
Photo credit; Kourosh Keshiri
It is hard to believe that last year marked the 21st anniversary of Naomi Klein’s anti-globalisation manifesto ‘No Logo’. The seminal tome has since been translated into 30 languages and Time magazine chose it as one of the Top 100 Non-Fiction books ever published. Klein followed it with her treatise on the rise of disaster capitalism ‘The Shock Doctrine’ in 2007. It too garnered wide-spread acclaim and worldwide success. Her move into environmentalism came with the release of ‘This Changes Everything’, a damning indictment of the havoc capitalism has wreaked on the natural world and the urgent changes needed to be taken to mitigate its’ worst effects. Her climate activism has continued with ‘On Fire;a Burning Case for a Green New Deal’ which was released in 2019 and has also became an instant New York Times best-seller.
It’s not hard to see how Klein’s passion for social justice was nurtured. Born in Montreal to two ‘sixties radicals’, both of whom moved to Canada from America to evade her father’s conscription in the Vietnam War. Her mother was a second-wave feminist, best known for her anti-pornography movie “Not a Love Story”. Despite a natural adolescent resistance to parental values, over time she found herself becoming more receptive to their ideologies. “Just because we find some activism cringey doesn’t mean we get to tune it out. That’s a terrible reason to let the world burn” she jokingly said in a recent interview (Channel 4, 2019).
Klein attended the University of Toronto, where she studied philosophy and literature and moved into professional journalism before graduating, but has since received multiple honorary degrees. Alongside her books she is also an award-winning journalist and media commentator. She consistently ranks as one of the world’s top intellectuals and thinkers. Prospect Magazine have named her as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world.
Klein has won recognition for her work from far afield, including the Sydney Peace Foundation in 2016 amongst countless other awards. She is also a university lecturer and is currently the Gloria Steinem Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University, New Jersey. Previously she had been a Miliband fellow lecturer at the London School of Economics.
Naomi Klein has become known for her unflinching resolve in tackling social injustice and her fearlessness in holding corrupt individuals and organisations to account. She has long exposed politicians and their skullduggery, which is of course one of the principal tenets of the journalistic profession. Klein and other campaigners like her, must undoubtedly be a thorn in the side of the powerful elite. The book inspired a new generations of activists, who are dubious of corporate power. However, the branded world which Klein documents in No Logo, has now grown to such influence it has infiltrated many of our lives today. A strong well-defined social media presence is now imperative in today’s digital world.
In ‘the Shock Doctrine’, Klein’s anti-establishment credentials are on full display once more with the American government and corporations the target of her ire. With remarkable courage Klein exposes the greed at the heart of the Bush administration, their moves to capitalise in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and of course their ill-fated invasion into Iraq. Other examples of international disaster capitalism also feature in the book. In ‘This Changes Everything’ she launches a blistering take-down of the world’s ‘green’ billionaires whose grand promises to solve the climate crisis have all but spectacularly failed (Klein, 2014).
Perhaps why Klein’s work has always been so readily accepted within different areas of activism, is the undeniable rigour and meticulousness which goes into it. “Naomi is so thorough, you just can’t fault her” says Sinead Mercier one of Ireland’s foremost climate change consultants. “She’s so rooted in the environmental movement and she has a lot of respect to build on”. Her exhaustive and robust research has left little room for climate change critics to attack her and has helped bolster her voice on a global stage.
Whilst most climate change literature is understandably eager to awaken people to the urgency of the crisis, critics have labelled many offerings as having the opposite effect of galvanising the reader to take action, due to their fatalistic tone. Naomi in her own work always leaves readers with a range of practical suggestions. Her latest book “On Fire; the burning case for a Green New Deal” is a message of climate hope and the rising political movements who are trying to change the system.
From early on in her campaigning, Klein has seen great opportunity in the climate crisis and has advocated for policy changes, which could mitigate the crisis but also help effect social change. “She really built a bridge with other movements, she connected it with other crises we’re living through, such as the pandemic and economic and social issues” says Mercier. Time and time again, Klein has faced off absurd criticism that climate change is a ‘trojan horse’ for socialism. Throughout her work she has called for the dismantling of economic models which have plundered the world’s natural resources and left humanity hanging on the edge of ecological disaster.
Klein has campaigned for newer economic models (new Green Deals) and a break-away from trickle-down economics and neoliberalism, which has brought about environmental catastrophe and bolstered economic inequality throughout the world. The new green deal she supports and the suggestions she has made over the years would see huge investment in green industries, the movement of workers from high-carbon industries to renewable ones with protections for their wages and benefits in place; millions of new unionised jobs in the green sector; low-cost, clean public transport for citizens and leaving carbon reserves throughout the world un-excavated among many other possibilities.
A cornerstone of the new green deal is the protection of indigenous communities, many of whom have seen their natural habitats ruined by fossil fuel industries. As Klein reminds us, it is the inhabitants of poorer, developing nations who have contributed the least to the crisis but who will become its’ worst victims. “Climate change discriminates, it’s unequal, it’s cruel, the people who did the least to create this crisis, the ones who have the lowest carbon footprint, will suffer the most” she reminded us in a recent Channel 4 interview (2017).
Klein has frequently spoke of climate refugees who are already seeking asylum in Western countries and these Western countries’ failure to provide them with refuge i.e Trump’s inhumane treatment of refugees trying to cross the American border. As Klein reminds us (2019) “a 2018 World Bank Study estimates that by 2050, more than 140 people in Sub- Saharam Africa, South Asia and Latin America will be displaced because of climate stresses, an estimate many consider conservative.”
In terms of impact it is hard to think of anyone who surpasses her influence as a figurehead for anti-globalisation internationally. And her influence as an environmentalist has grown exponentially in a relatively short period of time. “Apart from Greta Thunberg and David Attenbourgh, that trio of people have really kickstarted a real shift in environmentalist thinking and also urgency”, says Mercier.
“When Naomi Klein came to Dublin to give a talk, it was completely booked out”, Mercier recalls. “She spoke a lot about water charges as an example of environmental conflict and some of the audience started booing. The environmentalists were really annoyed about the water charges- they believe the people [the polluters] should pay. But Naomi was approaching it from the perspective of her work and she believes that’s what disaster capitalists do; they privatise essential goods in order to profit from them.”
Leading left-wing journalist Owen Jones has cited Naomi as one of his early inspirations; “Her writing on anti-globalisation was a real life-line for me, she was on the left, she had a platform and she was saying something new and vital.” (O’ Hagan, S - 2020)
Greta Thunberg, who unwittingly became the spearhead of the global climate movement, is also unstinting in her praise of Klein. Thunberg has named her as one of her main influences and on the inlay of Klein’s latest book says; “she is the greatest chronicler of our age of climate emergency, an inspirer of generations.” (Klein, 2019)
Klein has greatly helped to expand the conversation around climate change and inspired countless people around the world to partake in grassroots movements. As she travels around the world, such is her authority, younger women have even began to ask her whether or not they should have children, as she explained in a recent TV interview (Channel 4, 2019).
With Donald Trump leaving office there is at last some hope on the horizon for the climate movement. But in her recent work she has noted that Joe Biden was one of the few Democratic presidential candidates who failed to support a Green New Deal. Biden has at least promised to take the US back into the Paris Agreement when he enters office this month and has already selected John Kerry as his climate envoy.
It seems that her optimism has been renewed by the younger generation and Klein is now putting much of her faith in them, many of whom are now becoming voters for the first time. Her latest book ‘How to Change Everything’ (written with Rebecca Stefoff) is specially written for teenagers and is released next month.
She appears to be buoyed by the likes of Thunberg and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to US congress and who has been an ardent supporter of a ‘Green New Deal’ from the outset.
But despite the cause for some optimism, there is no denying the grim challenges which lies ahead. The global average annual temperature is 1.2˚C higher than in pre-industrial levels and scientists predict we are on track for a 3-4˚C increase over the next eighty years, thanks to our rampant use of fossil fuels (O’ Doherty C - 2021). And with global populations rapidly expanding, added pressure on our natural resources is inevitable. Developing nations such as China or India, with their fast growing middle-classes are unlikely to be keen to stymie their use of fossil fuels, which could provide another significant hurdle in slowing down climate change.
As the global pandemic continues on with no definitive end in sight, it’s looking increasingly likely the global economy will emerge severely bruised. And as history has shown, economic hardship means support for climate change invariably dips. Climate change for most people has come to be associated with an increase in their costs of living.
So is Klein fighting a losing battle, in the face of such profound obstacles? In a recent essay for the latest edition of On Fire (Klein, 2019) she seems to somehow have maintained her characteristic optimism and re-affirms her long-held stance of finding opportunity, even now with the added complexity of the pandemic added to the crisis. “There is no returning to where we were before the crisis hit. It could be a lot worse, clearly. But it could also be significantly better”, she writes. “The outcome will depend on what we choose to carry with us - and what we are willing to leave behind.”
Print Citations
Klein, N (2014) This Changes Everything The Climate Vs Capitalism, United Kingdom, Penguin Books,
Klein, N (2019) One Fire, The Burning Case for a Green New Deal, United Kingdom, Penguin Books,
Klein, N (2007)The Shock Doctrine, United Kingdom, Penguin Books
Online Video
Channel 4 (2017) Naomi Klein on Trump, Corbyn and the global “war on affordable housing”, extended interview, July 4th. Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VU2vtamOws [Accessed: 02 January 2021]
Channel 4 (2019) Naomi Klein on Extinction Rebellion, the Green New Deal and Fast Fashion, October 16th. Available at www.youtube.comwatch?v=JpFZmisvrQQ&t=2443s [Accessed: 03 January 2021]
Online Newspaper Articles
O’ Doherty, C (2021) ‘Climate change: five reasons to be cheerful and five to be fearful’ Irish Independent, January 2
O’ Hagan, S (2020) ‘A lot of people in the Parliamentary Labour party are horrible’ Guardian, September 19
Online Sources
www.naomiklein.org