Book review: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate by Naomi Klein

Published by Allen Lane

Klein’s previous bestsellers – No Logo, a diatribe against global brands, and The Shock Doctrine, a similarly hard-hitting demolition of neo-liberalism – are both essentials on the modern liberal’s bookshelf.

With this latest book, she turns to climate change, arguing that an unstoppable crisis is almost upon us.

Part of the problem, she says, lies with our global society, which persists in “looking away”. To be a climate change denier, she says, you don’t have to be a smog-toting Republican in an SUV, but just “making tea, driving to the grocery store, having kids”.

We need to wake up to the fact that our economic system of global capitalism is untenable and wilfully destructive.

Her solution – to abandon our socio-economic system completely – might seem rash, but there will be few reading this genuinely frightening book who won’t hear echoes of Cassandra.

As with her other books, Klein can be accused of leaning too far to the left to be wholly loved by the mainstream, but she’s no fool. Maybe one day we’ll wish we’d listened.