THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

In 2006 Al Gore presented us with an "inconvenient truth", about climate change. But it was not so inconvenient that we felt compelled to radically change our lifestyles. Perhaps we made a few tweaks, such as getting a more economical car or buying some locally produced food or doing more recycling, but most of us, including those of us who think we take climate change seriously, carried on more or less as before. Not surprisingly, climate change just got worse. So, when I first saw the title of this book, I had my doubts. After all, I had been waiting years for some kind of wake-up call that really would change everything, and force governments, businesses and society to take climate change as seriously as it needs to be taken. I wondered how loud the wake-up calls have to get before we stop what we are doing and start to live very differently.

It is not as if there is a shortage of wake-up calls. These days, they come almost every day. The polar ice-caps are melting. The rainforest is disappearing. The seas are warming, and acidifying. On many days in many cities it is impossible to step outdoors because the air is so toxic. Human population growth is out of control, putting even more pressure on the biosphere. Extreme weather (storms, drought, floods, and very high temperatures) is becoming the norm, rather than the exception. Important species (such as bees and plankton) are under threat, and some others (e.g. tigers, polar bears) are very likely to become extinct. As if this were not enough, all our life-support systems - i.e. clean air, clean water, forests, topsoil, aquifers, fisheries, wetlands, biodiversity – are in serious decline. And yet nearly all of us carry on almost exactly as before. We continue to fly, drive, overconsume energy, and buy food and other things produced far from our homes.

The book begins by reminding us what we should all know, if we have been paying attention. The climate has already changed, and there is nothing we can do about this. We are going to have to learn to live with the consequences. That said, we can do a lot to prevent the situation getting even worse. In essence, this means that we stop taking carbon out of the ground and pumping it into the atmosphere. And we have to stop right now. Setting targets for the future will no longer work. It might have worked twenty three years ago, at the Rio Earth Summit, but we have reached the point where drastic action is needed, not targets and promises. Given our addiction to fossil fuels and perpetual economic growth, and given the disproportionate influence of business and money on governments and the media, things look bleak indeed. Yet, as this book keeps revealing, there are many chinks of light, and these keep increasing in number and size. Arguably, the most important of these take the form of campaigns by indigenous peoples, in North America and elsewhere.

Naomi Klein has a collective name for these campaigns – Blockadia – because they aim to block further extraction of fossil fuels. To do this, they are using the law. Specifically, they are using treaties, often made a long time ago, to enforce their rights to clean water, clean air, and clean land. These were provisions insisted on by wise elders when they were bargaining with the US and Canadian governments, sometimes more than 150 years ago. To everyone's surprise, the courts are upholding these rights in case after case, and these judgements sometimes bring the fossil fuel juggernaut to a complete halt. Equally interesting are the unlikely new alliances being formed, such as those between tribes and ranchers in Montana, as people realise that they have a common interest in blocking the Keystone pipeline. Of course, these are relatively early days, and we have yet to see how the higher courts and national legislatures will respond. That said, it is already clear that something big is changing, as more and more people realise that they are fighting for their very survival. I think that it is this realisation that Naomi is referring to in her title, because it is a realisation that, as it spreads rapidly, could change everything.

Speaking personally, this book has come in the nick of time for me. I was beginning to wonder whether anything would ever shock me again. Like the frog that does not notice that it is being boiled very slowly, I had begun to feel that I was becoming immune to the succession of spectacular announcements that, if I had heard them in the Seventies or Eighties, would have shocked me to the core. I suspect that many of us feel this way. Yes, this book has shocked me, but in the best sense. It has restored my belief that, although we cannot reverse climate change, at least not in the near future, we can stop it from getting worse. Interesting, is it not, that the very people so damaged by the invasion of modernity may be the ones who eventually bring the world back to sanity.