Book Discussion: Final chapters of Naomi Klein’s, This Changes Everything

Facilitator Cheryl Knight suggested the discussion as a follow up to last month’s initial review of the book.

Knight noted that the much of the well-researched book predicted devastating effects due to climate change from our system of world-wide corporate government.

The October discussion of the book’s Part 3 will look at Klein’s more positive takes on what individuals can do if they join together to promote a healthier and sustainable world that offers economic justice to all citizens.

Klein states in her book, “…only mass social movements can save us now. Because we know where the current system, left unchecked, is headed. We also know how that system will deal with the reality of serial climate-related disasters: with profiteering, and escalating barbarism to segregate the losers from the winners.”

The social movement by citizens to abolish slavery in the Western nations offers an analogy of what is needed to avert climate catastrophe from fossil fuel extraction.

To regulate and control fossil fuel extraction, Klein suggests that a carbon tax “might do a lot less good than forming a grand coalition to demand a guaranteed minimum income.”

A guaranteed income she argues, may lead to debates “about what we owe one another based on our shared humanity, and what it is that we collectively value more than economic growth and corporate profits.

This shift in perspective, she notes, may also give us, “may also give us a better understanding of our personal climate inaction allowing many of us to view past and present failures with compassion, rather than angry judgment.

For questions regarding the meeting, please contact Bill Hennessy at[masked] or [masked]