Writer Andrew Glover is skeptical of Naomi Klein’s goals:
One of the most prominent voices in this space has been Canadian writer Naomi Klein, whose 2015 book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, argued that capitalism must be dismantled for the world to avert catastrophe. While I am sympathetic with some of the critiques that Klein directs at corporations and “free market fundamentalism,” her argument doesn’t hold water—because mitigating climate risks is a project whose enormous scope, cost and complexity can only be managed by regulated capitalist welfare states. Moreover, it’s difficult to see how she isn’t simply using the crisis of climate change as a veneer to agitate for her preferred utopian socio-economic system. As has been pointed out by Jonathan Chait of New York magazine, Klein appears to be adapting a mirror image of the same strategy she critiqued in her previous book, The Shock Doctrine, wherein she claimed that cynical politicians, pundits and corporations seize on crises to lock in economic restructuring along radical free market principles.
Naomi Klein wants to create the “new Soviet Man” one way or another.
Exactly. Her vision of a socialist society is more in line with feudalism: a prosperous and pampered elite ruling over a disease- and poverty-stricken proletariat, whose lives are nasty, brutal, and, thankfully for the elite, short. Clearly, she considers herself to be among the former and believes it’s her duty to oppress the great unwashed.
She’s an advisor to the Bishop of Rome.
Every communist assumes they will be part of the elite. No one who supports communism does it under the assumption that all their stuff is going to be taken off them and they will be assigned to the night shift janitorial staff at the peoples tractor factory.
And the soviet union was a bastion of environmental good practices. And in Naomi Klein’s ideal world if you criticize the government you are thrown in a gulag.
capitalism is something you do, it can never be dismantled. buying, selling, trading will continue no matter how freaking big and controlling government gets.
When your argument is based upon a false premise in the first place (Anthropogenic Globull Warming), it doesn’t really matter what you say to support it…
Bingo!
Mostly, she’s a lunatic. But we have lots of lunatics in Canada, and elsewhere. It’s best to ignore them as much as possible.
She’s just mouthing the UN talking points that have been available for digestion for a while. Maurice Strong, et al stuff: “save the planet from people” .
If you haven’t thought of it, the Green movement has been taken over by Marxist/Maoist tendencies, well to be honest a whole cloth of communist mumbo jumbo. The real policy on wrecking Capitalism is “control” the population, the production of resources & goods to “bring the world in balance” where a “caretaker” human derivative “manages” the place. As if.
Population Earth = 500,000 to 1 billion folks. That is the end goal. Everything run on wind or solar & growing your own veggies while your kiddies roam the fringes of your little Utopia & get to become prey for big meat eaters, if they stray too far. “Oh, look Amber just got taken!” You won’t eat meat, too…more by decree than by what should be biologically necessary to survive as a species. Health care will be “free” because you are so talented in life skills you can do anything, or have to travel some several thousands of km by foot to seek the help, you will not find.
Apes will outnumber us, & probably take us over, if I want to be scathing. They’re more in tune with nature that we are, both instinctively & physically, genetically. Humans in the end WILL become extinct over this, I guarantee you, if we decide “this is the final solution for humans on Earth”. Some new Age Group thinking exercised here..
Humans should really advance the species further by exiting this planet & spreading their genes across the Universe, because before CO2 “pollution” ever gets to where it is a problem on this rock (as if it ever was, or ever will….it isn’t a “pollutant” it’s a trace gas vital all carbon form life on this planet), some big chunk of space junk is gonna whack this planet back to the Cretaceous, or further & we’ll have to start all over if there are any survivors. Well, geological history has proven that the survivors probably will. We survived a whacking 70,0000 years ago that put us back to a population level that genetic studies have demonstrated that the current population is derived from these few “survivors” then. They then burst forth & brought fruition to the species that occupies the real estate now, in their various forms. Why should we be ashamed of that?
Gerald Butts et al like minded people like Naomi, have a death wish for you & your kids. They are anti Humans.
Is it time to dismantle capitalism? Ahhh No! Is it time to quit paying attention to communist media whores like Naomi Klein? That would be an emphatic yes. Communism/Socialism killed more than 100 million people. Capitalism raised the standard of living for the entire planet. Case closed. Oh yeah, Climate change is based on flawed data and an wealth redistribution plot. It’s bull.
It’s time to stop using Marxist terms like capitalism; I prefer private enterprise (as opposed to public “enterprise”).
Put another way that’s the voluntary versus the compulsory.
Government invites market failure by getting between buyer and seller.
Yes, it’s more syllables but more precise in meaning, rather than singling out big business/crony capitalism with its common cause to the bourgeoisie, no wait – establishment.
Most well to do businesses are small with owners working their butts off without a safety net, just a set of handcuffs from the apparatchiks to assist them. They’re the real prey of the tax hunters, rich with all kinds of levies, taxes and fees.
It hasn’t been about the poor for ages. The rich have long ago surrendered to the collectivists and now pray at their altar.
Insist on precision from opposing arguments. If all else fails, you get them to insulting your moral character quicker.
“It’s time to stop using Marxist terms like capitalism”
Well, the other problem is that capitalism isn’t an ideology in the way that conservatism, socialism, Hinduism, Marxism and Catholicism are. Accumulating capital is not something people believe; it’s something people do. And they’ll do it however and wherever they can, even under totalitarian systems – think capitalism and the People’s Republic of China.
We are also far too intellectually lazy in equating capitalism with free enterprise; capitalists aren’t interested in free enterprise, they’re interested in cornering the market and accumulating capital. They’ll put up with free enterprise but they’ll also put up with any other system if it helps them corner a market – and we’re back to the People’s Republic of China again.
All that to say: yes, I agree about terms like “capitalism”. Let’s stop allowing the other side to frame the debate by forcing us to use their vocabulary.
“Let’s stop allowing the other side to frame the debate by forcing us to use their vocabulary.” (and their assumptions).
Bam.
Brian, klein is very small:-))
I posted this same article in a university free speech discussion group. The first comment was ths: “I’m not understanding this idea. So the economic system which precipitated the carbon mess of our day will somehow get us out of this mess? The system which over 70 years allowed for 60% biodiversity loss, 4.06 ppm of carbon, overpopulation etc will through growth fix this mess? It’s like asking a heroin dealer to be your rehab specialist haha ”
How would you politely respond to a 20-something who wrote this?
Don’t waste your time with them. Just give them free pot to smoke on & walk away. You’ve got more pressing things to occupy your mind & self with, more important than their mewlings. Like staying alive, providing for your family…living within the parameters of what’s real now.
If the person had an education, he would know that the Planet is dynamic & that these issues he worries about have happened before over the 4.5 billion years that this planet has existed in it’s place in space & untold thousands of species have died off in that time, probably millions, but the Planet still survives with it’s varied life forms & planetary “systems” that keep it functioning & hospitable for “life” in it’s myriad forms. Humans are just one of them.
Ask them why communist governments have the worst environmental records. Ask them to explain why rich, capitalist countries have the cleanest environment. When they inevitably shout “But Scandinavia..”, remind them that Scandinavian countries are capitalist democracies but with a large welfare state and bureacracy (similar to Quebec or sask under the NDP).
Ask them why communist governments have the worst environmental records.
The answer is obvious: their industries were sabotaged by those evil capitalists.
Yep, I could see them arguing that. The problem for them is explaining why a supposedly superior economic system like communism was completely reliant on an inferior capitalist system to prevent failure. Surely the superior communist economic system should have been an independently successful parallel economy that was resistant to such sabatoge.
In the 1960s the experts of the left said a population of more than 3 billion was unsustainable. 100s of millions would die of starvation starting in the late 1970s. Now we are over 7 billion and fewer people are starving than in the 1960s.
In the 1970s the experts of the left said we were headed for an ice age. It was “proven science”
Life expectancy has gotten better throughout the world.
Matt Ridley’s book The Rational Optimist” is a very good read and should be read by every 20 year old.
Oh, sorry, I forgot, just like Justin Turdeau modern 20 year olds can’t ready anything longer than a tweet.
Well, I can think of various ways. One way would be to point out that you too were once 20 years old and thought that you understood everything.
Possibly related: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/washington-could-lower-voting-age-to-16-for-2020
I can’t imagine a more wrong headed idea than to let 16 year olds vote! (but can’t buy cigarettes, don’t suffer the same punishments under the law, can’t be drafted into the army, etc, etc.) It’s diabolical.
Ah, but that’s because they’re so much smarter. That, by the way, is the logic behind why Mark Zuckerdork hired only younger people for his company Farcebook. If you’re older, you don’t know nuthin’. (Oh, yeah? Show me how you can change a tire on your car using nothing but smartphone apps.)
If we enjoyed a curious media, the greens would likely be embarrassed with Klein who, essentially gives their game away. That being the use of the omnipresent hysteria of CAGW as the pretext for drastically increasing the role of the leviathan state. He who controls access to energy, controls it all. When one looks at the business news and sees WCS prices well under $20 while WTI is at $63 as it is today, it shows how effective the green theocracy has been in Canada (and the effectiveness of US ENGOs). Klein is emblematic of far too many Canadians.
Socialism is always nothing more than a form of feudalism wherever it has evolved.
The deliberate hobbling of the western energy industry by Liberals in Ottawa inflames western alienation. Given that, the Liberals reliance on peace, order and good government as justification for the arbitrary taxation of certain, disfavored provinces and killing their essential industries is a complete joke. The result of impovershing Al-Sask to meet Ottawa’s greenhouse goals will result in strife, chaos and provincial separation referendums… the exact opposite of peace, order and good government. NEP resentment on steroids.
The deliberate hobbling of the western energy industry by Liberals in Ottawa inflames western alienation.
Western Canada has been and continues to be seen as a colony of Ottawa-Quebec. It’s obliged to give its resources to the “mother country” while also making equalization payments.
A prosperous western Canada means that its people have a sense of independence and that the region actually has an equal place in Confederation. For the last 50 years, the Liberal policy towards western Canada’s oil and gas industry has had the objective to permanently break the will of the people and remind them that they are only mere subjects, toiling for the comfort of the Laurentian elite.
For every problem, Naomi’s answer is Communism.
If environmentalists were serious about carbon dioxide and human welfare then they would support moving from coal to natgas and the natgas to nuclear (once nuclear became small, modular and safer). This could be phased in over a few decades to minimize the economic costs. Cheap, reliable electricity would have supported a move to electric vehicles and perhaps even electric heating. Electricity and transportation industry transformed to clean(er) with very little economic pain. Real reductions not fake neutral carbon tax tales.
For instance, the BDPS carbon capture can directly calculate its actual emission reduction while BC’s “neutral” carbon tax uses heavily massaged, convoluted statistics to give the illusion of CO2 reductions. Ditto to decommissioning a coal plant and replacing it with natgas vs. carbon pricing. And unlike carbon pricing schemes, real and quantifiable CO2 reduction systems that are operational aren’t subjected to political whims and sleight of hand.
But, no, as soon as natgas prices fell the environmentalists attacked them and nuclear power. What they support is expensive, unreliable energy (wind and solar) and high taxes. This inhibits the move to electric vehicles and heating. Who would want an electric car or heat if electricity prices skyrocket?
It’s obvious by their hypocrisy in their personal CO2 footprints and their odd reasoning on effective energy policies that decreasing CO2 is not their actual goal, it’s merely a tool to achieve their preferred economic and political policies.
The notion of “scientists” being some kind of “holy” men (and women) who can most impartially advise society on the best path forward for mankind is the MOST nonsensical notion of our contemporary society. Consider, for example the graph of the “Doomsday Clock” produced by the The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Top men. Really Top men, who are smarter than you are. That’s why they’re called “scientists”. Their hands are clean. They care ONLY about mathematical equations and technology. Pure things, unlike you and your impure thoughts … or so we are led to believe.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Doomsday_Clock_graph.svg
You are to read this graph understanding that the lowest points on the graph, are when we are closest to destroying humanity. You will notice (3) EXTREME lows in the graph … 1953, 1984, and 2018. Huh!? Guess WHAT the graph tells us …
1953 – IKE is elected (conservative President)
1984 – Ronald Reagan (conservative President)
2018 – you know who (conservative President)
Now, of course the “scientists” give all manner of reasons (other than simple politics) for these low points just … coincidentally … occurring during the administrations of THE MOST conservative Presidents since the Atomic age started. Just. a. coincidence. Uh huh … NOT a political Org. with a political graph. Nope. These are “pure”, “holy” scientists with not a stain of “sin” … like all us unwashed, subhumans.
Yet … from my unwashed, crude, simplistic, subhuman viewpoint … each one of those points represented pinnacles of peace and prosperity under conservative presidents. Times when the GOOD of a capitalistic society broke through the repression of hyper governmental control.
You can’t “dismantle capitalism”. Capitalism isn’t a system, its what all people do unless someone else is actively preventing them from doing it. We all work, trade, buy sell and run businesses ubless someone else is going out of their way to stop us, and then the only difference is that it becomes “the black market” rather than the free market.
Klein is a capitalist. She writes books and sells them. I’m sure she assumes her preferred brave new world doesn’t apply to her, the hypocritical bitch.
Socialists see only what they could take from capitalists, never what they could lose through socialism.
Dumb Biker (surely a self effacing sobriquet completely undeserved) said it first in this thread. When your argument is based upon a false premise in the first place (Anthropogenic Global Warming), it doesn’t really matter what you say to support it…
The quoted author, Andrew Glover, is only skeptical of the means and not the goal. He said mitigating climate risks is a project whose enormous scope, cost and complexity can only be managed by regulated capitalist welfare states.
There are no climate risks to mitigate. The enormous scope, cost and complexity, according to him, should require the regulating capitalist “welfare” states. That actually is the goal, not management of atmospheric CO2 concentration. Control energy, and you control production, hence industry. In the real world, with incremental increase in CO2, grain production has set records almost annually. And it has greened the whole Earth, even the Sahara desert. That is clearly evident in satellite photos.
Even if there were AGW, consider that the absolute lower limit of atmospheric CO2 concentration is 250 ppm, below which photosynthesis will completely stop and all life will end. The absolute upper limit is unknown, though it is known that the world had thrived in periods of four digit ppm concentration. We are much, much closer to the lower limit, and therein is actually the real risk.
Exactly. During the Jurassic/Cretaceous when a good chunk of our oil & gas were formed, the CO2 levels were 1700-1900 ppm. Things were Big in those days, plants & animals. No humans around to “control” the climate either, to muck things up. And yeah, stuff went extinct, too then without the helping hand of Man.
Then the UN admits that: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-03/un-official-admits-global-warming-agenda-really-about-destroying-capitalism.
So, someone needs to ask that Doofus we have as a PM, why this country is even paying indulgences for a false premise, in the form of carbon taxes. People should just refuse to pay.
You’re missing the “Catastrophic.” It’s not AGW the claim is and was CAGW. Don’t let them off the hook. The whole concept is that runaway increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide will turn the Earth into Venus. GW is inevitable after a glacial period and it’s not unreasonable to see carbon dioxide levels rise due to human activity. Even extremists have yet to prove the catastrophic part.
Speaking of which … these hysterics weren’t going to be satisfied by just moving to Canada (like American Actors and Musicians) … nope … they promised to fly to Mars! Bon Voyage!
And here I thought that Elon Musk’s obsession with Mars was to get away from a vindictive ex-wife….
Again … Fossil fuel extraction, refinement, and delivery is the #1 Manufacturing activity in America … 4x more $$ economic activity than #2 (small trucks). Imagine the economic malaise should America abandon its production of fossil fuels? Suggesting that wind and solar projects will supplant that activity is willfully ignorant. And I don’t expect America will EXPORT energy generated by wind or solar … thus eliminating a MASSIVE $$$ amount of trade revenue received from the exporting of oil, and LNC. Yeah … the “green malaise”. We endured 8 years of the “green malaise”. That was enough, thank you.
“[Her] argument doesn’t hold water – because mitigating climate risks is a project whose enormous scope, cost and complexity can only be managed by regulated capitalist welfare states.”
That “enormous scope, cost and complexity” is precisely why any “global action” on climate change is doomed to failure. It took the combined war-footing of the US, the British Empire and the Soviet Union – and a horrific, murderous, six-year slugfest – just to bring the Third Reich and Empire of Japan to heel.
And all the countries of the world are now going to link hands and cheerfully accept draconian constraints on their sovereignty and economic development to keep the temperature down a degree?
How to do science:
1. Make a guess.
2. Make an exact prediction, with numbers, out of that guess.
3. Check your prediction with careful experiment or observation of nature, if your numbers do not come out right, you are wrong.
It does not matter how famous you are, how many degrees you have, how many other people agree with your guess, or anything else, your wrong.
Let do “Climate Change” science:
1. If we make more carbon dioxide, the temperature will go up.
2. This will show up as elevated temperature at about 10-12 Kilometers altitude in the tropics, since the CO2 must heat the air around it when it absorbs that infra-red. The numbers should be an increase of 2.1 C .
3. We see 0.7 C temp increase instead, conclusion, the increase in temperature is too small to be dangerous, “climate change” is wrong.
Why?
I mean, the physics says the temperature MUST go up, right, so why isn’t it?
Well, the physics say that airplanes cannot fly, because they are heavier than air, but they do anyway because other physics make them fly. So, what other physics keep the Earth cooler than expected despite the increase of CO2?
It is a hot day in the tropics (so what else is new), near the equator, where the majority of the heat comes in. This is because the planet is not heated by the sun hitting the ground, but primarily by it hitting and heating the water, which covers 71% of it, and which stores the heat, unlike the land which does not. And that happens mainly at the equator since there, the sunlight does not reflect or refract out of the water, but penetrates straight down and is entirely absorbed.
The sun comes up, temperatures rise, eventually, at around 10:30-11:00 AM, the temperature and humidity (humid air is lighter than dry air) causes the air to rise, and a thunderstorm develops. This happens virtually every day right over the equator., you can see the thunderstorms from space, there are so many, they form long “squall lines”.
So, hot humid day, thunderstorm forms over your head, you are now in the shade, so, wanna guess whether you are now warmer or cooler, being now in the shade? Oh, and the cloud rains on you, and the wind blows, evaporating that water on you, are you warmer or cooler? So is the ground, so it emits less heat, also known as infra-red, so less infra-red is trapped by the increased CO2 overhead, and the temperature up there only goes up 0.7 C instead of 2.1 C.
So the answer to why we do not need to worry about “climate change” is that the clouds, as well as other things, make the Earth a self regulating system, keeping the temperature within a certain set range. The only time it breaks out of that range is during ice ages, the next one being due any day now.
So now you understand how the climate really works, we need to avoid the next ice age, drive a bigger car.
Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Brundtland report, the socialists have been using environmental issues to push for socialist totalitariansim. Clines book proves it.
It’s nice to see lefties call out other lefties. He’s right Klein is a hypocrit. When private interests manufacture a crisis and benefit from it, it’s bad; when authoritarian powers manufacture a crisis and benefit from it, it’s good. Then again I’m sure Klein believes that logic and consistency are tools of the patriarchy.
3 times now, THREE TIMES I sent a message via the kleimmunists web site requesting she speak up, weigh in on, opine regarding the current conditions in venezuela, all 3 times got a form letter response shes doing ‘research’
is there such a thing as political shaming? you want to dissect their brain like that old episode of star trek, to see what makes them ‘tick’.
For what this is worth, even if it only is good for a laugh
a couple days ago on PBS they had sort of documentary called ” sinking cities” in which they contradict themselves a few times
long story short, they first say a few scary things about the consequences of global warming, you know like hurricanes, which in turn cause floods etc etc,
then later in the documentary admit New York city gets a dangerously strong hurricane – that causes a flood – at least once each century…
so it is NOT global warming
they first say the part of New York that was and will be again in the future most affected by hurrcanes and the temporary floods is the outer edge of the city…then 30 minutes later tells us that this outer edge was man made, and that is why it is more vulnerable
there were a few other things, a few other obvious contradictions, but you get the idea
it was bad propaganda, but dumb liberals can’t tell the difference between that and science
I knew from the beginning that Klein’s book was an instruction manual; it was never the warning she claimed it was, and she always knew that.
Meanwhile, from Naomi Klein’s private jet as it lands in yet another tropical paradise that will be underwater due to sea level rise the day after the climate conference is over…
Parked beside Gore’s private jet…
Beside DiCaprio’s private jet…
Beside the 35 planes the government of Canada used to bring 34,000 civil “servants” to the conference…