A Disaster Avoided
One day while traveling on the Hyperloop home from work, I found myself looking out upon the Californian countryside and thinking about the climate data I was poring over at work. It indicated that in 2015 the earth was heading in a spiral of destruction due to climate change and I found myself imaging how I would be looking at an arid desert right now if not for the intervention of both politicians and citizens. This subject piqued my interest and I decided to do a bit of follow-up research on the subject. I quickly found evidence that policy makers in 2015 read Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate as well as other environmental texts and took the key lessons to heart. As I began this
…show more content…
(Kevin Anderson - Delivering on 2°C: evolution or revolution?, video) The subsequent melting of ice at the poles would have created a domino effect in which the water in the oceans would heat and cause more turbulent weather. This change in weather systems would have been felt globally as many environments would have completely shifted many becoming dry, arid regions absolutely vacant of life. At low latitudes, 4°C would result in reductions of around 30-40 percent in the yields of important staple crops such as corn and rice, at the same time as the population heads towards 9 billion by 2050. (Climate change going beyond dangerous, pg. 16-39)
In 2015, the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere reached over 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human history. This was recorded setting and spurred policymakers to do research themselves and read about climate change rather than just listen to industry reports and forecasts. After reading This Changes Everything, policymakers understood that the amount of carbon had to be drastically reduced in order to preserve the earth for future generations. One way to do so was to get off of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, and get off them fast because the time to take action was quickly running out. The burning of these fuels releases carbon dioxide along with many other hydrocarbons into the atmosphere, where in turn, they trap heat trying to leave our atmosphere. The rise in
In the novel This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, author Naomi Klein argues that climate change is an inevitable crisis leading toward disaster. She discusses the urgent need to shift towards renewable energy and the need to move away from a "savagely unjust economic system,” that has led our economy towards to extractivism(15).
Naomi Kline and Bill Mckibben offer alternate conceptualizations and articulations of the impending climate crisis and possible strategies for resistance in This Changes Everything and Eaarth. There are some areas in which the two authors seem to align their views and others where they diverge significantly. Both narratives are placed in the context of climate crisis and both authors are frank their assessment of where we are currently and where are inevitably headed as a planet. Kline highlights ideology and economic structure as foundational factors and McKibben seems to tacitly if not explicitly agree. Throughout most of the book, Kline chooses to focus on neoliberalism, capitalism and the hierarchies and artificial divisions they create as the
the climate” by Naomi Klein addresses the issue of climate change and its relation to Capitalism. Klein’s general argument is that climate change and environmental crises cannot be addressed from a Capitalist perspective because the latter advocates for wasteful consumption, which result in serious problems in the climate and the environment in general. Klein argues that human intelligence through scientific findings and technological development is capable of finding ways to protect the environment (Kelin, page 22). Klein offered solutions, which are “reviving and Reinventing the Public Sphere,” “remembering how to plan,” “Reigning in Corporation,” “relocalizing production,” “ending the cult of shopping,” and “taxing the rich and
Capitalism vs. the Climate” “a book of such ambition and consequence that it is almost unreviewable.[1]” Naomi Klein researches the impact of Climate change and its relationship with free market capitalism. She discusses capitalism as failed economic system. She goes into great depth on the subject of resource extraction, pollution and the events of surrounding the affected communities in these regions across the world. However, rather than concluding that things are hopeless Naomi Klein argues that: We can build something better and
Greenhouse gases are accumulating and the dominant cause seems to be the “fossil-fuel-based human economy” (Goodland 604). Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere and fast; greenhouse gases include the release of carbon dioxide from burning coal, natural gas, and
In the last 100 years, the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased, causing the Earth to warm by an average of 0.6 degrees celsius, largely a result of burning fossil fuels for energy, transportation, and land use changes increased for food production. The basic science is straightforward and climate researchers have shown that gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and others can trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, causing a phenomenon known as the greenhouse effect. Human activities such as industry, transport, energy generation and deforestation all produce these greenhouse gases. In the last 20 years, concern has grown that global warming is inevitable and now considered most probably caused by man-made increases in
Klein work is indeed exemplary. It is important to understand that denying climate change is profitable, provided that it remains profitable, the environment degrades. The most astonishing reality is that the continuous environmental degradation can propel it to a point of no return. It is important for governments as well as private organizations to take a voluntary lead in addressing these contemporary issues. Klein adds that “In the face of an absolutely unprecedented emergency, society has no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilization. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for
Tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere every day and the consequence is the destabilization of Earth’s climate and damage to existing and endangered ecosystems. In order to avoid these ramifications, carbon emissions must be reduced. Industrial nations like the United States rely heavily on the burning of billions of tons of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas, as their primary source of energy generation. Unfortunately, this has led to the United States being one of the top leaders in carbon emissions in the world along with India and China (Woodard, 2007, pg. 27). A proposed solution that has already been implemented in several nations is the carbon tax (CO2 tax), which puts a price on and taxes the carbon dioxide emitted from the burning of fossil fuels and makes polluters pay the price for the emission of their negative externalities into the environment. As fuel follows through with the combustion process, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere where it remains. The carbon dioxide traps the heat in the Earth’s atmosphere leading to a rise in global warming and climate change (Carbon Tax Center, 2016a, What’s a Carbon Tax section, para. 2). A carbon tax can quickly and easily be implemented by the United States federal government and has the potential to conserve the environment by reducing carbon emissions,
“Climate change has revealed this underlying dynamic in its starkest form: the potentially cataclysmic trade-off between economic and environmental well-being,” Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg remark in their book Climate Change, Capitalism, and Corporations. [HOOK]. Indeed, human beings are risking the whole planet existence by stepping more forward in the endless path of economic growth [CONNECTION]. In her book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. Climate Change, Naomi Klein, a Canadian filmmaker, social activist, award-winning journalist, and author known for her political analysis and criticism of capitalism, explains why capitalists are denying the obvious fact of climate crisis and how they are procrastinating the appropriate
Prominent environmentalist Naomi Klein wrote the book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate which dives down in the how selfish human greed threatens the fight against climate change.
Climate change, specifically in reference to C02 Emissions released by human use of fossil fuels and their consequential effects on the environment, is perhaps one of the most pressing issues we, not just as Americans, but as human beings face in our lifetimes. Though it may sound like a sensationalist statement the facts are hard to deny. In May of 2013, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
I am writing to ask for your administration to support the development of initiatives and policies to stop the climate change. Four decades from now, we do not want to repeat the story in The Age of Stupid, movie in which a man lives in the devastated future world of 2055. The man looks back to today’s date and asks himself why we did not stop the climate change when we had the chance. However, today global warming is out of control, global temperatures are steadily rising. “The primary cause, a consensus of scientists has said, is the rising emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane” (Stone, 2013). The carbon dioxide (CO2) stays in the atmosphere for 50 to 100 years, nitrous oxide
The burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, and deforestation over the last 200 years has caused the concentrations of heat-trapping "greenhouse gases" to increase significantly in our atmosphere. These gases prevent heat from escaping to space. Greenhouse gases are necessary in our lives as they help in keeping the planet 's surface warmer than it would otherwise be. But, as the concentrations of these gases continue to increase in the atmosphere, the Earth 's temperature is climbing above past levels (USEPA, 2014).
Global warming has been a controversial topic for years and some have even denied its existence; however, as more studies are being published every day in regards to our changing climate, it is hard to ignore this growing issue and how humans contribute to it. The term greenhouse gases refers to the group of gases that are primarily responsible for global warming and chief among these gases is carbon dioxide. Rising carbon dioxide levels can be attributed to a combination of burning fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and petroleum as well as deforestation in general ( Source A). To slow the effects of global warming, it is important for leaders in our society to consider their greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide, and make
The issue of global warming should be on the list of our top priorities. Studies show that the average of global temperatures have risen since the Industrial Revolution began. Since the Industrial Revolution, human emissions has quadrupled the frequency of certain heat extremes and many scientists have warned that a failure to bring greenhouse gases under control could eventually lead to a 62-fold increase in extreme heat blasts (Gillis Justin A17). Most of the increase is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. These activities contribute to a build-up in carbon dioxide and other gases in Earth’s atmosphere. The Earth’s atmosphere is made of gases like nitrogen, carbon dioxide and oxygen. These gases act as a blanket that covers and gives us warmth, but once these gases such as carbon dioxide absorbs heat, but does not release it back into space in which causes the increase in global temperature. This is called the greenhouse effect because it only traps heat but does not release it.