Greta Thunberg became famous for her alarmist and apocalyptic speech on climate change. However, until now she hadn’t offered much specific advice on how to solve the problem. Now, the young Swedish activist has published The Climate Booka volume that includes essays by over a hundred different authors, including 18 contributions by Thunberg herself.
In one of her texts, the Scandinavian ecologist charges against industrialization and capitalism as follows:
“The Industrial Revolution, fueled by slavery and colonization, brought unimaginable wealth to the Global North and, in particular, to its economic elites. This extreme injustice is the foundation on which our modern societies are built.“.
However, what really happened thanks to industrialization and capitalism was an unprecedented increase in the world population, motivated precisely by the fact that the incidence of hunger and poverty decreased. Thus, the global population went from 1,000 to 8,000 million people in the heat of this development. Similarly, it is not correct to say that capitalism only contributed to improving the lives of a small minority. In 1820, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty reached a rate of 90 percent globally. Instead, this same percentage is reduced today to 9 percent.
Despite the evidence, the book is full of harsh criticism of capitalism. Throughout almost 500 pages, there are only two sentences in which Thunberg admits that other economic systems have also had a negative impact on the environment. Here is one of them:
“Leaving capitalist consumerism and the market economy as the dominant administrators of the only known civilization in the universe probably seems like a terrible idea. But keep in mind that, if we talk about sustainability, all previous systems have failed equally. The same is true of all current political ideologies: socialism, liberalism, communism, conservatism, centrism… You name it. They have all failed. But, to be fair, some have certainly failed more than others.“.
Thunberg does not explicitly reveal which systems have failed more than others and, in fact, her argument implicitly points against capitalism, to which she dedicates all her criticisms. Nevertheless, the data shows that environmental destruction in socialist countries was much worse than that observed in capitalist countries. For example, in East Germany there were three times as many CO2 emissions than in the capitalist half of my country.
Despite the data, Thunberg insists that it is capitalism that is conspiring against the climate. In The Climate Book He blames politicians for being “slaves to big oil and financial companies.” In the same way, he charges against the media, “which is just taking its first steps to cover the climate crisis (…). This type of news should dominate every news program, every political discussion, every business meeting and every second of our daily life. But that’s not what’s happening.”
It is worth asking what kind of information agenda this proposal from Thunberg would leave us with. After all, the idea of bombarding the population with constant references to one type of circumstance or another is rather reminiscent of the propaganda typical of totalitarian states. However, that is what Thunberg proposes in The Climate Bookwhich in fact includes other contributions by authors who reproach the media for offering the point of view of researchers or experts who do not share the alarmism professed by the most exalted wing of environmentalism.
Thunberg also regrets that “there are no laws or restrictions in force that force us to take the necessary measures to safeguard our future living conditions on planet Earth.” He laments that “the world is run by cis straight, white, middle-aged men who have grown up in a privileged environment” and considers that this type of people “are terribly inadequate” to deal with the climate crisis of which he warns us.
His co-author Sonja Guajajara cautions that “we need indigenous women at the center of the fight for the future of humanitybecause in their native communities it is we, the indigenous women, who are in charge of managing and conserving the ecosystems and preserving knowledge through memory and custom”.
Greta devotes a paragraph to nuclear power, which she summarily rejects as a possible solution. The technologies to extract CO2 from the air are also dismissed by the author, who describes them as “a joke”. She, too, is not convinced by solar geoengineering because “it arouses fierce resistance among aboriginal peoples.” And, as for electric vehicles, they are not a viable solution either because “they are only an option available to the rich and powerful.”
An eco-planned economy
Kevin Andersenanother of the co-authors of the book, defends that the State should determine “the number of houses that we can have and the size of these properties, the frequency with which we fly and the type of seat we use, the type of cars we drive and the distances we travel with them, the size of the offices we occupy at work, the international meetings and conferences we attend, the frequency with which we travel…”.
The pearls of the book do not end there. Kate Raworth It proposes that the state phase out “private jets, mega-yachts, cars that run on fossil fuels, short-haul flights, and frequent flyer rewards and rewards programs.” Seth Klein He calls for launching “a new generation of public corporations” capable of producing “correctly, at the required scale.” In addition, he regrets that there is not “more government advertising dedicated to increasing the level of climate literacy of the population.”
The book also contains articles from Naomi Klein y Thomas Piketty. The Canadian author calls for raising taxes on the rich and cutting spending on security to finance the fight against climate change. The French economist calls for all people to be assigned a limit of CO2 rights and, if they want to exceed it, they must pay the corresponding price.
Ultimately, the entire content of the book leads to the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by an eco-planned economy that would allow the state to determine every facet of human life, deciding what individuals and companies can and cannot do. A totalitarian dystopia that Thunberg defends as the only possible way out
Rainer Zitelmann is a businessman, doctor in History and Sociology and author of more than 20 books. His latest releases in Spanish are “Capitalism is not the problem, it is the solution“(Publishing Union, 2021),”The rich in public opinion” (2022) and “In defense of the free market” (Unión Editorial, publication scheduled for 2023).
