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Student Views: What Naomi Klein Taught Me about Environmental Action

Naomi KleinOn March 2, author and activist Naomi Klein came to Northwestern to speak about issues covered in her recent book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate. Medill student Virginia Nowakowski attended the event and wrote about her experience for In Our Nature, a student environmental journal. The following is a summary of her article. The full article is available through In Our Nature.

Naomi Klein called for a giant leap in environmental action during her address in Leverone Auditorium. She touched on several important concepts I think every environmentally-friendly college student should keep in their back pocket.

Intersectionality in the Environmental Movement

“If there is any glimmer of hope it is actually that there are a great many people around the world who understand that this system [of capitalism] needs changing with or without climate change,” Klein said. She emphasized the point that environmentalists shouldn’t push aside other movements like human rights or racial equality in favor of the climate movement. This is especially important on a college campus where there are a bounty of social justice causes all vying for attention. Rather than focusing on what divides us, maybe we should work together to create change.

Who to Address

In a dinner preceding the event, a student asked how to approach people who might hold opposing views on climate change. Klein took the opportunity to mention that arguing about the science of climate change with climate change deniers will seldom cause them to reconsider their stance on the issue. To actually yield results, students interested in saving the environment should reach out to the apathetic or the uninformed, those who may partially understand the crisis, but do not know how to respond.

Justice and the Environment

Klein spoke briefly about her time in the Vatican, helping draft “Laudato Si,” Pope Francis’s encyclical about the environment. Although she says she does not agree with many of the views of the Vatican, Klein was struck by Pope Francis’s use of a certain phrase within the document: “throwaway culture,” meaning a culture that treats people, products, and ultimately the planet as disposable. She said that rectifying the current “throwaway culture” begins the reparation process for communities that have been harmed by it.

Being Humble in the Face of Nature

In an age of technological advances, Klein raises the point that we still cannot control nature, so we need to control human actions instead. This idea is present in the “Leap Manifesto,” a document encouraging Canadian involvement in environmentalism. The manifesto is named for leap years, when we add an extra day to February to compensate for the fact that our calendars don’t perfectly match the Earth’s pattern of revolution. “It’s this rare act of human humility where we recognize that it is easier to change the laws that humans create than it is to change the laws of nature,” Klein said. “We now need to do that to our economy and to our political system.” Instead of fighting against nature, or simply yielding to natural laws in all matters, we should consider how we can work with natural forces to create a better world.

Klein received a standing ovation at the end of her address. It will be interesting to see how Northwestern student movements incorporate the main messages of Klein’s address in their work.