This Changes Everything (book)


This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate is Naomi Klein's fourth book; it was published in 2014 by Simon & Schuster. In it, Klein argues that the climate crisis cannot be addressed in the current era of neoliberal market fundamentalism, which encourages profligate consumption and has resulted in mega-mergers and trade agreements hostile to the health of the environment.
The book debuted on the New York Times bestseller list at number five on 5 October 2014.
A documentary based on the book, titled This Changes Everything, was directed by Avi Lewis and produced by Alfonso Cuaron and Joslyn Barnes. Additionally, Seth MacFarlane and Danny Glover shared producer credits.

Reception

The book won the 2014 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction and was a shortlisted nominee for the 2015 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.
In The New York Times Book Review, Rob Nixon wrote that This Changes Everything was "the most momentous and contentious environmental book since Silent Spring." It was also included on their list of 100 notable books for 2014.
In Monthly Review, Professors John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark provided detailed counter-arguments in response to what they term are the "liberal critics" of the book. They also praised the book, writing:
Klein, who in No Logo ushered in a new generational critique of commodity culture, and who in The Shock Doctrine established herself as perhaps the most prominent North American critic of neoliberal disaster capitalism, signals that she has now, in William Morris's famous metaphor, crossed "the river of fire" to become a critic of capitalism. The reason is climate change, including the fact that we have waited too long to address it, and the reality that nothing short of an ecological revolution will now do the job.

In a New York Review of Books Review of Books discussion on her subsequent book, , Eric Klinenberg notes that This Changes Everything had "become a touchstone of progressive climate activism. It's the single strongest statement we have for why carbon-fueled capitalism with its imperative of relentless growth and exploitation, is fundamentally incompatible with ecological sensibility and climate justice."