Either we embrace radical change ourselves or radical changes will be visited upon our physical world. The status quo is no longer an option.
About
the Book
The Book
Naomi Klein’s fourth book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate was published in September 2014 and was an instant New York Times and international bestseller. The New York Times Book Review called it “The most momentous and contentious environmental book since Silent Spring.”
In 2014, the book won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, Canada’s most prestigious award for non-fiction. Also was named Observer Book of the Year and a New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books of the Year and Margaret Atwood chose it for The Guardian’s Best Books of 2014 list.
This Changes Everything is a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core “free market” ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems.
For more details, visit the official This Changes Everything website, where you’ll find more Press information and Endnotes.
About the Book
The Book
Naomi Klein’s fourth book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate was published in September 2014 and was an instant New York Times and international bestseller. The New York Times Book Review called it “The most momentous and contentious environmental book since Silent Spring.”
In 2014, the book won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, Canada’s most prestigious award for non-fiction. Also was named Observer Book of the Year and a New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books of the Year and Margaret Atwood chose it for The Guardian’s Best Books of 2014 list.
This Changes Everything is a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core “free market” ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems.
For more details, visit the official This Changes Everything website, where you’ll find more Press information and Endnotes.
About the Book
Description
Climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.
Klein argues that the changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should not be viewed as grim penance, but rather as a kind of gift—a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. And she documents the inspiring movements that have already begun this process: communities that are not just refusing to be sites of further fossil fuel extraction but are building the next, regeneration-based economies right now.
Forget everything you think you know about global warming. It’s not about carbon—it’s about capitalism. The most profound threat to humanity is the war our economic model is waging against life on earth. Yet we can seize this existential crisis to transform our failed economic system into something radically better.
Klein exposes the myths that are clouding the climate debate. We have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. We have been told it’s impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it—it just requires breaking every rule in the “free-market” playbook: reining in corporate power, rebuilding local economies, and reclaiming our democracies.
We have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight for the next economy and against reckless extraction is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring.
Can we pull off these changes in time? Nothing is certain. Nothing except that climate change changes everything. And for a very brief time, the nature of that change is still up to us.
Either we leap—or we sink.
Climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.
Klein argues that the changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should not be viewed as grim penance, but rather as a kind of gift—a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. And she documents the inspiring movements that have already begun this process: communities that are not just refusing to be sites of further fossil fuel extraction but are building the next, regeneration-based economies right now.
Forget everything you think you know about global warming. It’s not about carbon—it’s about capitalism. The most profound threat to humanity is the war our economic model is waging against life on earth. Yet we can seize this existential crisis to transform our failed economic system into something radically better.
Klein exposes the myths that are clouding the climate debate. We have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. We have been told it’s impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it—it just requires breaking every rule in the “free-market” playbook: reining in corporate power, rebuilding local economies, and reclaiming our democracies.
We have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight for the next economy and against reckless extraction is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring.
Can we pull off these changes in time? Nothing is certain. Nothing except that climate change changes everything. And for a very brief time, the nature of that change is still up to us.
Either we leap—or we sink.
Praise
Reviews
Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust
“Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything is a ground-breaking work on how climate change changes everything. Written with an elegant blend of science, statistics, field reports and personal insight, it does not paralyze but buoys the reader. The book’s exploration of climate change from the perspective of how capitalism functions produces fresh insights and its examination of the interconnectedness between our relationship with nature and the creation of better, fairer societies presents a radical proposal. Klein’s urgency and outrage is balanced by meticulous documentation and passionate argument. Heart and mind go hand in hand in this magisterial response to a present crisis.”
The Guardian
“‘We lack the collective spaces in which to confront the raw terror of ecocide,’ is how Klein encapsulates the problem. Lucky for everybody then that opening up such spaces is exactly what Klein does best.”
Bill McKibben
“This is the best book about climate change in a very long time—in large part because it’s about much more. It sets the most important crisis in human history in the context of our other ongoing traumas, reminding us just how much the powers-that-be depend on the power of coal, gas and oil. And that in turn should give us hope, because it means the fight for a just world is the same as the fight for a livable one.”
New York Times Book Review
“’This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate’ is a book of such ambition and consequence that it is almost unreviewable . . . . ‘This Changes Everything’ is, improbably, Klein’s most optimistic book. She braids together the science, psychology, geopolitics, economics, ethics and activism that shape the climate question. The result is the most momentous and contentious environmental book since ‘Silent Spring.'”
The Globe and Mail
“A work of startling force, exhaustive reporting, and telling anecdote . . . makes a muscular case for global warming as the defining, cross-sectional issue of our era.“
The New York Times
“[A]robust new polemic . . . . Drawing on an impressive volume of research, Ms. Klein savages the idea that we will be saved by new technologies or by an incremental shift away from fossil fuels: Both approaches, she argues, are forms of denial . . . . Ms. Klein is aware of the intractability of the problems she describes, but she manages optimism nonetheless.”
The Observer (UK)
“Klein is a brave and passionate writer who always deserves to be heard, and this is a powerful and urgent book.”
The Chicago Tribune
“If global warming is a worldwide wake-up call, we’re all pretty heavy sleepers . . . . We haven’t made significant progress, Klein argues, because we’ve been expecting solutions from the very same institutions that created the problem in the first place . . . . Klein’s sharp analysis makes a compelling case that a mass awakening is part of the answer.”
Rolling Stone
“Gripping and dramatic . . . . [Klein] writes of a decisive battle for the fate of the earth in which we either take back control of the planet from the capitalists who are destroying it or watch it all burn.”
Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust
“Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything is a ground-breaking work on how climate change changes everything. Written with an elegant blend of science, statistics, field reports and personal insight, it does not paralyze but buoys the reader. The book’s exploration of climate change from the perspective of how capitalism functions produces fresh insights and its examination of the interconnectedness between our relationship with nature and the creation of better, fairer societies presents a radical proposal. Klein’s urgency and outrage is balanced by meticulous documentation and passionate argument. Heart and mind go hand in hand in this magisterial response to a present crisis.”
The Guardian
“‘We lack the collective spaces in which to confront the raw terror of ecocide,’ is how Klein encapsulates the problem. Lucky for everybody then that opening up such spaces is exactly what Klein does best.”
Bill McKibben
“This is the best book about climate change in a very long time—in large part because it’s about much more. It sets the most important crisis in human history in the context of our other ongoing traumas, reminding us just how much the powers-that-be depend on the power of coal, gas and oil. And that in turn should give us hope, because it means the fight for a just world is the same as the fight for a livable one.”
New York Times Book Review
“’This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate’ is a book of such ambition and consequence that it is almost unreviewable . . . . ‘This Changes Everything’ is, improbably, Klein’s most optimistic book. She braids together the science, psychology, geopolitics, economics, ethics and activism that shape the climate question. The result is the most momentous and contentious environmental book since ‘Silent Spring.'”
The Globe and Mail
“A work of startling force, exhaustive reporting, and telling anecdote . . . makes a muscular case for global warming as the defining, cross-sectional issue of our era.“
The New York Times
“[A]robust new polemic . . . . Drawing on an impressive volume of research, Ms. Klein savages the idea that we will be saved by new technologies or by an incremental shift away from fossil fuels: Both approaches, she argues, are forms of denial . . . . Ms. Klein is aware of the intractability of the problems she describes, but she manages optimism nonetheless.”
The Observer (UK)
“Klein is a brave and passionate writer who always deserves to be heard, and this is a powerful and urgent book.”
The Chicago Tribune
“If global warming is a worldwide wake-up call, we’re all pretty heavy sleepers . . . . We haven’t made significant progress, Klein argues, because we’ve been expecting solutions from the very same institutions that created the problem in the first place . . . . Klein’s sharp analysis makes a compelling case that a mass awakening is part of the answer.”
Rolling Stone
“Gripping and dramatic . . . . [Klein] writes of a decisive battle for the fate of the earth in which we either take back control of the planet from the capitalists who are destroying it or watch it all burn.”
Selected Media
Video/Press
Film Trailer
Nov 2, 2015
The feature documentary, This Changes Everything, narrated by Naomi and directed by Avi Lewis, premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, presented by Oscar Winning Director Alfonso Cuarón, and executive producers Seth Macfarlane, Shepard Fairey, and Danny Glover. Since then it has been shown 1000s of times in community screenings around the world.
Taking the Leap lecture
May 2016
After the release of This Changes Everything book and film, Naomi went on a sold out tour to speak to audiences worldwide. Recorded by CBC Ideas after the historic December 2015 Paris Climate meeting, in this lecture, Naomi analyzed the failures of that Agreement and discussed ways to move forward from it.
Film Trailer
Nov 2, 2015
The feature documentary, This Changes Everything, narrated by Naomi and directed by Avi Lewis, premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, presented by Oscar Winning Director Alfonso Cuarón, and executive producers Seth Macfarlane, Shepard Fairey, and Danny Glover. Since then it has been shown 1000s of times in community screenings around the world.
Taking the Leap lecture
May 2016
After the release of This Changes Everything book and film, Naomi went on a sold out tour to speak to audiences worldwide. Recorded by CBC Ideas after the historic December 2015 Paris Climate meeting, in this lecture, Naomi analyzed the failures of that Agreement and discussed ways to move forward from it.
Global
Sales
Publishing
Information
This Changes Everything has been translated into 27 languages:
Arabic
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Catalan
Chinese Complex
Chinese Simple
Croatian
Danish
Dutch
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Lithuanian
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Slovene
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Ukrainian
Global Sales
Publishing Information
This Changes Everything has been translated into 27 languages:
Arabic
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Catalan
Chinese Complex
Chinese Simple
Croatian
Danish
Dutch
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Lithuanian
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Slovene
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Ukrainian