6 The Nation. October 7, 2019
ILLUSTRATION BY ANDY FRIEDMAN
The essays collected in Naomi Klein’s
new book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case
for a Green New Deal, come together
around a central verdict: that the climate
crisis cannot be separated from
colonialism, indigenous geno-
cide, and slavery. These histor-
ical processes established not
only the extractive industries
that have led to climate change
but also an extractive mind-
set, “a way of viewing both the
natural world and the majority
of its inhabitants as resources
to use up,” Klein writes. For her,
the best way to fight both is
with the Green New Deal, which
offers a way to “get clean” as
well as to “begin to redress the
founding crimes of our nations.”
—Lynne FeeleyLF: Many of the essays focus
on what you call the “deep
stories” that are interfering
with people’s willingness to
confront the climate crisis. Can
you discuss what these stories
are and how they are blocking
climate action?
NK: Some are the economic
stories of neoliberalism—about
how things go terribly wrong
when people try to work to-
gether and how, if we just get
out of the way of the market,
the benefits will trickle down to
everyone else.
But the deeper story is
about our relationship to the
natural world. In settler colo-
nial countries like the United
States, Canada—where I was
born—and Australia, conti-
nents were “discovered” when
Europe was hitting its own
ecological boundaries, whenit had felled its great forests,
when its own fish stocks had
collapsed, and when it had
hunted its great animals to ex-
tinction. If you look at how the
early European explorers were
describing this cornucopia of
nature, it was, “We will never
run out of nature again.”
So the idea of limitless na-
ture is baked into the stories
of settler colonial countries. I
think this is why resistance to
climate action is strongest in
these countries, why it is not
just a threat to a right-wing
worldview that thinks that the
market is always right but a
fundamental threat to these
national narratives.LF: Your essay “Season of
Smoke” is a personal narrative
of the summer of 2017, when
you were on the Sunshine Coast
in British Columbia. It’s differ-
ent, in part because your son,
Toma, is at the center of it. Why
did you choose this form?
NK: When we think about disas-
ters, we think of very dramatic
events. But that experience of
just being in the smoke for well
over a month, being aware of
how much of the continent was
similarly choking on smoke—it
isn’t dramatic. It’s just this
low-level kind of despair, the
physical manifestation of lack
of possibility. I decided to write
it as a diary, as opposed to a re-
ported piece, to capture that—the length of it, the grind of it.
It’s definitely one of the sadder
pieces. People are constantly
accusing me of being hopeful
just because I haven’t complete-
ly given up. Is that really what
qualifies as hope these days?
In terms of writing about
my son, Toma, I think we write
about what we know, and we
write about our lives. There’s
room for clinical writing on
climate change, and we need
those good scientific papers.
But for people who are trying
to reach people’s hearts, I
don’t think we should take
ourselves out of it. We need
to help other people find ways
to express their grief and their
anger and their hope and
their love of what they want
to protect by risking doing it
ourselves.LF: You write that much of
what will determine the suc-cess of the Green New Deal
will involve actions taken by
social movements, but you
end the book with a discussion
of the 2020 election in the
United States. How do you see
the stakes of the election when
it comes to climate justice?
NK: The stakes of the election
are almost unbearably high.
It’s why I wrote the book and
decided to put it out now and
why I’ll be doing whatever I can
to help push people toward
supporting a candidate with
the most ambitious Green New
Deal platform. I think we des-
perately need a new story and
a sense of common purpose.
The Green New Deal is really
our best shot at building that
kind of common purpose—of
putting electoral power behind
the movements that are orga-
nizing from below and pushing
for their vision.QPeople are
constantly
accusing me of
being hopeful just
because I haven’t
completely given
up. Is that really
what qualifies as
hope these days?