Naomi Klein: This Changes Everything - Capitalism vs. The Climate

Klein has been exploring the interface between environmental degradation and capitalism since her first book, No Logo, appeared in 1999. Her provocative new book, This Changes Everything, argues that carbon is not the ultimate cause of climate change; the real enemy is capitalism. She provides a far-reaching explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core “free market” ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems. Who benefits from the status quo? How deeply are the current power structures embedded in our political economy? How difficult will it be change them?

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of The New York Times and international bestseller, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, which The New York Times called “a movement bible.”

This talk was filmed at First Parish in Cambridge on Thursday, October 16, 2014.

[inspire]

Naomi Klein knows what she is talking about - failing capitalism -  as well as Stanley Aronowitz, Chris Hedges, Emmanuel Saez, Noam Chomsky, Richard Wilkinson, Robert Reich, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Mason, Richard Wolff, David Harvey, Gar Alperovitz,  Ernest Callenbach etc. We ougt to bay attention!!

[wendellfitzgerald]

A simple but completely radical distinction to be made in the conversation about capitalism is between earned and unearned income. Economists call unearned income "economic rent" and all forms of such unearned income starting with the income from ownership of land and natural resources which is the largest component of unearned income are estimated to be 40+% of GDP mostly owned by economic elites (the 1%) and the historical root cause of the disparity wealth. Since there are now no non-radical solutions left to address climate change the idea of shifting taxation off of earned incomes from labor wages and the profit of real unmonopolized capital invested in the real economy where real goods and services are produced onto economic rent/unearned income is a radical idea worth considering. There are no unintended negative consequences of taxing economic rent/unearned income and the potential fund available to take for public use is more than adequate all by itself to fund all levels of government and environmental remediation as long as need be. The good news is that taxing unearned income especially from ownership of land and natural resources removes the incentive for exploiting the earth (especially fossil fuels sources). This would speed up the incentive to move away from fossil fuels into renewables which is a major part of the result to be hoped for from any solutions to climate change radical or not. I assert that fossil fuels will only be abandoned when the unearned profit to made from exploiting them is removed and the only way to do that in a democracy is to tax those profits away as close 100% as possible. By the way economic rent is the flaw in capitalism that doesn't really belong to capitalism but is a hang over from feudalism. Capitalism might work really well once the free lunch of unearned incomes is dealt with.

[Thaddeus]

There is no central committee....scary

[aaronmizzou]

I love her ideas and how she is putting capitalism in it's proper place, but there is no way we are steering away from the coming disaster. I hate to be a doomsdayer, but our exponential growth will only lead to a collapse. Nothing in nature grows exponentially without a collapse. That is the beautiful tragedy of capitalism. Grow Grow Grow. It is impossible to sustain. Keep up the hope Naomi, as for me the path is clear, none of us will change until we "hit bottom" with our addiction to dense energy. Fossil fuels are amazing, but an industrialized society is not compatible with planet earth. AND, holy cow people in the audience...how hard is it to ask a damn question?!!!

[jangofet]

i think what that guy said about that we have to get in front of the consumers participation in fossil fuels is the way to go. the consumer is the fuel and i think that's where the change (through education of better systems to be implemented) has to start for the current systems to change led by one giant growing movement organization fuelled by more and more people. and the changes need to always be made with the reminding of the current goal of the whole model of the nation in relation with the globe so as to be cognisant of where we are at and where we are going which assists a collective in strengthening it's succinctness and establishing transparency so we are on the same page and discussion and processes move that much more fluid.

if we participate and fuel companies that don't desire abundance for all even if it means shared profits, resources and technology, then that's what we will get.

if we believe i'm just one person, there's no point in buying an electric vehicle, reducing purchases from destructive corporations and explore an alternate way of life, identity, joy, sustenance, in researching and supporting and advocating alternate sustainable and renewable materials and practices, then we will continue to fuel destruction until we look for something that is generative and are embracing to create joy and live that way.

[sstarklite]

We must eliminate every vehicle and house and start building only Tower cities connected to maglev Trains worldwide ASAP!

[margatrizia]

PROUT is what you need as an alternative socio-economic system.

[rouxbax]

release those raw data and let others "run the numbers" instead of just obfuscating and hiding those data. if those data are true, then release them raw. Or one could just hide them and say "trust me".

[kelvinham]

An excellent logical lecture about the danger neo liberalism has put us allin

[RepairMyCarSA]

This changes everything...except intellectuals insisting on monetizing their IP. Make your book & movie free-99 if their purpose is to spread the message. Some good ideas though

[raykirkham]

It looks like ONLY THE GREEN PARTY listened to what Naomi Klein was saying. Their platform was just unwittingly described here by Naomi.

[RGVZGM]

Please investigate a resource based economy.

[labortruthseeker]

Mother Nature bats last but she has a firm grip on the bat and has a powerful swing.

[SiegelRush]

Why are all the audience members so incredibly bad at asking questions? I couldn't write more self-centered rants if I tried.

[bimmjim]

We have work to do. People need to move uphill and retrain. For my part, I will work on the retraining. I am developing a source for free online retraining courses for Engineers. .
I have listened to the first part of this speech but I'm not too impressed. .
Naomi is good at getting people to jump on the Bandwagon but I am more concerned with steering the wagon in the proper direction.
. I recommend that people go back to school.
Consider this fact : China is now the biggest polluting country in the world and China is a Communist Dictatorship. Don't waste your energy attacking the wrong boogey man. .
We must throw away our old sacred words, like : "The Economy" and "Growth."
We need leaders who will stop giving the power to the Establishment Economists.
These people and their paradigm/model are the problem.
So far I haven't used the words 'Capitalism' or 'Socialism.' These concepts are no longer relevant.

[johnnybizaro]

Well big Oil and big energy ain't going to change. You have missed the point. The big problem is we have unelected folks who run the corporations who exclude the rest us in the decisions on life and death.

We have failed because we need to do away with the old business structures that have exclusions on how the profits are shared. We  need democratic worker co-operatives as the main business structure.

No more slave and master system.

[whaahhh]

she is way too smart, i predict they will try to silence her, in what ever way they see fit. trillions of dollars are at stake.