel approach to development as the West and argue for their right to do so. Environmentalism, Klein argues, can have the greatest impact in the Global South, supporting communities and fighting to ensure that as countries develop and expand, they do so along green and sustainable lines.

“Tipping the Balance” (Pages 413-418)

Much can still be done in the industrial North to help tip the balance. People can fight the pipelines and export terminals that would send fossil fuels to the South, for example, and battle new free trade deals while reining in our consumption and relocalizing economies.

The most powerful lever for change in the Global South is the same as here: “the emergence of positive, practical and concrete alternatives to dirty development” (413). A global feed-in tariff, internationally administered to support clean energy throughout the developing world, would be another option. The solution is for developing countries to develop differently from the way the West did. Yet financing a just transition in fast-developing economies has not been a priority of environmentalists in the North. Many big green groups reject the idea of climate debt and historical responsibility. Klein argues that the wealthy Western world needs to look seriously at this and start taking responsibility for the consequences of the history behind its wealth. This includes slavery and colonialism, as well as climate impact. While some say we are not responsible for the actions of our ancestors, it’s still the case that those actions have a direct bearing on why some countries are rich and others are poor.

For developing countries with large fossil fuel supplies, extracting and burning carbon is the easiest way to relieve poverty. They need an incentive to choose a different path from countries and corporations that grew wealthy as a result of burning vast amounts of carbon. It’s not just a question of what’s right, Klein believes; it's a question of our collective survival, and that should be incentive enough for the Western world to make these kinds of contributions. At the same time, we need to agree that having no hand in past pollution isn’t a green light to pollute the present. Likewise, being wrong in the past does not grant a country the right to repeat the same crime on an even grander scale. After all, today’s polluters know the catastrophic implications of pollution in ways that early industrialists did not.

The EcoEquity think tank has established a model called the “greenhouse development rights” framework based on the idea of climate debt, wealth inequality, and collective but differentiated responsibility. It addresses “the vast disparities found not only between but also within countries” (417). Klein puts this forward as a practical model we should adopt. The EcoEquity model is based on two key factors: responsibility for historical emissions and a capacity to contribute based on a country’s level of development. Every nation’s share of the global burden is clearly defined and quantified. The US would have to make 30% emission cuts, but this could be done not just at home but by financing and supporting the transition to low-carbon pathways in developing countries.

Implementation might sound impossible in the current political climate. However, starting points could be things like erasing current debts owed by developing countries in exchange for climate action, loosening green energy patents, and sharing knowledge. Most of the cost should come not from taxpayers but from the corporations most responsible for driving the crisis, from polluter-pays measures, a financial transaction tax, or eliminating subsidies for fossil fuel companies. Klein concludes, “there is no way forward that does not involve redressing the real roots of poverty” (418).