On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal

Although I had heard good things about Naomi Klein I have not read any of her books although I'm sure I've read some of her articles published in various periodicals. So I did not know that she was married to Avi Lewis, son of "the indomitable Stephen Lewis" and grandson of David Lewis. With those impressive in-laws I suppose she had no choice but to become a cogent and passionate writer which shows in this book on climate change and the Green New Deal.

She introduces the book by talking about Greta Thunberg and the School Strike for Climate that Greta inspired. Virtually every climate change activist has been awestruck by Greta even if then President Trump wasn't so impressed with the "very happy young girl". In fact, the title of this show more book was inspired by Thunberg's speech to the World Economic Summit in Davos where she said "I want you to act as if your house is on fire, because it is."

The book includes a number of articles Klein wrote between 2010 and 2019 dealing with topics such as the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from BP's Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig, how capitalism fuels climate change, massive forest fires, and bleaching of coral reefs. Her articles are not just an account of everything that has gone wrong in the world; the subtitle of this book is "The Burning Case for a Green New Deal" so she devotes a lot of the book to how a Green New Deal would work and she uses the historical lesson of FDR's New Deal that brought the US out of the Great Depression. She sold me on it. I just wish every politician in the world was required to read this book and maybe they would move faster to achieve the goals most of them have signed on to.

Obviously this book was published before the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in full force which is sort of a shame because how governments have thrown money and resources at responding to the pandemic is just the sort of response we need to combat climate change. And then just this past weekend there was an article in The Guardian about Klein's newest book How to Change Everything geared to the YA market. It concluded with these words:
What the pandemic has changed, says Klein, is our understanding of how to respond to an emergency. When youth movements called for climate change to be treated as an emergency, governments responded with fine words but little urgency. “The big difference post-Covid is we now know what it means to treat an emergency like an emergency. We’ve all seen our governments do it. They can change things dramatically overnight. And that’s not something those of us born after the second world war had experienced. Our expectations and our ability to differentiate between just talk and actual change is heightened. And the pressure is going to be even greater on political leaders.”

Exactly! show less

The thing that I admire most about Naomi Klein is that she writes incredibly clearly. One may agree, or disagree with her beliefs, but one is never in doubt as to what they are.

She puts the case for social change to be an essential part of the Green New Deal and, I get it, at last.

This book should be on everybody's read list - even better, were it to be on their 'I have read' list.

What Naomi Klein attempts to do to promote a unifying strategy among progressives and their multitudinous issues. So, she wants those who are focused on climate change for example to strengthen their cause by also embracing women's rights, indigenous, LGBT, labor, Puertorican issues, etc. She does this well but it now seems dated, out of place, given the current political circumstances. The needs and issues still exist so we need a refresher from Ms. Klein.

Quotes: (page 85) “Climate change does not demand an end to trade. But it does demand an overhaul of the reckless form of 'free trade' that governs every bilateral trade agreement and the World Trade Organization. If done thoughtfully and carefully, this is more good news---for show more unemployed workers, for farmers unable to compete with cheap imports, for communities that have seen their manufacturers move offshore and their local businesses replaced by big-box stores. But the challenges this poses to the capitalist project should not be underestimated: the reversal of a thirty-year trend of removing every possible limit on corporate power.”

(page 155) “But this only scratches the surface of what we can learn from reading Said in a warming world. He was, of course, a giant in the study of 'othering,' what is described in his book Orientalism as 'disregarding, essentializing, denuding the humanity of another culture, people or geographical region.' And once the other has been firmly established, the ground is softened for any transmission: violent expulsion, land theft, occupation, invasion. Because the whole point of othering is that the other doesn't have the same rights, the same humanity, as those making the distinction.”

(page 202) “We need warriors in this fight, and warriors don't step up against the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere, not on its own, anyway. Warriors step up for the right to clean water, to good schools, to desperately needed decently paying jobs, to universal healthcare. Warriors step up for the reunification of families separated by war and cruel immigration policies.
You already know that there will be no peace without justice---that's the core principal of the Sydney Peace Foundation. But here is what we need to understand just as well. There is no climate change breakthrough without justice, either.” show less

This series of chronologically organized essays, speeches, and articles written by Klein lay out her case for addressing climate change with radical solutions that address other systemic problems created by unrestrained capitalism and a carbon-based system.

Climate Change Essays, Articles, Speeches
Review of the Allen Lane paperback edition (2019)

On Fire was part of Shakespeare and Company's 2019 Year of Reading subscription.

Featured in a blog post at https://booksbeyondbinaries.blog/2019/09/30/2019reading-update/

Questo è il tipo di libro di cui abbiamo bisogno in modo che l’emergenza climatica in corso venga presa sul serio e si inizi seriamente a mettere una pezza e ad arginare il casino che abbiamo combinato. Non pezzi strappalacrime su teneri animaletti in via d’estinzione, ma pezzi che puntano il dito su un sistema socio-economico non più sostenibile e sulle sue diverse ramificazioni, in modo da unire lotte e rivendicazioni solo all’apparenza distanti tra loro.

Il mondo in fiamme è una raccolta di saggi scritti o pronunciati da Naomi Klein nel corso degli anni in merito alla crisi climatica, che, grazie all’attivismo di persone come Greta Thunberg, sembra ormai dato per certo, ma che ancora guardiamo come a qualcosa di lontano, show more come se non ci riguardasse, come se eventi climatici estremi non stiano già minacciando le nostre case e non abbiano già devastato la vita di migliaia di persone.

Difficile trovare una recensione dove si accusa Klein di star esagerando o di non dire la verità: le opinioni negative riguardano più che altro le soluzioni proposte e hanno una natura ideologica di opposizione agli interventi raccolti sotto il nome di Green New Deal (che poi, okay, va bene non essere d’accordo, ma le alternative quali sarebbero?).

Ed è per questo che voci come quelle di Naomi Klein sono così preziose: partono dai dati raccolti dalla scienza e dal consenso pressoché unanime della comunità scientifica sul fatto che non possiamo più andare avanti così e su quelli basano la riorganizzazione delle nostre società, oltre ad avere il prezioso dono di rendere accessibili a chiunque concetti non proprio semplicissimi. show less