This Changes Everything

“Confronting the Climate Denier Within” (Pages 161-170)

Klein gives a brief account of the history of the small nation island of Nauru. After gaining independence from Australia in the late ‘60s, Nauru had been held up as an ideal model for developing countries. It grew wealthy because of the pure phosphate of lime that the island had in abundance, a resource that was highly valuable as an exported fertilizer: “Nauru started developing at record speed, the catch was that it was simultaneously committing suicide” (163). For centuries it was treated as a “disposable country,” a resource to be mined by the West. The people of the island grew very wealthy for a time, and decadent materialistic lifestyles were common.

All the island’s wealth depended on the finite supply of phosphate. The interior was mined exhaustively, making it infertile and uninhabitable. The government had plans to build a more sustainable economy, but terrible investments meant that its wealth was squandered. In the ‘90s, it became a money-laundering haven. Now with an enormous national debt, it faces both ecological and financial bankruptcy. To add to Nauru’s woes, it is also hugely vulnerable to a climate crisis it didn’t create due to drought and rising ocean levels.

For Klein, Nauru becomes a symbol of the suicidal dangers of our current approach to the world and our short-term, exploitative relationship with nature: “our entire culture is drawing on its own finite resources, never worrying about tomorrow” (166). We extract and do not replenish, and are shocked to find that this has terrible consequences: “at every stage our actions are marked by a lack of respect for the power we are unleashing” (166).

Lastly, Australia paid Nauru to house an infamous off-shore refugee detention center, where people are held for up to five years in what has been described by Amnesty International as awful and degrading conditions. The conditions have driven people to mental health crises, suicide, revolt, and hunger strikes.

Klein reflects that the island’s remoteness has allowed the world to treat it as a convenient trash can. This, she argues, is illustrative of our attitude to carbon pollution: something we benefit from and then put out of mind. Ultimately, though, there are consequences; we are all “part of a swirling web of connections,” and we must learn that we can’t expand and consume indefinitely (168). Some leaders from Nauru have opted to hold up their country as a warning to the world, a cautionary tale. As Klein puts it, “Nauru isn’t the only one digging itself to death; we all are” (168).

Klein refers to this problematic approach to the Earth as “extractivism”: something that runs deeper than capitalism or any one side of the political spectrum. Klein states that “[e]xtractivism is a non-reciprocal, dominance based relationship with the Earth, one purely of taking” (169). There is no attention given to care, regeneration, and future life; it is an attitude of superiority and distance from the planet. It involves the reduction of life into objects for the use of others, robbing them of their own value; life becomes “natural resources,” human beings become labor to be exploited, and the interconnections of these various objectified living things are ignored.

Part of extractivist thinking is the acceptance of “sacrifice zones”: places that don’t count that can be poisoned, drained, and destroyed for someone else’s benefit. Klein illustrates this approach with the examples of Western imperialism and colonialism, which were about conquering foreign places and claiming their resources without a thought to consequences: “The colonial mind nurtures the belief that there is always somewhere else to go and exploit once the current site of extraction has been exhausted” (171). Klein links extractivism not just to modern capitalism, but to deep-rooted ideas in our history about how we relate to the world.

“The Ultimate Extractivist Relationship” (Pages 170-76)

Klein reviews the extractivist approach and links it to the key role coal has played in the development of modern industrialized society. She cites Francis Bacon as an early exponent of the extractivist attitude—that the Earth is there for human beings to dominate, explore, and plunder. This was far removed from pagan notions of living in respect and reverence for the Earth. This dominating attitude grew as human power over nature grew. It lay behind the scientific revolution and colonial expansion of the 17th Century and was given even greater emphasis by industrialization.

Up until James Watt invented the coal-fired steam engine, industry was still dependent on the forces of nature: the wind to move ships and water to move water mills that powered factories. Coal, once used to power engines, liberated human beings temporarily from concern for nature. Ships and factories could work regardless of the fluctuations of natural factors, so long as there was a steady supply of coal. It allowed for “total domination of nature and other peoples” (174). With that came rapid expansion of industry and consumer goods and the quest for new resources and markets around the globe. This was the birth of modern capitalism.

Klein points out that this domination of nature through the power of coal comes at a cost that we’re only just starting to realize: “Harnessing fossil fuel power freed large parts of humanity from the need to be in constant dialogue with nature” (175). Coal seemed like an entirely controllable, reliable source of power, unlike wind or water: “Now the cumulative effect of those centuries of burned carbon is in the process of unleashing the most ferocious natural tempers of all” (175).

Klein argues that to confront this climate crisis truthfully is to confront again our vulnerability in the face of nature. The power relations are reversed; in the face of natural catastrophes created by a warming planet, we will be left helpless. The world needs to reject the extractivist, domineering approach that has been so central to our development. We must go back to being “but one porous part of the world, rather than its master” (175). Crucially, it means moving away from fossil fuels.

“The Extractivist Left” (Pages 176-182)

Klein argues that the extractivist mindset was key in building the modern world, and consequently, it’s very difficult to think outside it: “we are still living inside the story written in coal” (177).

Western politics, for the most part, has involved battles within this prevailing mindset. The struggle for equality from the left (from socialists and liberation movements like feminism), while occasionally questioning extractivist narratives, has for the most part “fought for more equal distribution of the spoils of extraction” (177). We have continued to see ourselves as above the ecosystems that support us.

Klein points to the Soviet Union and China as examples of how self-proclaimed communist states were just as extractivist in their approach as Western capitalist states. She also criticizes Keynesian, moderate socialists, who still see economic growth as key, and trade unions that put protecting jobs in extractivist industries above the fate of the planet.

Scandinavian-style social democracy, with its successes in green energy and urban planning, is seen as showing promise. Likewise, left governments in the developing world, in places like Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Brazil, are praised for fighting wealth inequality and tackling poverty, but they are criticized for doing so by following a “progressive extractivist” (181) approach and relying on oil and natural gas to grow the economy: “These left and centre left governments have so far been unable to come up with economic models that do not require extremely high levels of extraction” (180). She points with disappointment to Bolivia and Ecuador, where there was talk of moving away from these approaches and embracing the more reciprocal relationship to nature followed by Indigenous peoples in these countries, but this hasn’t become a reality.

Klein refers to the idea of “climate debt” (181) and argues these developing countries should be supported by the developed nations that are largely responsible for climate change to fund a transition to a green economy.

She points to the beliefs of Indigenous people around the world, who have been involved in struggles for land rights and against extractivist activity, and sees a positive way of thinking we need to embrace: a view outside extractivism that returns us to a relationship of respect and interconnectedness with nature.

“Some Warnings, Unheeded” (Pages 183-187)

Klein looks at the history of the environmental movement and its relation to extractivism. She notes the movement's upper-class origins in the 18th century, with wealthy men who were concerned that industrialization was damaging the natural beauty spots they enjoyed. These conversationists were not critical of colonialism or capitalism.

Klein points to the emergence of more radical ecological thinking in the 19th century and cites Henry David Thoreau, who argued for the interconnectedness of all life on Earth instead of seeing the Earth as a resource to be exploited. Similarly, Aldo Leopold in A Sand Country Almanac called for a “land ethic” where we respect the rights of all natural life to exist and move from thinking of ourselves as rulers over nature to being mere members of nature’s community. These ideas challenged extractivism, but “unattached to populist movements they posed little threat to galloping industrialization” (184). The mainstream environmentalist movement sought to distance itself from the radical implications of these thinkers.

In the 20th century, Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, a damning indictment of extractivism and its assumption that nature exists for the convenience of man. Yet in the environmental movement itself, these voices of warning have not been sufficiently heard. The movement has remained timid. Rather than challenging the logic of growth and extractivism in all its political forms, the movement has “tried to prove that saving the planet could be a great new business opportunity” (186). Klein argues this is not just because of the power of neoliberalism but also the deeper underlying power of extractivist thinking: “the cultural narrative that tells us that humans are ultimately in control of the Earth” (186) and that we’ll somehow be able to fix things through our technology, wealth, and power. This “magical thinking” (rooted in human arrogance) is, Klein argues, what we need to free ourselves from.