This Changes Everything

“Slapping the Invisible Hand, Building a Movement” (Pages 120-26)

Arguing that a “core battle of ideas must be fought” (125) if we are to make meaningful change, Klein looks back at a key crossroads moment. In 2009, just after Obama was elected President, the financial crisis shook people’s faith in neoliberal economics, and major banks and auto companies had to rely on huge government bailouts to keep from going under. Obama came to power with a promise to use climate change as an opportunity to create millions of jobs in a new energy economy. He was implementing a $800 billion stimulus program to deal with the fallout of the financial crisis.

Klein argues this could have been a huge turning point, where struggling manufacturing companies could have been put to a new purpose and adapted to build public transport and green energy infrastructure. The bailed-out banks could have been forced to lend to businesses to drive this green transformation. Old factories could have been run as cooperatives, as they were in Argentina after the financial crash of 2001. Climate change could have been a massive job creator and economic stimulus. However, “this required a government unafraid of bold long-term economic planning” (124) supported by a mass movement of environmentalists, workers, and students.

Instead, the moment was missed. The mass movement wasn’t there to demand change, and Obama, for all his campaign promises, left the banks and auto companies to their own devices. The stimulus bill did very little for public transport, focusing instead on the national highway system.

The money and opportunity were there, but “what stopped [Obama] was the invisible confinement of a powerful ideology” (124): the power of the neoliberal consensus, which insists that big government is bad and that there is something wrong with interfering with large corporations and something sinister about central planning.

Klein traces the problem back to neoliberalism and the victory of the “free market counterrevolution” from the ’80s onward (125). The lesson is that to win change, we must first defeat this ideology. People can do this “by showing that the real solutions to the climate crisis are also our best hope of building a more stable and equitable economic system” (125).

“Planning for Jobs” (Pages 126-128)

Klein looks into the economic and job creation implications of large-scale public investment in green infrastructure, public transport, and renewable energy. She points out that in the transition to a new economy and way of living, jobs will be lost in some sectors, but millions of new jobs will be created in the sectors where investment is needed.

Fossil fuel companies will never be convinced because they stand to lose so much profit, but Klein argues that trade unions and workers in these industries can be convinced if they’re directly supported to find secure, skilled jobs in the expanding green sector. There will be no shortage of these. Klein points to studies from the US, Canada, and South Africa that suggest millions more jobs can be created per dollar in green industries and public transport than in fossil fuels and highway expansion. According to the US BlueGreen Alliance, investing $40 billion annually in public transit and high-speed rail for six years would produce more than 3.7 million jobs in that period. Already, 5 million jobs have been created in renewable energy, and that’s before the large-scale investment that’s needed.

There’s vast scope for job creation, but this requires significant government investment, and in some cases, communities and governments must take back control of key public services, such as transport and energy. After years of private profiteering and poor service, a poll from the UK in 2013 suggests there’s broad support across the political spectrum for the renationalization of rail and energy services.

“Planning for Power” (Pages 128-136)

Natural gas has been described as a bridging fuel to renewable energy as it creates fewer emissions than coal and oil. It would still need phasing out in the transition to renewables, and for it to be used in place of oil and coal but not damage the growing renewable market, it would have to be heavily regulated.

This raises the question of incentives. Private companies are interested in turning a profit and expanding their market share. Why would they get on board with an initiative “that required that they submit to a huge range of costly regulations?” (130) For Klein, this is why if natural gas is to be used as a bridge, it must be managed “by and for the public” with profits reinvested in renewable energy. (130).

She contrasts the kind of community-focused nationalization she approves of with old, state-run, unaccountable models found in China and the Soviet Union. The big publicly-owned oil companies around the world are just as bad as their private counterparts. Klein proposes instead “a new kind of utility—run democratically by the communities that use them” (131). To show the success of this model, she points to Germany and Denmark’s renewable energy programs, which incentivize small non-corporate groups to get involved with feed-in tariff programs and price guarantees: “Roughly half of Germany’s renewable energy facilities are in the hands of farmers, citizen groups and co-operatives” (131). This not only creates green energy but puts revenue back into the communities producing it.

This model is a departure from neoliberal orthodoxy as it involves governments giving advantages to green and small-scale providers. Germany’s transition to renewables has been the fastest in the world, proving that “decentralisation delivers not on a small scale but on the largest scale of any model attempted thus far” (132).

Getting buy-in from communities is key with renewable energy projects, and that’s much more likely if these programs are locally run with clear local benefits.

Klein points to the differences between this and the old state-run model. Decentralized public ownership is a movement away from a top-down model, away from central powers making decisions removed from local needs and experiences. At the national level, policy and plans are needed, along with the planning of large-scale infrastructure, but this is combined with local autonomy and input. Communities should be given new tools and powers to design the methods that work best for them.

Klein applies the same decentralizing logic to agriculture. She says the debate is usually framed as between industrial farming and local farming, but actually, there’s a powerful middle option—agroecology.

Agroecology is where “small scale farmers use sustainable methods based on a combination of modern science and local knowledge” (134). It’s based on maximizing species diversity and enhancing natural systems of soil protection and pest control, and it significantly reduces the carbon impact of farming.

To those claiming Africa needs a “new green revolution” (135) along industrial farming lines, Klein argues that decentralized farming and agroecology not only are proving themselves to be more sustainable and productive than industrial methods but that local ownership is key for fair distribution of food to deal with starvation and hunger in poorer countries. She points to continuing food shortages in India, where industrial farming has been introduced, and argues it’s not about the amount of food produced but who controls that food and how it’s distributed.

“About that Green Miracle” (Pages 136-139)

Klein points out that despite the great success of the German transition to renewables, carbon emissions in Germany went up at the same time. This shows that a rise in renewable uptake doesn’t necessarily correlate to a drop in carbon emissions. At the same time that the German government was promoting the renewable program and phasing out its nuclear energy program, they were doing nothing to stop the German coal industry from extracting, burning, and exporting coal and coal-generated electricity.

Klein argues a complete transition to renewables is both technically and commercially feasible and should come alongside decisive measures to stagger the phasing out of both nuclear and fossil fuel energy generation and consumption: “What we need are strict rules against the extraction and burning of coal” (138). She points to the risks of nuclear energy and the high carbon overheads in developing nuclear energy programs. Saying yes to renewables is part of the solution, but as the German experience shows, all that progress is at risk unless “policymakers are willing simultaneously to say no to the ever rapacious fossil fuel industry.” (139).

“Remembering How to Say No” (Pages 139-152)

Klein describes the grim sight of the Alberta tar sands: a grey desert, “the Earth skinned alive” (139) to access a semisolid oil known as bitumen, which is incredibly energy-intensive to extract. This is the process known as fracking.

Klein gives the example of the planned construction of the Keystone XL pipeline for transporting bitumen. The plan required federal approval, and in 2011, Klein was involved in a protest against it: “three years later we would still be waiting for the president’s yes or no” (140) despite his campaign commitments to tackling climate change. For Klein, it’s a clear example of the difficulty governments have in saying no to the fossil fuel industry. We’ve reached a time when we must stop extracting and burning fossil fuels, but we’re doing the opposite.

Klein argues that the wealth and lobbying power of the fossil fuel industry has “blocked common-sense responses to the climate crisis at every turn” (141). Left to the market, we will see innovations in green energy, but we have also seen innovation in deeper, more energy-intensive forms of fossil fuel extraction, which effectively cancels out all green innovation.

The myth is that we struggle to change the status quo, but as Klein points out, the status quo in the energy sector is changing all the time; as natural fossil fuel reserves are depleted, the “innovation” of fracking is changing it in totally the wrong direction. Gas extracted through fracking is more damaging to the environment than conventional fossil fuels due to the energy involved in extraction and the high levels of methane leakage it causes. Methane is a far more efficient trapper of heat than carbon dioxide: “in the key period when we need to be looking for ways to cut our emissions rapidly the global gas boom is in the process of constructing a network of ultra powerful atmospheric ovens” (144).

We’ve seen the rise in other dirty fuels like lignite coal and technology plowed into energy-intensive deep extraction, which has been allowed with no government intervention. These decisions are “locking us into disastrous levels of planetary warming” (145).

Klein points out that as easier-to-access fossil fuels are depleted, major fossil fuel companies are investing billions of dollars in unconventional extraction programs to make sure they maintain their profitability: “These investments won’t be made back unless the companies that made them are able to keep extracting for decades” (146). This is occurring at a time when climate experts tell us we need to quickly shift away from fossil fuels and be almost fossil fuel-free by 2050. For this to happen, the fossil fuel companies would be left with “stranded assets,” and their share prices would fall.

They act, Klein explains, in the interest of their own financial survival: “Keeping up their reserve-replacement ration is an economic imperative” (147). She quotes a study that states current collective fossil fuels reserves held by these companies (i.e., fuel that’s ready to be sold and burnt) are five times greater than a conservative estimate of what we can burn globally and still hope to keep temperature rise to 2 degrees before 2049 (148).

Essentially, these companies’ collective survival is directly opposed to the policies we need to secure our collective future on this planet. This is why they fund the climate change-denial movement and spend vast amounts of money lobbying, bribing, and influencing governments to block serious climate change regulation. As most economies are still heavily dependent on fossil fuels, they have huge bargaining power.

Part of the solution, Klein argues, is to restrict the lobbying power of big business, sever the cozy ties between large corporates and governments, cap donations, and increase transparency: “The only thing politicians fear losing more than donations is elections” (151). We need a broad mass movement armed with evidence on climate change, as “a resurgent climate movement could use those warnings to light a fire under the call to kick corporate money out of politics—not just fossil fuel money” (152).

“Not an ‘Issue,’ a Frame” (Pages 152-160)

Klein argues tackling climate change can bring together and energize a range of complementary causes, from fighting political corruption to building public services and defending migrant rights. Climate change can be a catalyst and driving force for positive social change. However, for this to happen, our political thinking needs to change quickly, and we don’t have much time.

Social and environmental justice, she argues, are not in competition, they’re complimentary. She argues environmentalists need to move away from a narrow, one-issue environmental focus to embrace wider social causes and build a broad movement. Equally, those on the left need to bring environmentalism into the foreground of their struggles.

Klein argues neoliberal ideology isn’t as secure as it once was. After the financial crash and with rising inequality and austerity, people are open to alternatives. As so the existing model fails many people, they have a stake in changing it. Climate change can be a rallying call, not only to change but to improve things for most people on the planet.

Klein speaks of the grassroots movements and community groups fighting for environmental and social justice in local struggles against fracking and for the rights of Indigenous peoples and migrants. She sees potential, but she argues we need more structure, scale, and direction. Leftists and liberals need to get involved and see the power of the argument climate science has created for social change. Equally, the mainstream environment movement needs to embrace a more holistic political perspective: “Building a mass movement that has a chance of taking on the corporate forces arrayed against science based emission reduction will require the broadest possible spectrum of allies” (157).

Up to now, the movement has been too sporadic and diffuse. Klein looks to contributing cultural factors: “we collectively lack many of the tools that built and sustained the transformative movements of the past (158). We’re part of a post-modern, digital age where we’re increasingly rootless and caught in the perpetual now, “dividing our attention spans as never before” (159). Understanding climate change, she argues, involves having a sense of place and knowing our history. The roots of the climate crisis lie not just in the modern world, but in deeply engrained Western narratives about man and nature, and we need to understand these and move our thinking and politics in a different direction.