On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal by Naomi Klein.

2/5 rating. 291 pages.

Book #16 of 2022. Read March 24, 2022.

This was a real disappointment of a book for me: the topic is right up my alley and I have a huge interest in the ideas related to climate change and a Green New Deal, but I thought this book really wasn’t very good.

I think I was hoping for more discussion about how to successfully implement a Green New Deal that works on fighting climate change while implementing social and economic transformation. One that changes our society’s religion of growth and consumption into one of conservation, community, and a sense of what is enough. Instead, this book was a lot of speeches and articles about what we did wrong and how we have failed in the past, sprinkled in with dunking on past republicans who have cared more about the next dollar than their constituents. Some of these made me laugh, but the idea that anyone would read this book and actually change their mind is certainly not going to happen after you just lambasted them as idiots.

I don’t know what it will take to make a change in our society, but making other people feel bad about themselves will not do the trick. There were a few good articles about actually making a collective dream of a society that we want to live in that is safe, clean, equitable, and beautiful. These I definitely enjoyed. As Naomi says: “But those were ‘no’ coalitions, and we wanted to try something different: a ‘yes’ coalition. And that meant we needed to create a space to do something we never do, which is dream together about the world that we actually want.”

I would not recommend this book. There are a million other books out there, choose one of them to read!

Quotes:

“Greta also learned from climate scientists that the worst of this was not a foregone conclusion: that if we took radical action now, reducing emissions by 15 percent a year in wealthy countries like Sweden, then it would dramatically increase the chances of a safe future for her generation and the ones that followed. We could still save some of the glaciers. We could still protect many island nations. We might still avoid massive crop failure that would force hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people to flee their homes.”

“It was madness: the world was on fire, and yet everywhere Greta looked, people were gossiping about celebrities, taking pictures of themselves imitating celebrities, buying new cars and new clothes they didn’t need – as if they had all the time in the world to douse the flames.”

“In part, this is because if we were to decide to take climate disruption seriously, pretty much every aspect of our economy would have to change, and there are many powerful interests that like things as they are. Not least the fossil fuel corporations, which have funded a decades-long campaign of disinformation, obfuscation, and straight-up lies about the reality of global warming.”

“In recent hearings on Capitol Hill, congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts grilled representatives from the top oil and gas companies on the revealing ways in which they had allocated resources. Over three years, they had spent ‘$39bn to explore for new oil and gas. Yet, the average investment in research and development for safety, accident prevention and spill response was a paltry $20m a year.’”

“In Gingrich’s telling, drilling at home wherever the oil and gas might be – locked in Rocky Mountain shale, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and deep offshore – was a surefire way to lower the price at the pump, create jobs, and kick Arab ass all at once. In the face of this triple win, caring about the environment was for sissies: as Senator Mitch McConnell put it, ‘in Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and Texas, they think oil rigs are pretty.’”

“A 2007 Harris poll found that 71 percent of Americans believed that the continued burning of fossil fuels would cause the climate to change. By 2009, the figure had dropped to 51 percent. In June 2011, the number of Americans who agreed was down to 44 percent – well under half the population.”

“Even more striking, this shift has occurred almost entirely at one end of the political spectrum. As recently as 2008 (the year Newt Gingrich did a climate change TV spot with Nancy Pelosi), the issue still had the veneer of bipartisan support in the United States. Those days are decidedly over. Today, 70-75 percent of self-identified Democrats and liberals believe humans are changing the climate, a level that remained stable or risen slightly over the past decade. In sharp contrast, Republicans, particularly Tea Party members, have overwhelmingly chosen to reject the scientific consensus. In some regions, only about 20 percent of self-identified Republicans accept the science.”

“This is a crucial point to understand: it is not opposition to the scientific facts of climate change that drives denialists, but rather, opposition to the real-world implications of those facts.”

“The contrast is a vivid reminder of just how far Pope Francis has to go in realizing his vision of a Church that spends less time condemning people over abortion, contraception, and whom they marry, and more time fighting for the trampled victims of a highly unequal and unjust economic system.”

“Later in the text, pointing to various biblical directives to care for animals that provide food and labor, Pope Francis comes to the conclusion that ‘the Bible has no place for a tyrannical anthropocentrism unconcerned for other creatures.’”

“The point is that this could have been a moment to understand that we are all affected by climate change and must take action together and in solidarity with one another. But it wasn’t, because climate change isn’t just about things getting hotter and wetter: under our current economic and political order, it’s about things getting meaner and uglier.”

“If there is a single, overarching lesson in the Trump victory, perhaps it is this: Never, ever underestimate the power of hate. Never underestimate the power of direct appeals to power over ‘the other’ – the migrant, the Muslim, black people, women.”

“Either we fight for a future in which everyone belongs, starting with those being most battered by injustice and exclusion today, or we will keep losing.”

“If, on the other hand, we humans really were on the brink of saving ourselves in the ’80s, but were swamped by a tide of elite, free-market fanaticism, one that was opposed by millions of people around the world, then there is something quite concrete we can do about it. We can confront that economic order and try to replace it with something that is rooted in both human and planetary security, one that does not place at its center the quest for growth and profit at all costs.”

“For this reason, one of the most pressing tasks ahead is to use every tool possible to make the case for how our overlapping crises are indeed inextricably linked – and can be overcome only with a holistic vision for social and economic transformation.”

“Because there is nothing more disorienting than finding yourself floating through time, unmoored from both future and past. Only when we know where we have come from, and where we want to go, will we have a sturdy place to plant our feet.”

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