This Changes Everything
This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein
This Changes Everything is a book that is deeply founded on human narrative and written with thick academic research thus portraying a personal understanding of the climate change as the issue in this current age. Klein makes a clear and compelling case that if the world fails to address the increasing global temperature and continues to collectively depend on fossil fuels, all the other progress it has made is at risk. She notes that according to reports by the World Bank, the world is on track to become 4 degrees warmer, an estimate that is based primarily on the current and forecast levels of emissions of greenhouse gas. Writers who offer English assignment help at Edudorm essay writing service notes that she goes further to explain that in accordance to the best science that is currently available, a four degree rise in temperature could make the global sea levels to raise by 1 or 2 meters by the year 2100. She mentions the major cities that are in danger such as New York, Boston, Los Angeles, London, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Mumbai and Shanghai (Winters, 2015).
Context of the book, This Changes Everything
Naomi Klein notes that heat would cause crops that are considered staple to dramatically reduce production across the world and combined with dangerous hurricanes, fisheries collapse, wild fires, the extensive interferences with water supplies, globe-trotting diseases and extinctions, it makes it difficult to imagine how a society that is peaceful and orderly could be maintained. The book, This Changes Everything further notes that the attempts by the international community to intervene in the emissions of greenhouse gas have miserably failed. Such policies like the Kyoto protocol have failed to curtail the production of the greenhouse gases (Winters, 2015). Experts who offer English dissertation help at Edudorm essay writing service indicates that the author asserts that the world is stuck because actions that could be taken to give the best option of preventing any catastrophe are threat to the rich and elite community. These are also the minority that control the economy, political processes and the major media outlets. She points out that we as humans have not done what is necessary to reduce the gas emissions since such an actions will directly conflict with a capitalism that is deregulated. In order to deal with the climate issue in an effective and equitable way, the author proposes increased amounts of renewable energy that should be supported by massive grids of new electricity. The book, This Changes Everything further notes that the society should consider investing in wanting public infrastructure like affordable housing and mass transit, to again to over the ownership of various important services like water and energy, to make the agricultural system more healthier and to let in the immigrants who have been displaced by the impacts of climate change (Winters, 2015).
Role of Governments in the book, This Changes Everything
The author compares her sentiments with the present actions of the wealthier nation’s governments where they will continue building high tech fortresses and come up with more draconian rules concerning the immigrants. She alludes to the fact that these governments will intervene in conflicts over water, arable land and oil in foreign countries or they will start themselves. She states that the cultures in these countries will continue do what they are doing currently but this time with more barbarism and brutality since their systems are meant to do exactly that. The title of the book, This Changes Everything indirectly argues that the earth’s climate is basically in conflict with capitalism. Authors who offer English homework help at Edudorm essay writing service points that the author, however, points out clearly that her aim is not to overthrow capitalism but to reform it. The word capitalism is almost always followed by deregulated, neo-liberal or predatory while she is trying to emphasis on this point. Just before the page containing the table of contents, the writer quotes an argument by Kim Stanley Robinson, a science fiction writer, that capitalism is completely being changed by the task ahead. Klein seems to be calling for capitalism to be somehow regulated by making numerous references to Marshal Plan and New deal, programs that lead to many social reforms and investment in the infrastructure sector by the government (Jaccard, 2014). Such an argument can be compared to a similar argument in her other book ‘The Shock Doctrine ‘ which records how people with money take advantage of various crises to have predatory agendas pushed through , something that would normally have been politically impossible. Her agenda is certain from the beginning where she explores the efforts of the climate change deniers to hide the reality effects of climate change in pseudo-scientific oratory. The writer continue to bring to light the how some mainstream eco-celebrities and environmental groups are complacent and thus making the problem worse and she later gives an outline of the incredible resources and extensive work that have been directed towards research aimed at geo-engineering the present atmosphere(Winters, 2015).
Climatic Management
To achieve climatic management, the author reaches out to diverse group of organisations that are loosely affiliated to come up with different forms of political resistance. These includes direct action on the environment, taking the resistance away from the culture that is dominant such as blockades, protests and sabotage by the dominant groups ,anarchists ,workers and other activists. The author calls on the courts to take action in order to prevent extraction of fossil fuel and its sabotage through enforcement of the rights of indigenous treaty. Tutors who offer English coursework help at Edudorm essay writing service acknowledges that she argues that if the court challenges such Beaver Lake can succeed in stopping expansion of star sands, the court could provide the best opportunity for people to continue in enjoyment of a climate which is suitable to human life. The author supports campaigns for civil disobedience involving infrastructure for fossil fuel projects like Keystone XL pipeline whose aims are to put pressure on the administration and the politicians. Her “people’s shock” appeals towards the threats arising from climate change can be compared to the concept of her other book ‘The Shock Doctrine’. She argues that another crisis under the given factors will make people to come out to squares and streets yet again, the question being what progressive efforts will be achieved, the way such an achievement will be seized in terms of confidence and power of the masses (Winters, 2015). The author is calling on the progressive politicians to make use of social crises to access the power abounding in the halls of state to execute a social policies’ and environmental shift.
Forces of Change in the book, This Changes Everything
The experience that would be realised if the forces the author promotes were to take over power can be explained through her extensive quotes of her interviews she had with Greece’s Syriza party leader Alexis Tsipras which she refers to as an example of Europe’s few sources of power. May be the books exposure on the main environmental NGOs hypocrisy and the pretence of billionaires who ‘sound-green’ should clear the illusions that those kind of forces can be depended on to address the climate change crisis (Winters, 2015). The book, This Changes Everything shows that the author had a wide consultation with scientists, more so in her presentation on the how developing lives are affected by the environmental disturbances. The book, This Changes Everything convincingly points out that capitalism as an economic system is gearing towards devastating the environment and thus should be massively changed.
Even though the author does not give an analysis of the historical capital progression and the shaping of the carbon emission by the neoliberal power , she gives details of how the neoliberalism work critically and how the public consent on denial for climate change is obtained among the various sectors of U.S citizens. Mentors who offer research essay help at Edudorm essay writing service recognizes that she concentrates on ‘The Heartland Institute’ may be the main think-tank whose efforts are aimed at preventing climate science and measures of controlling the emission of carbon in U.S. according to her, groups of such classes that institute belong to are aware of the meaning and the reality of atmospheric pollution and the need for having a collective action to control it (Declet-Barreto, 2014). Apart from such groups the author urges the common citizens of the developed nations to have an evaluation of their own silent acceptance of a lifestyle that is based on production and consumption. She also gives leaves a challenge for the civil society to come up with a broad movement that is people based to counter a global capitalism that is growth obsessed and which is the driver for carbon emission. The main lesson for these sentiments is that the corporate organisations cannot be relied upon, on their own to come up with clear measures of curbing the effect of carbon emission on the environment.
Limitations of the Author’s Analysis
The author’s narratives have an observable impression on the environmental struggles based in grassroots levels in developing countries like in Niger Delta and Ierissos in Greece and developed countries like Canada. However, she runs into limitations due to her lack of structural and historical materialism based analysis and thus has no understanding of how reasoning of capital work. As long as growth-oriented processes continue to engulf the world without any restraint, the economic benefits will always overshadow the socially- oriented biophysical environments. More over Klein does not elaborate the differences to be noted in this issue but offers only a single reason to for which her objectivity can be trusted (Declet-Barreto, 2014). Instructors who offer urgent essay help at Edudorm essay writing service argues that this is seen in her assertion that she is not asking anyone to take her word on science but everyone should trust the words of the climate scientists and their many previewed articles. The question is whether the author’s worldview has or hasn’t resulted to biasness in extracting evidence on why it is necessary to dramatically change the global capitalist economy for the purpose of preventing climate change (Jaccard, 2014). May be her interest is not to provide evidence but to change capitalism, such that she looks only for the evidence that will support her interest and thus ignoring technology that would contradict her argument.
Conclusion
The book, This Changes Everything provides the reader with a reasonable dose of gloom and doom on the urgent need for climate change action. It presents a remarkable analysis of how capitalism relate to carbon emissions, more so on the drive to increase the extraction of carbon fuel. The author ends with a change in tone, where she offers a proposal on the possible appearance of a movement for curbing looming crisis on climate change.
References
Winters E., (2015).A review of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, by Naomi Klein. Retrieved from: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/05/04/klei-m04.html
Declet-Barreto, J. (2014). Book Review Symposium – “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate”. Natural Resources Defence Council, Washington, D.C. 12-13. Retrieved from: http://www.academia.edu/11509584/Book_Review_Symposium_-_This_Changes_Everything_Capitalism_vs._the_Climate_
Jaccard M. (2014). This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Is a radical economic overhaul our best hope to save the climate? 1. Retrieved from: http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2014/11/i-wish-this-changed-everything/
