I
just had to say a few words after reading Naomi
Klein’s book because it seemed so right for the
moment towards the end of 2017.
Naomi
Klein
knows her audience is progressive and she knows
adding some facts about the beginning of the
Trump Presidency will appeal. In her
2017 book No
is Not Enough: Resisting the New Shock
Politics and Winning the World We Need (Knopf),
Klein delivers in her clear biting style. But
this little yellow book has a big message. Keep
your cool as the shocks and absurdities of the
Trump era continue. Keep your sights on the
world many of us want. Klein knows that the 1915
“Leap Manifesto” that outlined such a world
excited a lot of people. I say more about it
below.
The
book
follows the practice of other authors by making
reference to her earlier books. Yet for her, the
earlier books tie in with Trump clearly and
well. Klein’s No Logo (1999) explored
a transition in sales in which a corporation
needed just a known brand name and a related
image that gave people a sense of belonging to a
club. Goods came from wherever and it was the
image and name and sense of membership in that
society that sold.
Part
I
of No is Not Enough tells “how we got
here.” The first three chapters explore Trump
and family as the ultimate brand in the new
world of brands and logos. The Trump Florida
resort Mar-a-Lago can increase prices and
increase sales on account of a US President now
spending time there - at public expense. Klein
contends that the Trump logo combined with the
White House is an ultimate conflict of interest
and Trump and his family are making, and will
make billions of dollars out of the coinciding
of brand and White House. She does a good job
showing this.
Her
earlier
book The
Shock Doctrine (2008) explored how big
social shocks could disorient a society like
Poland, allowing the corporate sector to impose
its agenda with big changes and without
questions. A shock can be a 2001 terrorist
attack – that paved the way for war and
legislative changes that altered civil rights.
But with Trump, the initial shock is that he’s
President – and producing a rapid-fire
bewildering and disorienting sequence of smaller
shocks. Then there are climate-induced
hurricanes etc. that can create a moment for
corporate sector exploitation as a shock effect.
That comes up in Part III where she explores how
things could get worse.
Meanwhile,
Part
II is about “Where We are Now: Climate of
Inequality.” I see this as climate and
inequality. She sets out what we may have heard
elsewhere about the serious climate change
dangers and challenges, now sidelined by Trump
in the US. She reminds us that US society has
serious inequalities. There is violence against
women. There are migrant workers a low pay and
high risk. There are blacks filling the jails.
There were bailouts for banks following the 2008
financial collapse. Bankers
involved were let off scot-free. Minimal
financial regulatory changes were made. There
were bailouts for corporate automakers. But the
people affected by the collapse, and the black
community was particularly badly hit, were left
to sort things out on their own. The taxpayers
are paying the bills.
Some
of
the reading on climate is painful. Back in 1978
Exxon did its own research taking CO2 samples
from its tankers and making state of the art
climate change models predicting such things as
ocean rise. Its own scientists warned the
corporation then that the general scientific
understanding was that humans were influencing
climate change by the release of CO2 from
burning fossil fuels. This
company was particularly involved in efforts to
add confusion around the cause of global warming
and climate change. At the time Klein wrote, the
head of Mobil-Exxon was part of the new White
House administration. Indeed, very early in the
book, Klein makes sure we see the obvious. Trump
and his team are the rich corporate leaders of
the United States. The corporate elite no longer
influences the White House; it occupies the
White House. They are white. They are not women.
Part
IV
moves into optimism. The bad shocks of Part III,
including possible wars occurring near petroleum
producers, which then drive up the prices for
Mobil-Exxon, are only part of the story. Occupy
Wall Street emerged after financial help after
the 2008 crash went only to banks and car
manufacturers. Black Lives Matter has grown out
of the continuing deaths of blacks. And a huge
march led by women coincided with the Trump
inauguration. Argentina said no to its supposed
only solution in a financial crisis – and
survived. Spain did not respond to the bombing
of its subway with massive law changes and new
wars. But Klein goes beyond this.
Klein
is
aware that climate change requires not just a
“no” to business as usual. It requires a seismic
shift in the nature of the energy economy to
dominant green wind and solar energy. Not long
ago, that seemed questionable. Now a shift to
green economy has been modelled in parts of the
world and widespread change appears feasible to
more and more people like me reading the
reports. The shift can create jobs locally where
energy and jobs are needed, and where fossil
fuels from afar or from dirty sources are not
needed. There are stories of farmers and
cooperatives running local power utilities in
Scotland and in Denmark. Green energy doesn’t
need a small elite team like a nuclear reactor.
It doesn’t need big time investor corporations.
It could provide new long-term local work for
the US workers whose former jobs left the US
with big business – the very people that Trump
says he wants to help. Klein notes that this is
good news for many of us, but it is bad news for
big international corporations and especially
bad news for the super big oil corporations.
Often
among
the marching or camping crowds, Klein notes,
people with a range of concerns are now acting
together and learning about each others’ issues
- black lives and violence against women and
jails and migrants. She was particularly moved
by the success during the lead up to the last
2015 Canadian election of the “leap manifesto.”
The
manifesto
claims that climate change and accumulated
social needs require a leap right now – not an
evolution. The moment calls for a full agenda of
reforms - now:
“We could live in a
country powered entirely by renewable energy,
woven together by accessible public transit in
which jobs and opportunities … eliminate racial
and gender inequalities.”
The
manifesto
calls for implementing the UN Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It says no to more
big projects that lock the country into resource
extraction for future decades. Communities
should control the new renewable energy systems.
Indigenous people should be the first to receive
public support for their clean energy projects,
along with communities that have experienced
health problems from past industrial activities.
Energy-efficient homes should be built and
retrofits provided for. There must be training
opportunities for workers in the fossil fuel
sector so they could participate in the clean
energy sector.
A
shift to more local and ecologically-based
agriculture is called for. There should be an
end to trade deals that interfere with
rebuilding local communities and with protecting
the environment. The shift should emphasise low
carbon sectors of the economy like caregiving,
social work and education - and it
should add a childcare program. We should
re-examine the possibility of a universal basic
annual income like the one that was briefly
piloted in Manitoba. We should end fossil fuel
subsidies. We should hold town hall meetings
about the leap manifesto across the country.
So
there
you have it – my quick reflection of a brisk
activist’s book that’s right for the moment.