How to Change Everything by Naomi Klein with Rebecca Stefoff
⭐⭐⭐
Brilliant. Great for its intended audience of children.
Full of all the history, politics, science, current affairs and practical tips that you would need to have a basis to go on to learn more about the climate crisis or to do something about it.
This book got to me in the disasters that it displayed and made it feel angry and sad but somehow it also managed to uplift me and was filled with so much hope from its authors and the activists within its pages.
vv LONG REVIEW vv
I wasn’t sure how I’d fair with this book as it is aimed at teenagers, even though it’s about a topic very close to my heart - the climate crisis. I was happily surprised when I began tabbing pages with post-it notes and telling people all about the things I was learning. I haven’t read anything else by Naomi Klein although I do have No Logo, This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine on my shelf at home, so I was intrigued by her writing style, especially towards a book for teenagers.
The book is set up in three parts including where we are, how we got here and what happens next with a conclusion and afterword about the COVID-19 pandemic which occurred as this book was about to be published. I found the book full of history, politics, climate science, current affairs and practical tips which all felt relevant and cleverly woven into the continuous narrative of this book about the climate crisis.
The book started at the beginning when discussing the history of human-caused climate change and I was thankful for that because I understood the events through time but had never put them together in such a way that would result in this cohesive explanation of climate change. The authors started with the invention of the steam engine
“Many cultures have philosophies that teach their members to be good ancestors as well as good citizens, doing nothing that would prevent future generations from having good lives.”
I absolutely loved the section about the philosophies which have changed over time and between cultures and are at the basis of the way that society views the Earth and our relationship with the Earth. I have always liked the concept of an Earth which is giving and taking and alive and responding to our presence, but I’ve never really known about the philosophies of indigenous groups or societies which have and behave with this kind of philosophy.
The problem, as ever, came with white men and their theories about extractivism and controlling and using the Earth. This problem evolved with the ability to travel around the whole, creating an attitude of colonisation and white supremacy over other nations, leading to the mass enslavement of Africans and other populations.
I was surprised to learn about the direct link between these philosophies and modern capitalism and consumerism which society seems so proud of today. I can understand how these extractivist and colonial ideas could lead to consumerism but wasn’t aware of the cause and effect relationship. The modern capitalist society also began to hurt more and different populations of people and demonstrate the effects of the industrial revolution and burning fossil fuels on people and the planet. My great-grandad was a coal miner in Wales and ended up with breathing problems which he received compensation for after his death.
This theme was repeated when the authors explained the rise of the different kinds of environmental movements in the 1900s, starting with conservationism, involving privileged well-off men who liked to use the outdoors for activities like fishing and hunting. They used this to motivation to persuade other people like them to turn places into national parks or game preserves. As the authors mention, "there is a cruel irony to this because [...] Indigenous people living in what is now called North America were the continent's original environmentalists.
There were a lot of the consequences of climate change described like disasters and hurricanes which were quite distressing to read, especially when it can feel close to home and we know these disasters are only going to escalate from now on. This also made me feel angry at the way that society has never got a mindset of preparedness or prevention when it comes to climate change caused disasters but just tries to pick up the pieces afterwards and then manages to manipulate the devastated population into a worse scenario through dodgy deals and gentrification. This was the concept of using disasters as laboratories for the future which can be used for good or for bad purposes. This kind of scares me because I live on an island, my country could become an experiment and how am I supposed to prevent that.
One of the worst disasters described was Hurricane Katrina. The problem was not just the hurricane that destroyed New Orleans but also the infrastructure and prevention measures that had been slowly removed in the past and then the excuse of the disasters to change the city without consulting its people and therefore pushing them out. The people who lived in New Orleans paid more than once for Hurricane Katrina and none of those aspects was their fault because they were excluded from all decision making processes.
"One Republican congressman from Louisiana said afterwards “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans” and gave God credit for destroying these poor neighbourhoods."
One story which I thought was going to be a brilliant display of hope and initiative was about Ecuador. Ecuador was trying to protect their Yasunà National Park and the indigenous tribes that lived there from oil drilling. The solution was to have wealthier nations donate money to bypass their need for oil drilling and go straight to using renewable and sustainable climate-friendly solutions and technologies. But they didn’t get funded. So it didn’t happen and they had to start drilling for oil in the Yasunà National Park and disrupting the indigenous people’s way of life. This made me so sad and angry, especially because just one billionaire would have had enough money to donate to Ecuador.
Somehow, the book also managed to uplift me and was filled with so much hope from people who has experience disaster or watched as politicians and leaders had ignored them.
The book introduced some really difficult topics for the readers to understand, digest and then put within the context of their society or experiences. One important concept is climate justice which is what should encompass all climate activism and is about solving the climate crisis whilst also helping to create a fair and just world and bring everyone along with us.
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, signed in 1989, was discussed and I think encompasses the ethos about being a good ancestor because children are not meant to defend themselves and end up with ruined futures because they cannot do anything to prevent that from happening.
There was a lot of brilliant climate science introduced in this book, like the number of degrees increase since the industrial revolution, tipping points and feedback loops, exactly what the Earth may look like in the future and how the Earth has evolved over millions of years with a climate that changes and now has a climate-changing as a result of humans. This information can be incredibly scary and intimidating but this is why it is all the more important to actually know how bad the scenario is and will be if we stick with business as usual.
I had never heard of the concept of shrinking the government but now I realise how relevant it might be. This describes so well the scary nature of privatisation and deregulation because I pride myself on living in a democratic country but as more things that relate directly to society get handed to businesses, the less the country is actually democratic. I always understood this, but a shrinking of the government helps describe something more sinister and underhand.
Sadly, the phrase eco-fascist and fascist had to be involved in this book. I am glad they were included because it is important to understand the world’s worst people but at the same time this was in the context of the Christchurch Massacre in New Zealand which occurred during a peaceful climate protest in the city. This also led us to the similar arguments made by people who want to keep out immigrants and cut aid to poorer countries. In the UK, this argument has become more widely known after Brexit and it makes me sad to know anyone in my country is that intolerant to people they think of as foreign.
There were some beautiful stories about people’s relationships with nature. The author describes visiting a coral reef in Australia with her son and him exclaiming that he “saw Nemo”. This feels so innocent yet encapsulates what the natural world is meant to feel like to humans: somehow unreal and magical and mystical and yet believable and wonderful in the fact that it is real.
THINGS TO RESEARCH:
Wangari Maathai (Kenyan who launched Green Belt Movement)
Elizabeth Wanjiru Wathuti (Kenyan girl inspired by Maathai)
Northern Cheyenne Reservation, Montana, USA
Haudenosaunee people (Iroquois)
MY NOTES
Thoreau - "The Earth I tread on is not a dead, inert mass. It is a body, has a spirit, is organic...", Carson - Silent Spring, Leopold - A Sand County Almanac
1970s - brought environmental laws so the approach of environmentalists had to change from one of protests and marches to lawyers and lobbyists - they fought smaller battles and didn't try to outaw toxic or environmentally destructive things or make enemies of businesses or politicians
1970 was the first Earth Day - was a day for the environment
time magazine, 1988 - no person of the year, but planet of the year: endangered earth
1988 felt like a change because everything was being taken seriously and felt like it could all change for the better.
this did not happen - Nathaniel rich wrote "Human beings are incapable of sacrificing present convenience to forestall a penalty imposed on future generations." in an NYT article in 2018 when trying to explain 1988. - human nature explanation of no changes - what actually happened was that climate change was taken seriously at the same time as governments starting wanting a free market society based on business, way of life based on rapid consumption, drive profit and economic growth - all clashed with climate change and science
"The very idea of climate change terrified some people. they called it a plot to "turn America socialist." (It isn't.) Some even claimed that those who warned of climate change secretly wanted to turn the country over to the United Nations. (They don't.)"
some said it was real, it just wasn't caused by humans. , others said it was a hoax.
this helped with the rise of greenwashing which is the only way that businesses can succeed if the consumers know about and understand climate change and what needs to be done. its dangerous because it diverts the blame or washes over what the company actually does and just keeps the same companies making money. energy companies and fossil fuel companies are the worst at this.
"Exxon Corporation knew about the link between fossil fuels and climate change decades ago." they have admitted this, they had climate scientists. an exxon scientist in 1977 said "There is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from burning fossil fuels. "
1982 memo contained prediction that earth would reach 1 degree warming by 2019 and it came true and the scientists said "we were excellent scientists."
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