Green activist Naomi Klein has a new book out today. If past form is anything to go by – No Logo; The Shock Doctrine – it will become an instant bestseller and will be informing liberal arguments for months and years to come. Here’s what you need to know about her latest, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.
1. It’s all about Naomi.
“At some point about seven years ago I realised I had become so convinced we were headed towards a grim ecological collapse that I was losing my capacity to enjoy my time in nature.”
Bomb the global economy back to the Dark Ages right now! We cannot, under any circumstances, allow Naomi’s feelings, mental health or picnics to be jeopardised by prosperity!
2. Even the BP spill is really about Naomi.
“After more tests, my doctor told me my hormone levels were much too low and I’d probably miscarry for the third time. My mind raced back to the Gulf – the toxic fumes I had breathed in for days and the contaminated water I had waded in. I searched on the chemicals BP was using in huge quantities and found reams of online chatter linking them to miscarriages. I had no doubt that it was my doing.”
(Though a bit later Naomi is forced to admit that, no, it was just an ectopic pregnancy which had nothing to do with the sins of Big Oil).
3. Naomi is a watermelon – green on the outside, red on the inside
“What the climate needs now is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature.”
and [from an interview in the Guardian]
“We need an ideological battle. It is still considered politically unthinkable just to introduce straight-up, polluter-pays punitive measures – particularly in the US.” To Klein, environmentalists should have just gone to war on business, and on the whole concept of capitalism.
and [from an interview in Macleans]
“…we must confront the reigning, unquestioned ideology that sees privatization as always good, and doesn’t question the logic of austerity, doesn’t question the logic of pro-corporate, free trade deals that have stood in the way of progress on climate.”
4. Naomi has been watching the way Jay Z and Beyonce use Blue and learned a useful lesson.
“What gets me most are not the scary studies about melting glaciers, the ones I used to avoid. It’s the books I read to my two-year old. Looking for A Moose is one of his favourites. It’s about a bunch of kids who really want to see a moose. They search high and low – through a forest, a swamp, in brambly bushes and up a mountain. (The joke is that there are moose hiding on each page). In the end, the animals come out and the ecstatic kids proclaim: “We’ve never ever seen so many moose!” On about the 75th reading, it suddenly hit me: he might never see a moose.”
Naomi, you and your son live in Canada. The world’s moose population is currently over a million, half of it in Canada. You are more than rich enough to take a long vacation with your family to gaze wistfully at whatever species you want be it the marine iguanas of the Galapagos or the Siberian Tiger. So by what tortured logic do you imagine it is probable or even possible that your son might “never see a moose”?
Read the rest at Breitbart London
Related posts:
- Only a totalitarian New World Order can save us now says Naomi Klein
- O Canada our only hope
- 10:10’s ‘No Pressure’ exploding kids campaign: why it was such a success
- Free Schools: the stake in the heart of the Progressive vampire
