Solving climate change may require transforming capitalism

Solving climate change isn't just a matter of new technologies or laws; it will require that we challenge the entire logic and structure of the deregulated capitalist economy.

That's according to author Naomi Klein, who released a new book this month called "This Changes Everything: Capitalism Versus the Climate."

“The book is about a clash between two logics: a logic of short-term growth and short-term profits above all else; and what we need to do to solve this climate crisis,” Klein says.

Klein, a best-selling author, social critic and climate activist, contends that global warming has largely been driven by globalization and unregulated free trade. For years, she says, the global economy has been expanding on a very particular model — a model based on removing barriers to investment and manufacturing.

“It's a very, very profitable model, but it's also a very high carbon model,” Klein says, “because there is a connection between cheap labor and cheap energy — and cheap energy tends to be coal.”

The bottom line, she says, is that solving the climate crisis must involve rethinking the entire global economic system. The environmental movement has been trying for years to work within this economic model, and the results speak for themselves: greenhouse gas emissions across the globe rose to record levels in 2013.

“We've been trying to respond to the climate crisis without rocking the economic boat,” Klein explains. “So we'll appeal to people as consumers: ‘It's all about changing your light bulbs; buy a hybrid; buy some carbon offsets.’ This is the model that has dominated for 20 years.”

Klein points out that the environmental ethos from the 1960s to 1980, when the Superfund Act was passed, was "polluter pays:" Where there’s a pollution problem, the polluter is responsible and they pay for the cleanup. In the 90s, the mindset changed to "polluter plays:" Governments and advocates sit down with polluters and try to convince them that it is in their best interest to help mitigate climate change.

Klein says that model has been a failure. While market mechanisms can work for smaller problems, she argues, the changes required are simply too great for the market to handle on its own. “The problem is that carbon is at the center of our economy — our economies are built on fossil fuels," she says. "The market can get us partway there, but it can't get us all the way there. It also requires some serious regulation.”

The answer, Klein says, is a return to the “polluter pays” model. “We're told all the time that our governments are broke. We can't accept that as a response to climate change. That means we need to go to where the money is. Luckily, fossil-fuel companies are the wealthiest industries in the world. No company has ever made more money than ExxonMobil.”

There are popular movements, like the one that calls for divestment from fossil fuels, and Klein also took part in the massive People's Climate March in New York last month. 

“It wasn't just that it was huge, it was that it was completely unlike any climate event I have been a part of,” Klein says. “It was not an NGO-organized event, although NGOs were involved. It really was a people's climate march … If you look at who came out, it was communities where kids have asthma, places that are already dealing with the real impacts of this toxic economic model.”

But, Klein admits, “I personally don't believe that grassroots resistance is going to get us to where we need to go. We need bold, national policies; we need international treaties. It's not just going to be resistance at the community level that will get us there."

Unfortunately, she says, governments have been hampered by "a sort of hyper-individualism” that prioritizes low tax rates and jobs over larger issues. Climate change, she argues, “landed in our laps when all of the tools that we needed to respond to this crisis were being taken out of our hands. We need to take them back.”

And with those mass movements — and rising inequality in the US — she sees a chance that might actually happen. "The level of dissatisfaction with deregulated capitalism is higher than it's been since the 1930’s," she says. "People want a better system."