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Book Review: This Changes Everything

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Book Review: This Changes Everything, by Naomi Klein, published: Sept. 2014

Summarize the book. What is being discussed?
Rob Nixon of the New York Times called Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything:
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 …show more content…

There are people working to make a buck against their own ethical standards and then leaving dirty energy as soon as they can. The openly recognize that the answer to a better life is right under their noses. There are green jobs that could employ the same pool of people same, but not enough political will to support it. Naomi flashes to Hurricane Sandy and talks about the absence of governmental action, she cites the role of government in greece with the economic crisis there and notes how the mining companies have come to prey on that society. Along with what was being promoted as the way out for Greece, the same thing happened in Spain & Italy. It is exploitation of resources and sell off whatever you have mentality that gold mining, oil drilling and ultimately in Klein’s opinion; the role of capitalism. She notes that in natural disaster capitalism is predatory and vicious. The agencies that respond to disaster have been gutted due to Reagan-era politics by limiting the role of government in the free market. Unfortunately, this brand of politics purports a “let’s protect our own” kind of attitude and “every man for himself.” She talks about the stories that we tell ourselves; the oligarchs are going to save us or the super-hero billionaires will save us with some techno-fix. The story of Richard Branson[11] CEO of Virgin Airlines, she talks about an investment scheme in which Branson invested 10 billion dollars. He said in an interview; “I will save the planet”

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