This Changes Everything

“Just Enough Time for Impossible” (Pages 449-458)

Klein recalls a speech at a science conference in San Diego in 2012 by Brad Werner, titled “Is Earth F**cked?” Werner, a complex-systems specialist, had run complex computer models to predict the fate of the planet. The computer model made it clear that global capitalism was making “Earth-human systems dangerous, and his own answer to the question posed in his paper was: ‘more or less’” (449). However, the one point of hope that came from it was what he referred to as the dynamic of resistance: the movement of people who adopt behaviors and values that don’t fit within the dominant cultural model. Klein includes environmental direct-action groups among these. He argued that history shows the power of resistance groups to reshape culture, and these resistance groups represent the likeliest source of friction with our current trajectory toward environmental disaster.

Klein believes it is social movements that will save us now. We’re on a path to self-destruction and “the only remaining variable is whether some countervailing power will emerge to block the road” (450-51). She sees resistance in Blockadia, already working at choke points to slow fossil fuel expansion and building positive alternative ways of living.