Naomi Klein: “There Are No Non-Radical Options Left Before Us”

The famed author of "This Changes Everything" explains why markets cannot be relied on to solve global warming

And I do think it’s going to get harder for fossil fuel companies.  It really is going to get scary.  And they’re terrified of the Exxon investigations because if Exxon has been systematically misleading the public, if they knew, all of this is going to be coming out, then this raises huge questions about the legitimacy of their profits.  And Exxon is the most profitable company in the history of the world, $42 billion dollars in profits in a single year.  And here we are unable to pay for public transit, unable to pay for the kinds of infrastructure that we need to deal with the crisis that they have created.

This is a conversation that they’re going to really try to have not happen.  And I know there are people here who are working on a carbon tax.  And it’s great but often you’ll hear people say, “Well, it has to be revenue-neutral.  It has to be fee and dividend.  Don’t call it a tax.”  Because we accept the Koch framework as a premise that if we’re going to take money from people we have to give it all back, all of it.  That’s what fee and dividend means, it means we will tax you and we’ll give you the exact same amount back that you gave us.  That leaves the government with nothing. So what are you going to use to pay for transit?  What are you going to use to pay for a renewable energy grid?  How are you going to get to 100 percent renewables?  We have to talk about the fact that we need more money.  It has come from somewhere.  So I think it is really worth studying how the center was moved in that way.

The famous Overton window, moving us rightward.  And the degree, just going back to what you were saying about the degree of denial, it’s just so flabbergasting, and I was hoping you would tell the story that you tell about covering the annual meeting of the Heartland Institute and what happened with Oklahoma’s US Senator Jim Inhofe, which is such a great story.

Read more at Naomi Klein: “There Are No Non-Radical Options Left Before Us”