Klein does not go into details about our climate change emergency, expecting that her readers are already familiar with the causes and magnitude of the problem. Instead she focuses on an argument in favor of organizing a mass movement for climate action that fights for big changes in our economic system, representing a conflict between the reigning neoliberal ideology and an alternative worldview "embedded in interdependence rather than hyperindividualism, reciprocity rather than dominance, and cooperation rather than hierarchy." She recommends a strategic alliance between climate activists and activists in the various movements for social justice, based on their common interests and the galvanizing effect of climate emergencies. She recognizes the great difficulties that a movement for climate action faces, but is hopeful that effective action can be forced before it becomes too late to avoid catastrophe. 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. … Climate change is our chance to right those festering wrongs at last—the unfinished business of liberation." (459)

The deniers remain strong because "…they are protecting powerful political and economic interests …" (44) The only way to resolve this is with tough, fair, world-level regulation. But instead we have a vacuum, into which pours all manner of noxious nonsense. Climate-change deniers, luxuriantly astroturfed. Charities cosying up to fossil-fuel interests, including one, Klein has discovered, that has put oil and gas wells on its own bird reserve. Clever chaps who should know better – Stephen Hawking, the lads from Freakonomics – with their fantasies of terraforms and geo-engineering. Eddying little markets in non-solutions: carbon offsets, emissions trading, organic nappies. What's wrong with us that we've let this happen? It’s nearly impossible to convince people to abandon their core worldview." (Source: Reddit comments by Naomi Klein, 11/20/2014/)Even more critically, many non-Natives are also beginning to see that the ways of life that Indigenous groups are protecting have a great deal to teach about how to relate to the land in ways that are not purely extractive." (370) i100685043 |b1010002177232 |das |g- |m |h14 |x1 |t0 |i12 |j18 |k160122 |n11-09-2023 00:41 |o- |aHC79.E5 K56 2015 So instead of changing anything, neoliberals have established institutions which fund people to do research which counters the overwhelming (97%) scientific consensus that climate change exists. The divestment movement won’t bankrupt the industry, but it is "chipping away at the social license with which these companies operate." (354) Naomi Klein's work has always moved and guided me. She is the great chronicler of our age of climate emergency, an inspirer of generations' - GRETA THUNBERG

Renewables "demand that we adapt ourselves to the rhythms of natural systems, as opposed to bending those systems to our will with brute force engineering." (394) The way I put it is: we’re not going to win climate justice if we’re not free to fight for it, if we’re not free to research, if we’re not free to speak, if we’re not free to protest, if we’re not free to strike. And none of those freedoms exist for Egyptians under the current regime. To illustrate how weak the measures to combat climate change actually are Klein cites the fact that there are fundamental flaws with the way CO2 emissions are monitored: Though rarely talked about there is a clear and compelling relationship between public ownership and the ability of communities to get off dirty energy.

extractivism,’ a term originally used to describe economies based on removing ever more raw materials from the earth, usually for export to traditional colonial powers, where ‘value’ was added. … One of the big headlines to come out of Cop27 was the “loss and damage agreement”, which sets aside funds to compensate low-income countries for climate damages caused by wealthy polluting countries. Do you think this means climate justice is being taken more seriously than before? This in turn is down to the primary driving force of the trade system in the 1980s and 1990s – allowing multinationals the freedom to scour the globe in search of the cheapest and most exploitable labour force (the ‘race to the bottom’) – it was a journey that passed through Mexico and South Korea and ended up in China where wages were extraordinarily low, trade unions were brutally suppressed and the state was willing to spend seemingly limitless funds on massive infrastructure projects – modern ports, sprawling highway systems, endless numbers of coal-fired power plants, massive dams, all to ensure that the lights stayed on in the factories and the goods made it from the assembly lines onto the container ships in time – A free trader’s dream, in other words, and a climate nightmare. The expansion of China’s ports indicates the increasing volume of trade between China and other countries Indeed, if the movement has a guiding theory, it is that it is high time to close, rather than expand, the fossil fuel frontier." (304) attempts to fix glaring and fundamental flaws in the system have failed because large corporations wield far too much political power—a power exerted through corporate campaign contributions, many of them secret; through almost unfettered access to regulators via their lobbyists; through the notorious revolving door between business and government; as well as through the ‘free speech’ rights these corporations have been granted by the U.S. Supreme Court." (151)

There is however, little motivation for neoliberals to adopt climate change policies because climate change will affect the poor more than the rich… when the extractive industry’s culture of structural transience bumps up against a group of deeply rooted people with an intense love of their homeplace and a determination to protect it, the effect can be explosive." (344) NB2 – I’ve changed the arty subtitles of the chapters so they are more meaningful to a mass audience. We should definitely all fly less (particularly the richest of us who do it the most often). Many people I know would fly less often if we had better rail systems in North America." (Source: Reddit comments by Naomi Klein, 11/20/2014) Chapter two provides an overview of how globalised neoliberal policies helped to cause climate change (chapter two)To illustrate the second point above: How TNCs use the WTO to sue governments Klein cites the following: As environmental author Kenneth Brower writes, ‘The notion that science will save us is the chimera that allows the present generation to consume all the resources it wants, as if no generations will follow. It is the sedative that allows civilization to march so steadfastly toward environmental catastrophe. It forestalls the real solution, which will be in the hard, nontechnical work of changing human behavior.’" (289) Again and again, linear, one-way relationships of pure extraction are being replaced with systems that are circular and reciprocal." (446) When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different, harmful views, was getting chronically mistaken for her, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously. Then suddenly it wasn't. She started to find herself grappling with a distorted sense of reality, becoming obsessed with reading the threats on social media, the endlessly scrolling insults from the followers of her doppelganger. Why had her shadowy other gone down such an extreme path? Why was identity - all we have to meet the world - so unstable? In Germany, this has taken the form of local citizens groups taking control of their own energy supplies from multinational corporations. There are about 200 of these in Germany, and they take the form of locally controlled energy companies which are concerned with public interests, not profit, which was democratically controlled by citizens, with money earned being returned to the city, rather than lost to shareholders of some multinational.