This Changes Everything

Toronto — 11 January 2015.

Capitalism vs the Climate

The Lima Conference should have been a milestone that marked out how governments will take urgent action to tackle climate change and to support vulnerable people across the world to adapt to its locked in impacts. But it was a failure and ran up against a political-economic system that puts the pursuit of profit above the needs of people and the limits of nature.

This is the importance of Naomi Klein’s new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, where she argues that the main culprit of runaway climate change is the system itself: capitalism. She explains that a system that requires endless growth is incompatible with sustainability and meaningful climate action. Klein insists and shows that market solutions will not do the trick, and that even “Big Green” environmental groups are part of the problem because they falsely suggest we can solve the crisis without fundamental changes in society.

Moderated by Lana Goldberg. Presentations by:

• Umair Muhammad is the author of Confronting Injustice: Social Activism in the Age of Individualsm. He is a PhD student in Political Science at York University. His research focuses on the political economy of the environment.
• Patricia E. (Ellie) Perkins is a Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, where she teaches and advises students in the areas of ecological economics and critical interdisciplinary research design. Her research focuses on feminist ecological economics, climate justice, and participatory community and watershed-based environmental education for political action.
• Sam Gindin spent most of his working life in the trade union movement as research director of the Canadian Autoworkers. He is the co-author, with Leo Panitch of The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire.

The forum was sponsored by: Centre for Social Justice, Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly and Socialist Project.