“When we take, we must not only give back,” writes Naomi Klein, “but we must also take care.” A critique of Western consumer culture, Klein’s harrowing words stress the desperate need to recover our symbiotic relationship with planet Earth before it’s too late…and it’s getting pretty darn close to too late.

Published in 2014, Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate exposes the relationship between corporate capitalism and climate change. Throughout the book, Klein tells the story of her own reckoning with climate change. Employing a combination of personal anecdotes from her research and hard climate data into a worrisome wake-up call for the West. 

How did we get to this turning point? This question, central to Klein’s analysis, doesn’t have a simple answer. Klein proposes, however, a number of factors that hurried us along including over-consumption, free-trade, and corporate investment in climate denial initiatives. 

Klein begins her book by examining Western consumption patterns. She critiques de-industrializing wealthy nations for being those most responsible for our current climate predicament. De-industrializing nations, or nations that previously underwent a technological expansion that resulted in the majority of the current pollutants, include the United States and the United Kingdom.  Zeroing-in on the expansion of free-market capitalism, Klein prescribes a corrective path for the West: “less consumption (except among the poor), less trade (as we relocalize our economies), and less private investment in producing for excessive consumption.”  By following this path, Klein believes Western nations can work to redistribute the large sums of wealth collected during the age of imperialism at the expense of nations like China and India, who are only now undergoing their own massive economic growth.

For hundreds of years, industrialized nations have been exploiting the Earth. Yet, these nations don’t face the brunt of the devastation. Instead, those most affected are historically marginalized groups, including Indigenous peoples, across the world. Specifically, Klein recounts stories from the First Nations people of Canada, to the Micronesian Island Nations, and farther, to the Niger Delta. Klein calls on post-industrial nations to lead the way in emissions reductions since they are most responsible for creating this climate disaster. Seeing this moment as an opportunity “to reckon, as our ancestors did, with our vulnerability to the elements that make up both the planet and our bodies,” rather than fight literally to the death to extract every last fossil fuel deposit on the planet, Klein’s work emphasizes a cooperative approach instead of the volatile alternative.

Next, Klein calls extractivism to the stand. Defined as “a nonreciprocal, dominance-based relationship with the earth,” extractivist policies rely on taking as much as possible. Klein states that extractivist policies work by  “turning living complex ecosystems into natural resources” and reduce “human beings…into labor.” An objectification of life, extractivism places a value on living things, not for the sake of life, but for their profitability, encouraged by Western consumer culture. To overcome the pervasive extractivist culture that Western capitalism perpetuates, Klein calls on wealthy nations to work with developing nations. Instead of outsourcing production to access cheap labor and avoid emissions penalties, Klein recommends that Western nations work to localize their economies once more.

This Changes Everything tells the harrowing story of how unregulated capitalism landed us in a climate disaster. Leaving us with much-needed hope, Klein encourages her readers to channel their frustration at the system into actionable climate activism. The Sunrise Movement, a growing youth movement that values non-violent action rather than traditional bureaucratic approaches, exemplifies the message behind Klein’s book: it’s not enough for us to recycle our bottles and purchase carbon offsets. Rather, we must elect leaders who put our planet’s future ahead of wealth accumulation. In 2020 alone the Sunrise Movement has met with President-elect Joe Biden to help formulate his climate plan, in addition to placing millions of phone calls on his behalf prior to the election. This massive achievement emphasizes the power of collective action and the desire among young people to hold our representatives accountable for the current state of our planet.

Klein’s final takeaway? Live nonextractively. This means “relying overwhelmingly on resources that can be continuously regenerated” like solar power and sourcing food from sustainable farming methods “that protect soil fertility.” Individuals alone cannot solve this crisis. If we as a species want to not only survive but continue growing in the coming decades, it’s crucial that those in power have the best interests of the planet in mind. In addition to this, we must supply “energy from methods that harness the ever-renewing strength of the sun, wind, and waves” and use “our metals from recycled and reused sources.” Readers and leaders alike must choose for themselves whether to continue on a path of climate ignorance or to embrace environmental justice through sustainability and nonextraction.