This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

Presenting the author's most significant work to date, The Shock Doctrine, comes an illuminating masterpiece that urges us to confront the climate crisis by rejecting the prevailing "free market" ideology, restructuring the global economy, and revolutionizing our political systems.

In this powerful book, Naomi Klein asserts that climate change is not merely another item on our agenda, but a dire alarm signaling the urgent need to rectify an economic system that has failed us in multiple ways. With meticulous research and compelling arguments, Klein advocates for a radical reduction of greenhouse emissions as our best opportunity to address profound inequalities, reimagine our damaged democracies, and revitalize our depleted local economies. Throughout the pages, she exposes the desperate ideologies of climate change deniers, the misguided promises of geoengineers, and the defeatist attitudes pervading many mainstream environmental initiatives. Furthermore, Klein convincingly demonstrates that the market cannot and will not solve the climate crisis, instead exacerbating it through increasingly extreme and environmentally destructive extraction practices, coupled with exploitative disaster capitalism.

Rather than perceiving the necessary changes to our relationship with nature and each other as burdensome penance, Klein invites us to view them as transformative gifts, catalysts for reshaping broken economic and cultural priorities, and for healing long-standing historical wounds. She sheds light on inspiring movements that have already embarked on this transformative journey, with communities refusing to be sites of further fossil fuel extraction and instead actively building regenerative, forward-thinking economies.

The question looming before us is whether we can enact these changes within the narrow window of time we have left. Nothing is certain except for the undeniable reality that climate change impacts every facet of our lives. For a fleeting moment, the nature of that change is still within our control.