June 1st, 2015By Naomi Klein This is an edited version of a speech that Naomi gave on May 21st in downtown Toronto, at a press conference announcing the upcoming March for Jobs, Justice and the Climate on July 5. You can also watch video of Naomi's full speech. I've had the incredible privilege of traveling around the world and meeting with activists, labour unions, and politicians who are focusing on climate change. I want to tell you that that the coalition of groups we're witnessing being assembled here in Canada is unique: organizations representing the most marginalized people in Toronto; First Nations who are our water and carbon keepers; environmentalists waging inspiring divestment campaigns; and the trade union movement, including the country's largest private sector union representing workers at the heart of the fossil fuel economy. We understand that we have key differences, but we also understand that what unites us is greater. That's why we're coming together in Toronto on July 5 for a March for Jobs, Justice and Climate Action. What you're seeing are the first steps towards a new kind of climate movement. It's a climate movement that recognizes that time is too short to allow our divisions to...

01 June, 2015

March 16th, 2015By Naomi Klein For two years running, Oxfam International has traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to make a request: Could the superrich kindly cease devouring the world's wealth? And while they're at it, could they quit using "their financial might to influence public policies that favor the rich at the expense of everyone else"?In 2014, when Oxfam arrived in Davos, it came bearing the (then) shocking news that just 85 individuals controlled as much wealth as half of the world's population combined. This January, that number went down to 80 individuals. Read on The New York Times ...

16 March, 2015

March 13th, 2015By Naomi Klein Sheila Watt-Cloutier is one of the most widely respected political figures to emerge from Canada's Arctic, and this potential was identified early on. When she was just 10 years old, she and her friend Lizzie were selected as promising future Inuit leaders and sent to live with a white family in the tiny coastal community of Blanche, N.S. Having grown up in Nunavik, Que., on dog sleds and in canoes, the young Watt-Cloutier loved new experiences and approached the long voyage south in the spirit of adventure.The girls were in for what Watt-Cloutier now describes as a "brutal shock." Read on The Globe and Mail ...

13 March, 2015

December 19th, 2014By Naomi Klein Naomi delivered this speech on December 18 at The Opera House in Toronto, at a special production of the Basement Revue to honour Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women. Listen to an audio recording of Naomi's reading here, with live musical accompaniment from Cris Derksen. On July 20, 2013, Bella Laboucan-McLean fell 31 stories off the balcony of a condo tower in downtown Toronto. She had been at a small gathering inside one of the building's many glass boxes. There were five other people in the condo that night. A resident of a lower-floor heard the sound of her body falling and alerted the police. Bella was twenty-five years old, Cree from Northern Alberta. The police deemed the death "suspicious." I'll say. Five people besides Bella in an 800 square foot condo. All of Bella's belongings still inside: Purse. Wallet. Shoes. Phone. Yet for 12 hours after her deadly fall, no one in the apartment calls the police. It is not until the building is crawling with cops going door-to-door, trying to identify the body, that one of those five people picks up the phone to report Bella missing. Everyone who was there claims they saw nothing. Knows nothing. No one will be a witness. And...

19 December, 2014

December 12th, 2014By Naomi Klein The annual United Nations climate summit is wrapping up in in Lima, Peru and on its penultimate day, something historic happened. No, not the empty promises from powerful governments to finally get serious about climate action—starting in 2020 or 2030 or any time other than right now. The historic event was the decision of the climate justice movement to symbolically join the increasingly global #BlackLivesMatter uprising, staging a "die in" outside the convention center much like the ones that have brought shopping malls and busy intersections to a standstill, from the US to the UK."For us it is either death or climate justice," said Gerry Arances, national coordinator for the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice. Read on The Nation ...

12 December, 2014

August 20th, 2014By Naomi Klein This Changes Everything will be in stores September 16 and is available for pre-order. For more information, tour dates, or to buy the book: thischangeseverything.org/ Forget everything you think you know about global warming. The really inconvenient truth is that it's not about carbon—it's about capitalism. The convenient truth is that we can seize this existential crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better. 

In her most provocative book yet, Naomi Klein tackles the most profound threat humanity has ever faced: the war our economic model is waging against life on earth. ...

20 August, 2014

August 20th, 2014By Naomi Klein So I'm profiled in the new issue of Vogue that comes out today, talking about my forthcoming book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. I was pretty nervous about the piece, in part because of the somewhat weird (for me) context, but mostly because it's the first major piece on the book. Happily, the writer, John Powers, did a really lovely and thoughtful job and I'm grateful. Of course he made my life sound way more fabulous than it actually is, but that's his job (it's Vogue!). There are however, two issues raised by the article that need addressing, both of them (sort of) about branding. As Powers reveals, I was recently diagnosed with thyroid cancer. This is not a subject I would have chosen to be public about but it's not one I'm able to hide either (the throat scar takes care of that). So I first want to reassure those who might be alarmed by the mention of perhaps the worst of all global brands. I'm doing great. Thyroid cancer is a very treatable form of the disease. I have excellent doctors, free health care (I live in Canada), and a great...

20 August, 2014

April 22nd, 2014By Naomi Klein This is a story about bad timing.One of the most disturbing ways that climate change is already playing out is through what ecologists call "mismatch" or "mistiming." This is the process whereby warming causes animals to fall out of step with a critical food source, particularly at breeding times, when a failure to find enough food can lead to rapid population losses. Read on The Nation ...

22 April, 2014

April 10th, 2014By Naomi Klein The way to beat Vladimir Putin is to flood the European market with fracked-in-the-USA natural gas, or so the industry would have us believe. As part of escalating anti-Russian hysteria, two bills have been introduced into the US Congress — one in the House of Representatives (H.R. 6), one in the Senate (S. 2083) — that attempt to fast-track liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, all in the name of helping Europe to wean itself from Putin's fossil fuels, and enhancing US national security. Read on The Guardian ...

10 April, 2014

October 29th, 2013By Naomi Klein In December 2012, a pink-haired complex systems researcher named Brad Werner made his way through the throng of 24,000 earth and space scientists at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, held annually in San Francisco. This year's conference had some big-name participants, from Ed Stone of Nasa's Voyager project, explaining a new milestone on the path to interstellar space, to the film-maker James Cameron, discussing his adventures in deep-sea submersibles.But it was Werner's own session that was attracting much of the buzz. It was titled "Is Earth F**ked?" (full title: "Is Earth F**ked? Dynamical Futility of Global Environmental Management and Possibilities for Sustainability via Direct Action Activism"). Read on The New Statesman ...

29 October, 2013