“How everything can change”: refreshing a fairer Earth

Against those who cleverly recall that on a scale of millions of years the climatic changes undergone by the Earth are nothing new, Naomi Klein fulminates. For the English-speaking essayist, born in 1970 in Canada to American parents and famous around the world, “the main difference between the current climate crisis and the upheavals of the past is that we are the cause”. Admirer of Greta Thunberg, she supports the young activists who follow in the footsteps of the Swedish teenager.

Written in collaboration with Rebecca Stefoff, a seasoned American popularizer, her book How everything can change, translated from English by Nicolas Calvé, is presented as a collection of “tools for the use of youth mobilized for climate and social justice”. The iniquity of the problem haunts Naomi Klein. In addition to polluting nature, she explains, “global warming is also unfair because it does not affect everyone equally.”

Aware of the social dimension of the phenomenon, she continues: “Poor communities and minorities suffer more than others. »Then she goes so far as to consider that autism, this disorder with which Greta Thunberg lives, allowed the teenager to perceive the crisis with the help of a mental microscope which accentuated its clarity as much as its gravity. . Didn’t the young activist recognize that, “under the right circumstances”, autism “can be a superpower”?

True to Greta’s straightforward yet keen awareness, Naomi Klein approaches the climate crisis with everyday words to reach not only youth, but a large, mature audience as well. She explains: a greenhouse “retains the heat so that you can grow flowers or fruit in it even if it is cold outside. Greenhouse gases do the same thing, but on a global scale ”.

Barely present at the start of the industrial revolution in the 18th century^e century in Great Britain, revolution quickly spread to the rest of the West and due to the improvement of the steam engine powered by coal, then accelerated by a diversified technological progress thanks to the use of other fossil fuels, including petroleum , greenhouse gases reached a very dangerous world level around 1950. Naomi Klein concludes: “So we are warming the planet in an unprecedented way. “

Given the Western origin of this warming, due in particular to the polluting historical exploitation of the natural resources of the countries of the South, the essayist believes that the West has a “climate debt” towards them. By having the wisdom to unite green economy and social justice, Naomi Klein would bring to the Earth the freshness that she sorely lacks.

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