This Changes Everything

“The Revolutionary Power of Climate Change” (Pages 31-38)

Klein looks at the climate-change-denial movement and considers its arguments, political makeup, and motivations. Using examples from the Heartland Institute's 2011 Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, she points out that the key driving force of the movement is not scientific, but political.

The Heartland Institute, a neoliberal thinktank, sees the environmentalist movement and green policies around global warming as a convenient front, a “green trojan horse” for a leftist, collectivist, and even communist agenda (31), which is opposed to everything it believes in. As one denialist commentator puts it, “[N]o free society would do to itself what this agenda requires” (32). The most common view is that climate change is a “trojan horse designed to abolish capitalism and replace it with some kind of “green communitarianism” (33).

Klein points out that great efforts are made to challenge the science of global warming. There are various counter-theories put forward by people who “are all convinced they have outsmarted 97% of the world’s climate scientists” (33). These theories include “tree rings, sunspots, [and] the medieval warm period” (33), but most of their proponents are not scientists, and the real focus of the denialist movement is not scientific.

Klein argues that sorting out the scientific truth of the matter isn’t the driving purpose of this movement. Far more focus is given to the politics of challenging the so-called leftist conspiracy of climate change and defending the American way of life. Conferences like the ones she describes are about giving people the ideological ammunition and sound bites they need to sway the public debate and take on climate scientists.

Klein goes on to describe how the climate denialist movement has grown since 2008 and has successfully influenced public and political opinion. One of its leaders, Marc Morano, head of the Heartland Institute, is described at the 2011 conference celebrating its victories. Polls show a significant shift in public opinion on climate change since 2007 and the rise of the denialist movement. In 2007, 71% of Americans believed continuing to burn fossil fuels would alter the climate; by 2011, this figure had dropped to 44%.

She also notes a marked change in perspectives along political lines. While 75% of Democrats believe in global warming, only 20% of Republicans do. This split has grown considerably. The issue, pre-2007, used to be more bipartisan with both people on the left and right accepting the science of global warming. In other words, one's political perspective is the key influencing factor in beliefs around climate change.

Klein points to a Yale study by Dan Kahan, which argues that “cultural cognition” is the key to explaining this. Cultural cognition is the way people interpret new information in line with their existing beliefs. People tend to reject or downplay information that poses a threat to their belief system. Klein argues that this can partly explain the denialist approach to climate change on the right. The consequences that follow from climate change, both in terms of responsibility and the political change required to deal with it, are incompatible with their worldview.

She then points out how the right has hardened its line on climate change. It’s become closely linked to fears about socialism and big government and is seen as an attack on American principles and freedoms. As such, climate change denial has become a central tenet of right-wing values and beliefs, along with “low taxes, gun ownership and opposition to abortion” (37).

“Unthinkable Truths” (Pages 38-44)

Klein looks at how the climate change denial movement came together and its motivations for denying climate change, saying it’s the product of big business interests and their ideological network. She explains the history of neoliberalism and its rise to preeminence in the post-Cold War era. For this ideology and the model of free market capitalism it defends, climate change represents a deep threat. She argues that the strongest advocates of neoliberalism know this; if the claims of climate scientists are true, then major changes would be required, which would attack “the very premise of global free trade” (40). This would include not only extensive regulation and intervention in industry and curtailing growth but also “global equity,” which means the nations that have historically polluted the most (i.e., the developed Western world) would have to take the largest share of the burden to cut emissions.

Even more fundamentally, conceding the truth of global warming would concede that the belief in global capitalism as a positive, liberating force is essentially wrong. In Klein’s words, “[C]limate change detonates the ideological scaffolding on which contemporary conservatism rests. A belief system that vilifies collective action” (41). She points out that it also threatens a related religious belief (another key aspect of American conservatism): that the world was created to be used and controlled by human beings.

In this context, climate change becomes an “unthinkable truth”: It simply can’t be accommodated, so instead it is rejected and denounced: “they deny reality, because the implications of that reality are, quite simply unthinkable” (43). Many on the right, she says, are open about the fact that their opposition has a political basis. The political implications of climate change led them to question the science.

From this, Klein concludes that the hard-core ideologues on the right, ironically, understand the real significance of climate change: that it would require changing everything and that there is no happy moderate solution. They set themselves against 97% of the scientific community, but when it comes to the political and economic consequences of what the scientists are saying, “they have their eyes wide open” (44).

“About that Money” (Pages 44-46)

Klein discusses the role money and vested interests play in the climate change denial movement. She points out that the think tanks that are key to the climate change denial movement are funded by “dirty energy giants” (44) like Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, along with conservative foundations. The Heartland Institute, for example, has received more than $1 million from ExxonMobil and Koch Industries (45). The exact amounts are hard to trace because the organization does not publish the names of its donors.

Scientists who present at climate denial conferences tend to be very well-funded by oil and fossil fuel-based companies. Klein points out that vested economic interests demonstrably influence opinions, citing how in several states that are dependent on fossil fuel industries, the figures for climate denial are considerably higher even among Democrats. Similarly, among scientists, it is “economic geologists” (whose careers are linked to extractive industries) who are far more likely to deny climate change.

“Plan B: Get Rich off a Warming World” (Pages 46-52)

In this section, Klein notes the link between climate change denial and levels of power and prosperity. Climate change denial is particularly prevalent among white conservative men, a group that has historically benefited from the present system.

Looking at speeches and articles from key climate change deniers, she points out that those with wealth and power can afford to be more relaxed about climate change because they have the resources to best deal with its effects. Money provides flexibility and protection that the poorest nations and people don’t have. As such, “a few degrees of warming isn’t something wealthy people in industrialised countries have to worry about,” at least for the short term (48). The hierarchical and individualistic ideology of neoliberalism provides the intellectual tools needed to ignore the mounting suffering that climate change will cause.

Klein stresses the dangers this viewpoint presents and notes its early warning signs. When climate change intensifies conflict and competition for land and resources, she argues that this individualistic and unsympathetic position with spread. Klein asks, “how will we treat climate change refugees?” (48) and guesses the answer.

Climate change will simply be seized as another opportunity for profit, for an intensification of the existing logic and the extension of existing power relations. Small self-sufficient rural communities will be destroyed and lose their lands to large developers. Wealthier nations will protect their major cities, and private options will be available for natural disaster protection while the poor are left to fend for themselves. She notes that the “Global North” will not be hit as quickly by the crisis as the Southern Hemisphere.

She goes on to note that big business has already started to plan for and anticipate some of these changes, even while some of these same businesses support the climate change denial movement. They are looking seriously at climate change, not from a moral or preventative angle but from the angle of how to adapt and make money off the situation. She gives the example of the American Insurance lobby. Until 2012, the Heartland Institute housed the Center on Finance Insurance, which was “working to protect their bottom lines in a future of climate chaos” while the Institute spread doubt about climate change (50). Klein calls these two seemingly opposing positions “disaster denialism” and “disaster capitalism” (51) and points out their agendas aren’t all that incompatible; the insurance lobby’s key interest is not fighting climate change but “safeguard[ing] or increas[ing] their profits whatever the weather” (50).

The combined approach of powerful elites is based on self-interest: to deny climate change while protecting themselves. She points to the growth in private luxury real estate developments with disaster protection features, all while the public infrastructure to prevent and deal with natural disasters is being eroded: “The ‘freedom’ agenda that they are desperately trying to protect from scientific evidence is one of the reasons that societies will be distinctly less prepared for disasters when they come” (52).

The wealthy and powerful can afford to be blasé about it. Short-term regional climate models also show that a slightly warmer climate will bring some economic benefits to northern wealthier countries. In short, everyone is not in this together.

“The Meaner Side of Denial” (Pages 52-54)

Klein continues to critique the extreme individualistic perspective of the denial movement, citing an article by Jim Geraghty in which he expresses the view that climate change will be good for America as it will cement the country’s global political power (52). Klein predicts that theories of cultural and racial superiority, which currently lurk below the surface, will rise again “to justify the hardening of hearts to the largely blameless victims of climate change in the Global South” (52).

She speaks of the “emotional blunting” that takes place after disasters: People start to become immune to, or at least habituated to, people’s suffering. Climate change, Klein argues, will intensify class and national divisions and lead to a crueler, more individualistic world.

“Coddling Conservatives” (Pages 54-58)

Klein discusses the attempts of some climate activists to persuade climate change deniers of the need for action. One argument from Joe Romm is that if people don’t act now, then greater government intervention will be required in the long run. Klein argues that there is no way of cutting emissions quickly enough without significant intervention. Society has left it too late to avoid this; had the world acted more robustly after the 1992 UN climate convention in Rio, then a more gradual approach could have worked. Instead, the global free market economy expanded. She quotes Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research on this point: “Our ongoing and collective carbon profligacy has squandered any opportunity for the evolutionary change afforded by our earlier (and larger) 2 degrees C carbon budget” (56). Klein points out that modest targets and paths were possible before globalization fully took hold. Ironically, the drive to a single global economy based on the rules of free market fundamentalism and the success of neoliberalism took away that chance for more moderate solutions.

Other activists are looking at other ways of appealing to conservative climate change deniers, arguing we need to present solutions that are “less offensive to conservative values” (56) such as stressing national security and patriotism and pointing to large-scale technological options like nuclear and geoengineering. Studies show that these approaches are much more palatable to the right than carbon emission reduction, regulation, and green energy.

Klein argues strongly against this, saying, “rather than challenging the warped values fueling both disaster denialism and disaster capitalism [this approach] actively reinforces those values” (58). Nuclear power and engineering are short-term, extractivist, high-risk approaches that create “even more dangerous forms of waste” (58). Likewise, making a “patriotic” argument for climate change based on protecting “our way of life” reinforces the individualist attitudes that are part of the problem. Patriotism presents a barrier to the global cooperation required for real solutions. Ultimately, Klein argues that “a way of life based on the promise of infinite growth cannot be protected” (58).

“The Battle of World Views” (Pages 58-63)

Klein acknowledges her own political biases and the political nature of her argument. She sees climate change as “a catalyst for forms of social and economic justice in which I already believed” (59). However, she points out that, unlike the climate denialist, her view begins with accepting the scientific truth of climate change established by 97% of the world’s climate scientists.

She describes a battle of worldviews and argues that “science forces us to choose how we want to respond” (59). People can continue down the road to destruction with a “big corporate, big military, big engineering response to climate change,” as well as individualistic, hierarchical, materialistic attitudes, or they can embrace a different world order, one based on egalitarian, communitarian, and environmentalist values. These values, she argues, are “currently being vindicated, rather than refuted, by the laws of nature” (59).

Klein states that “A very different worldview can be our salvation” (60). Change, she argues, is possible, and she points to the way neoliberalism and the denialist movement have already succeeded in changing values, socioeconomic realities, and cultural perspectives for the worse. The challenge is to transform them in the opposing direction.

Achieving this requires drawing together existing movements and struggles for social, political, and environmental justice around the world. However, Klein argues, no such robust movement has arisen. Liberal and left parties have not yet put fighting climate change at the center of their agendas. Klein insists this is because neoliberalism has been winning so far: “The real reason we are failing to rise to the climate moment is because the action required directly challenges our reigning economic paradigm” (63), cultural habits and practices, and the wealth of the oil and gas industry.

The belief that humans are selfish, profit-driven creatures has dominated society and thinking, spreading defeatism about the environment. This, Klein argues, needs to be challenged. She appeals to the countervailing spirit of empathy, solidarity, and collectivism that has emerged in times of crisis.