Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything

This Changes Everything is a book that was created to disprove what people have chosen to believe in regards to climate change and their involvement in it. Naomi Klein forces people to remember climate change and disallow from being swept under the rug by climate change deniers. In this book, Klein attempts to accomplish the nearly impossible task of making everyone reflect on how much harm they have done to the environment. She debunks arguments against climate change in an attempt to get people to change their detrimental habits and cease the worsening of the quality of the earth.

One of the only times people are forced to acknowledge the threat of climate change is when a natural disaster takes place. Only then are they given a physical manifestation of the damage they have done upon the earth.
Throughout history, natural disasters such as floods, storms, and droughts have forced people to reflect on their effect on the environment (103).

Despite natural disasters serving as a recurring reminder humans almost never learn their lesson. They have tricked themselves into believing they can wreak as much havoc as they please upon the earth. They believe themselves to be brilliant (166) enough to invent some sort of safety net to protect them from their mistakes.

The only time it seems people are willing to act as if they have learned their lesson is when they want to compare modern environmentalism to tragedy.
Some have gone as far as comparing being required to take care of the earth to Nazi Germany (32). These comparisons to times of extreme oppression and suffering have been created out of a refusal to admit to being wrong.

When new information comes out about climate change it is easy to accept that information if it confirms something you had believed prior to (37). So when information that goes against your current position on climate change comes out it is hard to accept as being something positive. This attitude is what leads to comparisons being made to nearly every negative time in our history. Yet something positive can come out of people looking to the past for guidance on how to deal with climate change. For example, solar power has always been a part of Natives' way of life (393). This ideology led to people being trained on how to use solar boxes and panels to lessen the detrimental effects of heating a house the normal way. This acceptance of climate change is out of cultural obligation to do
so.

Unfortunately, the determination is not enough to save the environment and repair the damage that has been done to it. Money is necessary to fund these projects. Yet the people who could afford to fund these projects usually identify as climate change deniers. The wealthy believe that a few degrees of warming is not something they have to worry about (47).

The irony of the situation is that the rich have a tendency to emit more pollution. In Germany, a study indicated that the travel habits of the wealthy had a twenty-five percent greater impact on climate change than that of those who weren't wealthy (113). In the past, those who did the most damage were forced to pay their part. Just as tobacco companies had to pay for people to quit smoking and BP had to pay to clean up the oil they spilled in the Gulf Of Mexico (112).