[lbo-talk] MY take on Naomi Klein on climate change and "extractionism"

Gar Lipow gar.lipow at gmail.com
Thu Jan 29 09:11:51 PST 2015


https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/what-naomi-klein-got-right-and-wrong-in-her-2014-book-this-changes-everything/

Short URL http://bit.ly/15Luflh

Naomi Klein’s book “This Changes Everything” (Simon & Schustter, 2014) on the link between the climate crisis and capitalism has outraged critics raging from Big Green to some socialists.

Naomi Klein is right on just about everything critics are calling her out about. When, to the horror of Big Greens, she names capitalism as the villain, she is right. Given that NO capitalist nation has come close to making the changes solving the climate crisis will require, why the hell shouldn’t she point out that something drastic is wrong with capitalism?

Nor, contrary to milquetoast “progressive” prudishness, is her straightforwardness alienating to popular majorities. Conservative tactician Frank Luntz warns conservatives not use the terms “capitalism” or “market”, because both are unpopular. Calling out capitalism is a good way to reach ordinary people, as well as being intellectually rigorous.

She is also sensible in paying little attention to the horror of some left critics that she fails to turn to socialism. Nations that were considered socialist, both by themselves and by most of the world, had truly horrible records on environmental issues which matched their records on human rights. Cuba, the one partial exception, was more or less forced into partial sustainability by having to manage an island economy under a set of sanctions that could more accurately be described as a state of siege.

Nobody can be right about everything. I am not going to spend much time on what Klein does right, because she has ably (and my opinion devastatingly) repeatedly answered her critics. Instead I’m going to focus on one area of disagreement.

Read the rest on znet https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/what-naomi-klein-got-right-and-wrong-in-her-2014-book-this-changes-everything/

Short URL http://bit.ly/15Luflh

-- Facebook: Gar Lipow Twitter: GarLipow Solving the Climate Crisis web page: SolvingTheClimateCrisis.com Grist Blog: http://grist.org/author/gar-lipow/ Online technical reference: http://www.nohairshirts.com

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