On Fire
2 journalers for this copy...
Penguin Random House held a contest they called Climate Crusader and I was lucky enough to win a prize pack of four books including this one. I'm looking forward to reading it.
Although I had heard good things about Naomi Klein I have not read any of her books although I'm sure I've read some of her articles published in various periodicals. So I did not know that she was married to Avi Lewis, son of "the indomitable Stephen Lewis" and grandson of David Lewis. With those impressive in-laws I suppose she had no choice but to become a cogent and passionate writer which shows in this book on climate change and the Green New Deal.
She introduces the book by talking about Greta Thunberg and the School Strike for Climate that Greta inspired. Virtually every climate change activist has been awestruck by Greta even if then President Trump wasn't so impressed with the "very happy young girl". In fact, the title of this book was inspired by Thunberg's speech to the World Economic Summit in Davos where she said "I want you to act as if your house is on fire, because it is."
The book includes a number of articles Klein wrote between 2010 and 2019 dealing with topics such as the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from BP's Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig, how capitalism fuels climate change, massive forest fires, and bleaching of coral reefs. Her articles are not just an account of everything that has gone wrong in the world; the subtitle of this book is "The Burning Case for a Green New Deal" so she devotes a lot of the book to how a Green New Deal would work and she uses the historical lesson of FDR's New Deal that brought the US out of the Great Depression. She sold me on it. I just wish every politician in the world was required to read this book and maybe they would move faster to achieve the goals most of them have signed on to.
Obviously this book was published before the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in full force which is sort of a shame because how governments have thrown money and resources at responding to the pandemic is just the sort of response we need to combat climate change. And then just this past weekend there was an article in The Guardian about Klein's newest book How to Change Everything geared to the YA market. It concluded with these words:
What the pandemic has changed, says Klein, is our understanding of how to respond to an emergency. When youth movements called for climate change to be treated as an emergency, governments responded with fine words but little urgency. “The big difference post-Covid is we now know what it means to treat an emergency like an emergency. We’ve all seen our governments do it. They can change things dramatically overnight. And that’s not something those of us born after the second world war had experienced. Our expectations and our ability to differentiate between just talk and actual change is heightened. And the pressure is going to be even greater on political leaders.”
Exactly!
She introduces the book by talking about Greta Thunberg and the School Strike for Climate that Greta inspired. Virtually every climate change activist has been awestruck by Greta even if then President Trump wasn't so impressed with the "very happy young girl". In fact, the title of this book was inspired by Thunberg's speech to the World Economic Summit in Davos where she said "I want you to act as if your house is on fire, because it is."
The book includes a number of articles Klein wrote between 2010 and 2019 dealing with topics such as the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from BP's Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig, how capitalism fuels climate change, massive forest fires, and bleaching of coral reefs. Her articles are not just an account of everything that has gone wrong in the world; the subtitle of this book is "The Burning Case for a Green New Deal" so she devotes a lot of the book to how a Green New Deal would work and she uses the historical lesson of FDR's New Deal that brought the US out of the Great Depression. She sold me on it. I just wish every politician in the world was required to read this book and maybe they would move faster to achieve the goals most of them have signed on to.
Obviously this book was published before the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in full force which is sort of a shame because how governments have thrown money and resources at responding to the pandemic is just the sort of response we need to combat climate change. And then just this past weekend there was an article in The Guardian about Klein's newest book How to Change Everything geared to the YA market. It concluded with these words:
What the pandemic has changed, says Klein, is our understanding of how to respond to an emergency. When youth movements called for climate change to be treated as an emergency, governments responded with fine words but little urgency. “The big difference post-Covid is we now know what it means to treat an emergency like an emergency. We’ve all seen our governments do it. They can change things dramatically overnight. And that’s not something those of us born after the second world war had experienced. Our expectations and our ability to differentiate between just talk and actual change is heightened. And the pressure is going to be even greater on political leaders.”
Exactly!
Just received this book from Gypsysmom .....looking forward to having a look at it!
Just received this book from Gypsysmom .....looking forward to having a look at it!
Bookgirrl & I are both looking forward to reading this book. We have already read a great little book by Greta Thunberg. ("No One is Too Small to Make a Difference".) Thanks very much for the book and the goodies you sent! The candies are yummy - really interesting flavour.