New Books in Environmental Studies

The Canadian author and journalist Naomi Klein says right-wing conservatives who deny the reality of global warming are correct about the revolutionary implications of climate change.

In her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (Simon and Schuster, 2014) Klein quotes Thomas J. Donohue, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who says that the steps being proposed to radically reduce carbon emissions would change the American way of life and put large segments of the economy out of business.

Klein agrees, but argues that transforming global capitalism into a more humane economic system would be a good thing. In her book, she urges progressives who care about the environment to show that the steps needed to avert catastrophic climate change “are also our best hope of building a much more stable and equitable economic system, one that strengthens and transforms the public sphere, generates plentiful, dignified work, and radically reins in corporate greed.”

Klein also argues that the imperatives of growth and consumption that drive global capitalism are incompatible with what we need to do to avert catastrophic warming.

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