This Changes Everything (76 page)

Debra Levy, my longtime research assistant, regrettably had to leave this project in 2012. Before she did, she made enormous contributions, particularly to the sections on geoengineering, messianic billionaires, and climate
debt. She also helped train Rajiv and Alexandra. She is one of the great collaborators of my career and I miss her still.

In the final months before deadline, Alleen Brown and Lauren Sutherland went above and beyond, helping enormously with the fact-check on absurdly tight deadlines. Lauren also did dynamite research for the billionaires chapter. Dave Oswald Mitchell contributed wise and comprehensive
research on the growth imperative, and Mara Kardas-Nelson did the same on local power movements in Germany and Boulder.

Rajiv and I are also deeply grateful to the team of very busy climate scientists who agreed to read sections of the book relating to climate change impacts and projections. Our readers ended up being an all-star cast of scientific experts including: Kevin Anderson (Tyndall Centre
for Climate Change Research), Alice Bows-Larkin (Tyndall Centre), James Hansen (Columbia University), Peter Gleick (Pacific Institute), and Sivan Kartha (Stockholm Environment Institute), all of whom vetted large sections of the book for accuracy. Michael E. Mann (Penn State University) and Olivia Serdeczny (Climate Analytics) also looked over the projections of a 4-degree world and provided
helpful feedback. As a nonscientist, having this team of experts vet the accuracy of this material was critical; all political conclusions drawn from those scientific findings are mine alone and in no way reflect on these generous readers.

When Bill McKibben asked me to join the board of 350.org in 2011, I had no idea what a wild ride it would be. Through the Keystone XL campaign and the kickoff
of the fossil fuel divestment movement, working with 350.org’s brilliant team—particularly its imaginative executive director May Boeve—has given me a front row seat to the fast changing climate justice movement partially documented in these pages. Bill, you are one of the world’s truly great people, a rock of a friend, and you wrote most of this years ago. I love being in this fight with you.
All views expressed here are my own and have nothing to do with 350.org as an organization.

Other experts in their respective fields who agreed to review sections of this book for accuracy include Riley Dunlap, Aaron M. McCright, Robert Brulle, Steven Shrybman, Oscar Reyes, Larry Lohmann, Patrick Bond, Tadzio Mueller, and Tom Kruse. I am most grateful to all of them.

My dear friends Kyo Maclear,
Eve Ensler, Betsy Reed, and Johann Hari all read portions of the book and shared their great skills as writers and editors. Johann, in fact, provided some of the most transformative editorial advice I received, and I am forever in his debt. This unofficial, backroom publishing team supported me in countless ways, from helping me come up with the right title to endless conversations about the
book’s themes.

My parents, Bonnie and Michael Klein, also provided helpful feedback,
and my father, who has spent a lifetime researching the risks of obstetrical interventions and advocating for women’s health, acted as a laughably overqualified research assistant in my investigations into the medical risks of fertility treatments. I am particularly grateful to my brother Seth Klein for his careful
and detailed edit, and to all of his colleagues at the B.C. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives for their groundbreaking work on climate justice.

My husband, Avi Lewis, is always my first reader and primary collaborator. On this project we made it official: as I have been writing this book, Avi has been directing a documentary film on the same subject, a parallel process that often allowed
us to research and travel together. The film work also fed into the book and though the film credits will do the real job of thanking the people involved, these acknowledgments would not be complete without some of our film collaborators, including: Joslyn Barnes, Katie McKenna, Anadil Hossain, Mary Lampson, Shane Hofeldt, Mark Ellam, Daniel Hewett, Chris Miller, Nicolas Jolliet, Martin Lukacs,
Michael Premo, Alex Kelly, Daphne Wysham, Jacqueline Soohen, as well as Ellen Dorsey, Tom Kruse, Cara Mertes, and Amy Rao for their tremendous support from the earliest days.

People we met and worked with in the field shaped this work in many ways, including Theodoros Karyotis, Apostolis Fotiadis, Laura Gottesdiener, Crystal Lameman, Alexis Bonogofsky, Mike Scott, Nastaran Mohit and Sofia Gallisá
Muriente, Wes Jackson, Phillip Whiteman Jr. and Lynette Two Bulls, David Hollander, and Charles Kovach, among many more.

Others who shared their expertise above and beyond include Soren Ambrose, Dan Apfel, Tom Athanasiou, Amy Bach, Diana Bronson, John Cavanagh, Stan Cox, Brendan DeMelle, Almuth Ernsting, Joss Garman, Justin Guay, Jamie Henn, Jess Housty, Steve Horn, Martin Khor, Kevin Koenig,
F. Gerald Maples, Lidy Nacpil, Michael Oppenheimer, Sam Randalls, Mark Randazzo, Janet Redman, Alan Robock, Mark Schapiro, Scott Sinclair, Rachel Smolker, Ilana Solomon, Matthew Stilwell, Jesse Swanhuyser, Sean Sweeney, Jim Thomas, Kevin Trenberth, Aaron Viles, Ben West, Ivonne Yanez, and Adam Zuckerman.

Many research institutions, NGOs, and media outlets provided valuable support, and I am particularly
grateful to the Climate Science Rapid
Response Team, DeSmogBlog, EJOLT (Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade), the Pembina Institute, Greenpeace Canada, the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, and Oil Change International. I rely heavily on Grist and Climate Progress for my climate news, and the wonderful writers at
Orion
for deeper analysis. And we would all be lost
without Democracy Now!’s unflagging commitment to covering climate when no one else will, providing free transcripts for every interview.

Many books and reports are acknowledged in the text and notes, but I am particularly grateful to: Mark Dowie for
Losing Ground
, Christine MacDonald for
Green Inc.
, Petra Bartosiewicz and Marissa Miley for
The Too Polite Revolution
, and Herbert Docena for his
writing on the history of carbon trading. Andreas Malm’s work on the history of coal had a huge influence on me, as have the complete works of Clive Hamilton. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson helped me to understand the underlying logic of extractivism, and Renee Lertzman, Kari Marie Norgaard, Sally Weintrobe, and Rosemary Randall made me see climate change denial in a whole new light.

The political
economy of the climate crisis is an incredibly dense field, and there is no way I could possibly cite all the critical thinkers who laid the foundation on which this book rests. Without hope of being exhaustive, let me mention a few whose work has been particularly important to my education and who have not been listed above: Joan Martínez Alier, Nnimmo Bassey, Robert D. Bullard, Erik M. Conway,
Herman Daly, Joshua Farley, John Bellamy Foster, David Harvey, Richard Heinberg, Tim Jackson, Derrick Jensen, Van Jones, Michael T. Klare, Winona LaDuke, Edgardo Lander, Carolyn Merchant, George Monbiot, Naomi Oreskes, Christian Parenti, Ely Peredo, Andrew Ross, Juliet B. Schor, Joni Seager, Andrew Simms, Pablo Solón, James Gustave Speth, Sandra Steingraber, and Peter Victor.

Publishing is a
finicky business, with more attention to detail than is at all fashionable. I am so grateful to all the people who labored over these important details, especially the stellar team at Simon & Schuster, including Johanna Li, Ruth Fecych, Fred Chase, and Phil Metcalf. At Knopf/Random House Canada, Amanda Lewis read diligently and contributed helpful editorial comments. Scott Richardson at Random House
of Canada is responsible for the book’s bold cover design. No one but Scott could have produced a design that would have convinced me to take my name off the
cover of my own book. Thank you in advance to the three talented and dedicated publicists responsible for launching this book into the world: Julia Prosser at Simon & Schuster, Shona Cook at Random House of Canada, and Annabel Huxley at Penguin
U.K. And thanks, too, to the lawyers who vetted this text: Brian MacLeod Rogers, Elisa Rivlin, and David Hirst.

Other researchers and
Nation
interns dipped in and out of the project over its five-year life, including: Jake Johnston, Dawn Paley, Michelle Chen, Kyla Neilan, Natasja Sheriff, Sarah Woolf, Eric Wuestewald, Lisa Boscov-Ellen, Saif Rahman, Diana Ruiz, Simon Davis-Cohen, Owen Davis,
and Ryan Devereaux. All did excellent work. Alonzo Ríos Mira provided invaluable help with interview transcriptions, as did several others.

My writing continues to be supported by The Nation Institute, where I am a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow, and the Institute generously provided office space to Rajiv throughout this project, while
The Nation
magazine did the same for Alexandra. I am grateful
to all my colleagues in the Nation orbit, in particular my editor, Betsy Reed, as well as to Katrina vanden Heuvel, Peter Rothberg, Richard Kim, Taya Kitman, Ruth Baldwin, and Esther Kaplan. Special thanks also to the Wallace Global Fund, the Lannan Foundation, and the NoVo Foundation for their support over the years.

Rajiv extends a special thank you to Hannah Shaw and to his parents, Durga
Mallampalli and Joseph Sicora. Alexandra does likewise to her parents, Robyn and Kenneth Shingler, Kent Tempus, and Denise Sheedy-Tempus, and to her grandmother Sandra Niswonger. We are all grateful for their understanding and support through this long and immersive project.

Friends with whom I have an ongoing and enriching conversation on these subjects include many of those listed above, as
well as Justin Podur, Clayton Thomas-Muller, Katharine Viner, Arthur Manuel, Harsha Walia, Andréa Schmidt, Seumas Milne, Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Robert Jensen, Michael Hardt, John Jordan, Raj Patel, Brendan Martin, Emma Ruby-Sachs, Jane Saks, Tantoo Cardinal, and Jeremy Scahill. Gopal Dayaneni and the whole gang at Movement Generation provide me with an ongoing education and no end of inspiration.
More personal thanks go to Misha Klein, Michele Landsberg, Stephen Lewis, Frances Coady, Nancy Friedland, David Wall, Sarah Polley, Kelly O’Brien, Cecilie Surasky and Caro
lyn Hunt, Sara Angel, Anthony Arnove, Brenda Coughlin, John Greyson, Stephen Andrews, Anne Biringer, Michael Sommers, Belinda Reyes, and Ofelia Whiteley.

My deepest thanks go to little Toma, for his truly heroic feats of toddler
patience. He is about to learn that the world is a lot bigger than our neighborhood.

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N.B.: In the interest of having an endnote section that is shorter than the main text, not every fact in the book has a citation. Facts for which sources are provided include: all quotes, statistics, data points, and facts relating to climate science and carbon mitigation, though often only when the fact first appears in the text and not on repeat references. Facts that do not fall into
these categories, but are controversial for some reason, are also sourced.

Sources are not provided for references to uncontroversial facts (usually news events) that can be easily confirmed with a keyword search. Facts that clearly come from the author’s personal reporting (but are not quotes) are also generally not sourced.

In cases where there are sources for multiple facts and quotes in
a paragraph, one superscript note number appears at the end of the paragraph rather than a number after each individual fact. In the notes section here, the sources are listed in the order in which the facts appear in the paragraph, unless otherwise indicated. This has been done in the interest of achieving a less-cluttered text and further shortening the length of the endnote section.