Hyperbole? I do not think so, given (A) the dire state of the planet’s environment and (B) the role of the global economic system in accelerating climate change. We have to face the very uncomfortable truth that an unfettered free market system—which has lifted so many from squalor to middle-class comfort—is incompatible with a habitable planet. Moreover, our current global economic system, which is predicated on endless growth, is not compatible with a planet that has finite resources—or the finite capacity to absorb the pollution of an economy dependent on a linear process of extraction, use, and disposal.
This Changes Everything was published in 2014, and I have avoided it. While in graduate school, an M.Arch student told me that Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism “changed his life.” I tried reading it, but I quickly gave up, finding that Klein’s arguments stretched the limits of credibility (i.e. the book felt like a long conspiracy theory).
This Changes Everything does not have that flaw. Perhaps my worldview has shifted, perhaps I know this material better, or perhaps the arguments in This Changes Everything are indeed stronger, but Klein makes a convincing case, using original research, secondary sources, and compelling personal narratives.
Klein’s most recent work is On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal (2019), which contains a summary of This Changes Everything, in a chapter that is the first book’s subtitle, “Capitalism vs. the Climate.” I have not read On Fire yet, but it may be the better book with which to start, because it is the more recent and climate change is a quickly evolving concern.