When History Knocks
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- Published on Thursday, 08 January 2015 21:22
- Written by editor
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1066 .... January 9, 2014
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When History Knocks
Sam Gindin
To raise the environmental crisis in Canada is to simultaneously highlight the notorious Alberta Tar Sands, the fastest growing polluter in Canada. But the Tar Sands are more than an environmental issue. This crisis-in-motion is inseparable from other fundamental issues at the core of Canadian society: indigenous land claims, Canada's integration to the American empire and its oil-hungry military leviathan, a focus on resource extraction as a core of Canada's economic development and a set of contested values about ‘the good life.’ Naomi Klein's new book, This Changes Everything, incorporates the contradictions exposed by the Tar Sands and extends such contradictions far beyond Canada and far beyond the Tar Sands, identifying them with the larger contradiction between the environment and... capitalism. It ‘changes everything’ not so much because of it's emphasis on the urgency of the environmental crisis -- this itself is now commonly accepted within the movement -- but because Klein locates the barriers to easing and overcoming this crisis in the larger ecology of social life. It is these links between the environment, the economy, our vision of an alternative society and especially the discussions this leads to about how to organize ourselves to actually ‘change everything’ that make this such an important book.
Naomi Klein is a longtime movement and media icon, a gifted synthesizer and popularizer who, over the past two decades, has been a leading chronicler of anti-corporate, anti-globalization, and anti-capitalist social movements (a series of ‘anti’s that undeniably needs some unpacking).
Who else on the Left gets a sympathetic interview on the evening news of Canada's publicly owned television broadcaster before the release of her latest book? And who else, as a preview of that book, is immediately given a chance to explain to a national audience why, from the perspective of the environment, capitalism is "the main enemy?"
Klein's writings and talks have provided ‘the movement’ with needed context and coherence, and served as a conduit and catalyst for discussions, contributing to its recruitment and growth. Her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate is the climax of her highly influential trilogy and also registers how much her perspective has changed over the last fifteen years.