This Concerns Everyone - Naomi Klein and and the Climate Generation

Naomi Klein’s stirring call-to-arms on climate action, This Changes Everything, lays out the realities that we face in “decade zero”, the period of time that we currently have left to make significant changes to the way we live in order to prevent a climate catastrophe. In matter-of-fact terms, it lays out the science, details the myriad obstacles that humanity must overcome in order to avert a crisis, and then highlights many of the actions that every one of us can take to change the current trajectory of ecological breakdown and pollution.

Perhaps most interestingly, it details the most pressing concern for climate activists (and those of us who want our planet to remain habitable for generations to come): the absolute necessity of changing the current mentality of neoliberal, de-regulated, growth-at-all-costs capitalism that pervades nearly every culture and country on Earth.

Our economies require permanent growth in order to remain viable. Company share prices are often not based on the current earnings of the product or service they provide, but the potential for the company to grow and earn in the future. Extractive industry players like fossil fuel companies determine their worth not by the amount of oil they are currently pumping, but by the amount of dirty fuel that sits in land they own, waiting to be extracted and refined. Shell and BP are not absurdly wealthy because of the barrels of oil they create today, but because thanks to their reserves they are guaranteed to be able to keep producing for the next thirty or forty years, even with no further discoveries of new oil fields. And still, they're digging. Renewable energies be damned.

So the calls for climate action represent a very real threat to the future of Big Oil, but also the economy as a whole. If we cannot continue to churn out new phones every year, wear cheap clothing made in factories half a world away, buy seasonal foods all year around, or transport goods to our doorsteps via dirty ships and dirtier aeroplanes, it seems as though our whole world will collapse. We are all complicit in the hubris of humanity believing that we can do whatever we want, whenever we want, with no consequences.

For those who make a killing on polluting and extractive industries, the words and deeds of climate activists may therefore seem like an existential threat. In reality, ignoring those words and deeds will be the nail in the coffin for our current way of life.

But that won’t stop those who have invested so much in neoliberal capitalism from defending their cause to the grave.

Like a cornered animal, they will snarl and snap back at those that threaten them. Which is why Brexit campaigner Arron Banks sits at home and tweets gleefully about the possibility of an "accident in the Atlantic" that might befall Greta Thunberg on her journey to the UN, or Julia Hartley-Brewer can respond to Thunberg's informed and well-articulated arguments with the sort of petulance you might expect from a schoolchild. The science is accurate. The international community are finally waking up to our new climate reality. And the climate deniers and free-market preachers are absolutely terrified. 

As the elite often do when their power is threatened and they sense their time is drawing to a close, they will double down on the extractive, polluting activities that have made them rich over the previous decades. Much like the European powers’ spiteful slash-and-burn campaign that crippled Africa during decolonisation, the climate deniers will squeeze the system dry while they still can, not just for profit, but also for revenge. Jair Bolsonaro will burn the Amazon to the ground, and ravage the Indigenous people that stood against his heartless pro-business policies. Donald Trump will attack Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal" as economically impossible whilst his own policies send the US debt spiralling to new heights. Neoliberal converts will continue to denounce socialist agendas as global austerity continues and inequality continues to widen. 

This is the vicious bite of a dog that doesn't want to admit that it's scared. The ideology that built the modern world is now killing it, and those that benefitted most from the way things are don't know what to do anymore. As Klein puts it, we have a choice; overhaul our entire political and economic system in order to prevent a global climate catastrophe or wait until that catastrophe does it for us. 

Which is the key message in this debate. “Green new deals” and shifts to renewable energy are not revolutionary acts against the status quo. The status quo is going to change. The question is whether we want to do something about it now, as key UN institutions, global governments, and increasing global grassroots movements are urging us to do, or whether we want to stand back and watch the world burn until the flames reach our doorsteps.

People don't like change. Especially change that forces us to reconsider everything we believe in. But change is necessary if we are to avert a world-threatening crisis.

The global dominance of the current free-market Neoliberal thinking since the collapse of the Soviet Union has led many to believe there is no other possible option for healthy, and wealthy, societies. But our economic and political systems change constantly. For a proletariat worker in 1950s Moscow, the possibility of another form of economic or political system in the USSR would be unthinkable. For a medieval Parisian peasant, the feudal system of landowners and serfs was just the natural way of life.

But the Berlin Wall came down. The French revolution overthrew a feudal monarchy and ushered in a modern Republic. Even our comparatively stable western Liberal systems transformed from socialist and Keynesian economic prospects built on Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal and Clement Attlee's Post-World War Two drive for social security (which included the creation of the much-lauded NHS, at the time supported by those on all sides of the political spectrum) into systems of free-market, deregulated hyper-capitalism. Ideologies and economic doctrines came and went, fought wars for supremacy that were supposedly resolved, and the so-called “end of history” never came. 

The drive towards global democracy and liberalism that was promised in the 1990s is now under serious threat, as western countries see the return of authoritarian beliefs and regimes, African and Asian states fail to transition to the European model (as the liberal system expected would happen), and global movements of cooperation such as the EU stumble and falter. History isn't over, and for the first time since the ordinary people of the world decided that they wanted that iron curtain torn down, we are once again gearing up to exercise our will. The climate crisis is the most important issue we face today. And, as Klein expertly outlines, it has the potential to be a rallying cry for a new system that works for everyone, not just the few. 

Change cannot come unless we change everything. That means being more aware of our own habits and changing our behaviours where we know we can do better. But more importantly, that means changing the system so that it is forced to work for us. The political elite and the invisible hand of the market won't drop everything to reduce inequality, limit carbon emissions, or offer workers a fair wage and social security net unless we force them to. The current state of affairs is proof enough of that. 

We are more informed, more connected, and therefore more empowered today than at any other point in human history. We are also at greater risk of disaster than any generation before us.

We are all implicated in the self-mutilation of our only home. But we know how to create an economic and political system that benefits all of us, one that does not fetishize growth at the expense of wellbeing and community. The very things we need to do to stop the destruction of our natural resources and slow pollution, are the things that can benefit those of us who are struggling right now.

Climate change will affect the global rich and poor in vastly different ways, and if you care about those less fortunate than yourselves, you care about this. Neoliberalism built the modern world we stand in today. It made the rich much richer whilst widening inequality across the board. It moulded us into individuals whilst stripping away the community and family ties we once held dear. It allowed humankind to, briefly, play God with the natural environment in the name of economic growth. And now it stands to tear down the very temple it built.

The fight for the climate is not just about scientific fact and an abstract, dystopian future should we not act responsibly. It is about every issue we face in the modern world. Human-made climate change is the result of the way we humans act towards each other and towards the Earth right now, so that is what we have to address.

If you're angry at the destruction of rainforests, coral reefs, and wildlands in the search for more fuels to burn, join the climate fight.

If you're angry at small-scale farmers and fishers around the world losing their jobs to global industrial megaliths with which they cannot compete, join the climate fight.

If you’re angry at the treatment of thousands of economic migrants and refugees trapped in camps in the Mediterranean, at the US border, and across the world, join the climate fight.

If you’re angry at the massive number of homeless people struggling on the streets of your town, join the climate fight.

If you’re angry that CEOs can receive millions of pounds in bonuses when their workers don’t receive a living wage, join the climate fight.

If you don’t want to see Indigenous peoples, refugees, the urban poor, workers, poor youth, and minority groups discriminated against and marginalised, the you must join the climate fight.

The ideological battle for the planet starts now. 

Read Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything for an excellent analysis of where we are at in terms of climate change, how we got here, and where we might be going depending on how we respond right now. For examples of individual changes you can make to lower your own environmental impact, see here. To help the change the system to help benefit all of us, follow the lead of Greta Thunberg’s School Strike for Climate and the Extinction Rebellion, make your voice heard and stand up for the planet. Tell your friends, family, co-workers, and neighbours.