It can be 'trying' to read Naomi Klein's latest book

I

 am trying to read Naomi Klein’s book, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate”.

“Trying” is not a word I usually allow in my vocabulary for long have I believed you either do something, or you don’t.

I understand there are variations on the implications of “try”, but when something is as definitive as reading a book, trying should not be allowed to intrude.

Klein’s August 2015 book repeatedly reminds me that climate change is not just another difficulty that will relent, fold and fade away when confronted by the world’s market-driven economy, rather it will get worse as it is the relentless drive for profit and growth, essential ingredients of what exists, that has brought us to where we are.

It is rather difficult to stay calm and objective when reading Klein’s book, but standing on the precipice she describes, along with indisputable reasons we tetter on that ledge, makes me angry to think that our world is being incrementally sacrificed in the name of an ideology that favours only a few.

However, “calm and objective” we must all remain, for although we may find comfort in name calling, nothing is to be gained in abandoning our good sense, becoming emotional and simply haranguing those we see as responsible for the world’s increasing carbon dioxide emissions.

The world’s economy is a slick and sophisticated piece of intellectual machinery, charged with energy and its momentum will not be deflected easily.

The economy is a human-construct originally designed to serve mankind, but throughout the 20^th Century it developed a life of its own and now has a monopolistic-like grip on human behaviour and so rather than being our servant, as it should be, it is our master.

So climate change as difficult and challenging as it is may not, in fact, be the actual problem.

We need to take the advice of Victoria University’s Professor Trevor Hancock that we should lift our gaze, and “look up river” and maybe then we can see that climate change is really just the symptom of an illness; an illness that is unbridled capitalism.

A film based on Klein’s book, “This Changes Everything”, will be screened in Shepparton on the evening of Monday, October 26, for which tickets at $20 are still available.

-      Robert McLean.