Naomi Klein: "The Free Market Ideology Is Fading"
The books of the Canadian journalist and activist - from No logo, where she exposed the conditions in which work is done in Southeast Asia for the great brands of the West - dismantle the wheels of a rapacious capitalism. Her brand-new work brings together articles, chronicles and speeches in which she demonstrates how the urgency of environmental catastrophe requires far-reaching economic transformations.
By Silvina Friera: The future of humanity can change. On a Friday in mid-March 2019, more than 100,000 young people took to the streets of Milan, 40,000 did the same in Paris and 150,000 in Montreal. "We do not have a planet B!", They warned in one of the banners. “We have lost 45% of the insects as a consequence of climate change. 60% of the animals have disappeared in the last fifty years ”, summarized the losses in another poster. “Our house is on fire!”, Perhaps the most repeated, is the signature phrase for the young people who participated in the first global student strike for the climate. Naomi Klein's books dismantle the gears of a rapacious capitalism, as she did in the remembered No logo, where she exposed the miserable conditions in which millions of workers work in Southeast Asia for the great brands of the West. Now On Fire. A (heated) argument in favor of the Green New Deal (Paidós) brings together articles, chronicles and speeches by the Canadian journalist and activist in which she demonstrates how the urgency of the environmental catastrophe requires far-reaching economic transformations.
"We are the fire"
There are no more excuses to evade collective responsibility for climate collapse. Of course, there are powerful interests, especially fossil fuel corporations, which have spent decades funding misinformation and confusion campaigns. Deniers were, are and will be, unfortunately, as can be seen right now with the Covid-19 pandemic. Klein provides data, information and arguments that link the climate struggle with other struggles. “The richest 10% of the world's population generates almost 50% of global emissions, while the richest 20% is responsible for 70%. But the poorest are the first and main affected by the consequences of these emissions, which are forcing increasingly large numbers of people to move (and many more to come) ", warns the author in the introduction to the book , never better titled "We are the fire." “A World Bank study published in 2018 estimates that, by 2050, more than 140 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America will be displaced by climate pressures, an estimate that many consider conservative”, adds the author of The Shock Doctrine, This changes everything and Saying is not enough.
Klein echoes the call for a “Marshall Plan for the Earth”, demanded by the Bolivian climate negotiator, Angélica Navarro Llanos, in her speech at the United Nations climate forum in 2009: “This plan must mobilize a transfer financial and technological on a scale never seen before. It must bring technology to all countries to ensure that we reduce emissions while improving people's quality of life. " The Canadian journalist and activist hits the mark when she points out that climate change raises a reckoning in the terrain that most displeases conservative minds: that of the distribution of wealth. The hard right screams "socialist conspiracy" and flatly denies reality. Anders Breivik, a sociopath who opened fire at a Norwegian summer camp in 2011, in a section of his manifesto entitled "Green is the new red" calls for ending ecocommunism and qualifies "the demands on climate finance as an attempt to 'punish' European countries (the United States included) for capitalism and success ”.
“The fact that the Earth's atmosphere is not capable of safely absorbing the amount of carbon that we are injecting into it is a symptom of a much larger crisis, a crisis that has its origin in the elementary fiction on which our model is based. economic: that nature is unlimited, that we can always find more than we need and that, if something runs out, it can be replaced without problems by another resource that we can extract eternally ", explains Klein as if he were talking to the world's readers. face to face. “The atmosphere is not the only thing that we have exploded beyond its capacity to recover. We are doing the same with the oceans, fresh water, topsoil, and biodiversity. What the climate crisis calls into question is the extractive and expansionist mentality that has governed our relationship with nature for so long, ”says the journalist and activist who is part of the board of directors of 350.org, an international climate action movement. to be one of the promoters of the manifesto "Take the Leap", a declaration in favor of a rapid and fair restructuring that ends the use of fossil fuels.
In one of the articles in the book, Klein outlines a six-point program. The first thing she highlights is the need to reinvent the public sphere. Climate change is a collective problem that requires collective action. “One of the areas in which such collective action must take place is in large investments designed to reduce emissions on a massive scale. And this means networks of subways, trams and light rail that not only reach everywhere, but are affordable for everyone, even perhaps free; affordable, energy-efficient homes around transportation lines; power grids that carry renewable energy, and massive research work to make sure we are using the best possible methods. " The second aspect is to recover an art that has been vilified relentlessly throughout decades of market fundamentalism: planning; structuring the economy with collective priorities in mind rather than corporate profitability. The third issue is the control of corporations, which would go along the line of prohibiting behaviors that are dangerous and destructive. The fourth aspect is to relocate production.
The fifth point is to end the cult of shopping. “An ecological crisis whose roots are in the excessive consumption of natural resources cannot be addressed only from the optimization of the efficiency of the economies, but also depends on the reduction of the volume of material objects that consume 20% of the richest people on the planet - emphasizes Klein-. But this idea is anathema to the large corporations that dominate the global economy, which in turn are controlled by loosely committed investors who demand higher profits year after year. As it is, we find ourselves stuck in an unsustainable predicament in which, in the words of (Tim) Jackson, either 'we destroy the system or we destroy the planet' ”. The journalist and activist proposes that "the only way out" is a managed transition to another economic paradigm. The sixth point is to tax the rich. “Taxes must be imposed on coal and financial speculation; we must raise taxes on corporations and the rich; cut inflated military budgets and eliminate absurd subsidies for the fossil fuel industry (twenty billion dollars a year in the United States alone), ”proposes Klein, adding that in the same way that tobacco companies have been forced to sink the costs of helping people quit smoking “it is about time that the 'polluter-payer' principle was applied to climate change.
Out of sight
There is never a lack of material to discuss with Klein. She is in charge, with crystal clear clarity, to illuminate the folds of our contradictions. Climate pollutants are invisible to the eye. “When I published No logo at the beginning of this century, readers were stunned to discover the abusive conditions under which their garments and electronics were manufactured. But since then, most of us have learned to live with it; Not that we exactly approve of it, but we do live in a state of permanent oblivion regarding the costs of our consumption in the real world. The 'outside' of those factories have almost been completely forgotten, ”recalls the Canadian journalist and activist. “Air is the most invisible of all, and the greenhouse gases that heat it are the most elusive ghosts. Having forgotten about air (…) we have turned it into our sewer, ‘the perfect landfill for the secondary products of our industries’. Even the most opaque and acrid smoke that the chimneys spit out will dissipate and disperse, always ending up dissolving into the invisible ”.
When talking about "green jobs", Klein clarifies that the imaginary establishes that she is a worker with a helmet mounting a solar panel. This is a kind of green job, but there are other jobs that are already low carbon. “Caring for the elderly and the sick doesn't burn a lot of carbon. Making art doesn't burn a lot of carbon. Teaching children is low emissions. Nurseries are low in emissions. And yet, these jobs, carried out in their overwhelming majority by women, tend to be undervalued and poorly paid, and are frequently subject to cuts by the public administration ”, the author amplifies the concept of“ green jobs ”.
Towards the end of Catching Fire, Klein includes more arguments for which the Green New Deal has a chance of succeeding. This New Green Deal is inspired by Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, which offered a response to poverty and collapse caused by the Great Depression through a series of public policies and investments. The Green New Deal "will create many jobs" and the Canadian journalist and activist exemplifies that according to the US Energy and Employment Report, jobs in wind and solar energy, energy efficiency and other clean energy sectors were more than number to jobs in the fossil fuel industry by a ratio of three to one in 2018. The question of how to finance this New Deal may have several answers. According to the United Nations, taxing billionaires with a tax of just 1% would raise $ 45 billion annually worldwide, not to mention the money that could be raised if an international effort were made to end paradises. prosecutors, Klein suggests. According to James S. Henry, Senior Advisor to the Network for Tax Justice - an independent UK-based coalition - in 2015 private financial wealth hidden in tax havens around the world was estimated to be between 24 and the 36 trillion dollars. Ending some of these paradises would go a long way towards covering the price of the industrial transition that we so badly need ”.
Scientists have said that the world has to achieve the goal of reducing net emissions to zero by 2050. As a matter of justice, Klein says that in the rich countries that have become rich by polluting unlimitedly, decarbonization must occur more quickly so that in the poorest countries, where the majority of the population still lacks such basic elements as clean water and electricity, the transition can be more gradual. “One of the problems with the Green New Deal is that by tying climate action to so many other progressive political goals, conservatives will become more convinced that global warming is really nothing more than a plot to sneak socialism into the world. politics, so that political polarization will intensify ”anticipates the Canadian journalist and activist. “There is no doubt that Republicans in Washington will continue to paint the Green New Deal as a recipe for turning the United States into Venezuela; of that we can be sure. But that concern overlooks one of the greatest benefits of tackling the climate emergency as a vast infrastructure and land regeneration project: nothing heals ideological divisions faster than a concrete project that brings jobs and resources to affected communities. "
The climate challenge challenges us. Klein posits that with the same certainty with which glaciers are known to melt and ice sheets to disintegrate "the free market ideology is fading" and that in its place is emerging "a new vision of what humanity is all about. It can be". The journalist and activist she invites, in the same movement, to reflection and action: "When the future of life is at stake, there is nothing we cannot achieve."
Greta Thunberg and survival
From the title of her last book, Naomi Klein (Montreal, 1970) winks at the young Swede Greta Thunberg. At the age of eight, she Greta herself read books and watched documentaries about the collapse of species and the melting of glaciers. She soon realized that the use of fossil fuels and meat-based diets play a crucial role in planetary destabilization. In August 2018 she went to the Swedish Parliament and camped outside with a hand-painted sign that read: "School Strike for Climate." She came back one Friday after another. At first, as Klein recalls, she was completely ignored, "as if she were an uncomfortable beggar." But her quixotic protest garnered media attention and other students and adults began to show up with their own banners. She told the powerful of Davos she said: "I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is." Greta explains her actions: “If broadcasts must stop, then we must get broadcasts to stop. For me, it is either black or white. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival. "
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