Nothing Again— Naomi Klein Renews Her Climate Prescription

In about 2 weeks, Simon and Schuster and Penguin Books drop Canadian author Naomi Klein’s latest contribution to the climate crisis into bookstalls in airports all over the English world. The title is On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, although the cover just uses an emoji rather than spelling fire out for you. Its a pity the interior won’t follow that same convention.

My co-author of Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth, Kathleen Draper, who is here with me in Finland touring state-of-the-art negative emissions facilities with more than 100 other professionals, and I have been kidding about how copying is the highest form of respect and how maybe people looking for Klein’s book in the stores or on-line might just discover ours, too.

I doubt Klein’s book is as serious a search for real solutions as is ours, though I am happy to have that assumption disproved. Because this tour, and the biochar masterclass I am giving in Estonia right after, are consuming all my time right now, I’ve gone back to the archives and pulled up my October 5, 2014 review of Ms. Klein’s last book to re-post here. That review has held up pretty well after 5 years.

Rather than wallowing in despair or foraging for false hope, I would like readers to take a look at the actual text of the Green New Deal. It…