Naomi Klein talks climate justice at FAS

Naomi Klein, environmental activist and writer, spoke in Shriver Hall as part of the Foreign Affairs Symposium (FAS) on Tuesday. Klein, a Canadian, is known for her critically acclaimed books This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which discuss the relationships between climate change and capitalism, and the role governments should play in the economy.

She detailed how marginalized communities within societies are neglected by both the government and free-market economies. Climate change is often ignored, according to Klein, because its repercussions will only be felt in the long-term, and poor countries, those with the least sway internationally, will bear the brunt of climate-related disasters.

Prior to the talk, the Hopkins student group Refuel Our Future distributed orange badges outside of Shriver calling for the University to divest from fossil fuels. During the talk, Klein herself wore one of these orange badges and praised the efforts of the student group.

“We are a Johns Hopkins fossil fuel divestment campaign,” Refuel member Hannah Farkas said. “The idea is that Hopkins currently has a portion of its endowment invested in fossil fuel companies, which is really normal — almost every university has that. So we are out here handing out orange badges because orange is the color of the divestment campaign.”

Klein structured the talk by referencing numerous examples of current failures in dealing with the effects of climate change on human society, as well as examples of current movements that are successfully combatting those failures.

She began by addressing the UN climate change conference, COP21, that occurred in Paris in December. She provided moderate praise and bitter criticism for the agreement, citing the lack of a concrete action plan to reach the stated goals.

“Is what happened in Paris a political breakthrough or is it an ecological disaster? And the short answer is that it’s both. It’s the best that our leaders have come up with so far and it is still woefully inadequate,” Klein said. “So what is good in the deal? The most significant thing in the deal that we need to focus on and which is generally worth sharing is that [the conference] states its goal [is] keeping the globe from warming above two degrees Celsius or even 1.5, and that was the most significant thing that came out... Here’s the bad news: the same leaders who set those goals simultaneously and openly declared that they were unwilling to do the things necessary to achieve those goals.”

Klein said that the COP21 deal would be a disaster in the making, even if it were binding.

“Essentially what we have is a pretty good definition of safety coupled with a concrete plan for disaster,” Klein said. “We have political leaders who have said we know what we need to be doing, and we are willing to do roughly half that.”

Following this, Klein brought up the notion of “shock doctrine” in the context of Hurricane Katrina. She argued that after the devastation of the storm, the lack of spending on public infrastructure allowed self-seeking private interests to ingrain themselves in New Orleans.

“So you had the heavy weather which you are going to see more with climate change and the legacy of four decades of neglect by the public sphere,” Klein said. “After the initial shock of the storm came what I called the ‘shock doctrine.’ So the post-Katrina disaster plan was simple: Do away with the public sphere altogether, even though the failure of the public sphere is precisely what exacerbated the crisis.”

For the rest of the talk, Klein spoke about a variety of environmental issues such as the decline of the Canadian tar sands, fracking, the harm of free trade agreements and the Flint, Mich. water crisis. She tied them all to other social issues such as racism and discrimination against indigenous peoples.

Klein said issues of race, class, gender and ethnicity, among others, intersect and build upon each other. She implored like-minded groups to work together to address multifaceted problems around the world.

Klein also referenced several movements heading in the right direction to promote sustainability.

She discussed the protests against the construction of an incinerator in Curtis Bay, Md. by the group Free Your Voice, which was present at the FAS event. Klein also spoke about her own project, The Leap, which aims to provide positive solutions to Canada’s most pressing problems.

“[Leap] came out of a process of trying to articulate what our ‘yes [policy]’ looked like. So we hosted a gathering in Toronto with a group of leaders... and we let ourselves dream of the economy that we wanted. Instead of saying ‘no, no, no, this is what we don’t want’ we asked ‘what do we want?’” Klein said. “So the centerpiece of the [Leap manifesto] is about shifting from a culture of endless talking to a culture of caretaking, from extraction to a culture of care for each other and the planet.”

She ended her talk with a call for environmental activism.

“Although many establishment politicians fear change, people are hungry for it. At this late hour with so much to lose and so much to gain, now is not the time for small steps,” she said. “Now is the time for boldness. Now is the time to leap.”

In the question-and-answer session after the talk, Klein answered questions on a range of issues like veganism in the context of sustainability, the future of nuclear energy and technologies, and the role of free markets in promoting sustainability.

FAS member Hansel Romero described the event as a success.

“We expected a much smaller turnout than that of Edward Snowden, and we got just about exactly what we had hoped for, a few hundred people, and everything went well tech-wise,” Romero said. “I think that Naomi Klein gave a very riveting talk and that it engaged the community just how we had wanted it to.”

Hopkins students responded positively to the event, citing the skill of Klein as a speaker as well as the interesting content discussed.

“I thought it was extremely great. FAS always puts on amazing discussions, and I think that it should almost be a required part of the curriculum,” senior Bryan Ricciardi said. “I thought it was very informative, and it connected a lot of disparate issues, and it was delivered in a very eloquent way.”

Executive President of SGA Jack Bartholet said he appreciated that FAS invited Klein to campus.

“I actually wrote a bunch of papers on Ms. Klein, which is exciting. I agree with a lot of what she has to say, and I think it is fascinating, her take on intersectionality, in particular,” Bartholet said. “I think it was great that FAS brought her here, and I was really excited for it.”