Research- 'This changes Everything' Naomi Klein

Started 21st November 2016- Finished February 2017

This Changes Everything:

Capitalism vs. The Climate

Book by Naomi Klein

‘The real reason we are failing to rise to the climate moment is because the actions required directly challenge our reigning economic paradigm ( deregulated capitalism and public austerity), the stories on which western cultures are founded ( that we stand apart from nature and can outsmart its limits), as well as  many of the activities that form our identities and define our communities.’

‘birth a new consciousness’

Pivotal and relentless insight into how and why the globalization agenda of modern day is allowing such disastrous projects to go unnoticed and overlooked by so many ‘major figures’. The greedy power structure created within our society is stopping measures for improvement and seemingly heading toward a self-fulfilling prophecy of disaster. Although once the situation could have been salvaged, the lack of action means an entire globalization re-structure would be needed to improve the situation now. Facts and research presented within this book not only shocked me but made me sick to my stomach of the selfish west continuing to pollute and impact ‘less developed’ countries too much. Therefore, the work I produce could not be self-indulgent art. Creative minds are needed to be the voice of the voiceless and less powerful due to the repressive global hand of environmental change and legislation.

The writing within the book brings to light the vital examples of past failings and evidence of modern corporate governments placing priority upon economy and profit instead of humanity. The classic example of humans but no humanity. The lack of collective mindset is spread through our own consumerist lives being fed a constant feed of what we should want and need. As I read I felt irony dawn as there are many, within the same institution as myself, training to attract this consumer and expand business and often unnecessary industry continue to contribute to the ever expanding and polluting west. The task of education should be treated in the direction of a new mind improving the future. Not selfish gain of the ‘best job’ or car/wage. The facts and figures within this book have helped me strongly argue further for my own practice. Change is possible, however capitalism must be tackled fully and without compromise. Government re-structure seems a small price to pay for the continuation of not only human life but all life that we have claimed. The book also highlighted many deny the issues as an attack on government, corporate and capitalism. They’d be correct as the two can not go hand in hand. Therefore my own work needs to take this on board and my further work will aim to honestly convey direct facts and truth as well as metaphorical inference.

‘In an extractivist economy, the interconnections among these various objectified components of life are ignored; the consequences of severing them are of no concern’

‘Make Europe richer, he also helped make many other parts of the world poorer, carbon-fueled inequalities that persist to this day. Indeed, coal was the black ink in which the story of modern capitalism was written’

1989 Time Magazine’s cover (referenced within book)

Historical irony due to the fact that the issue was released in 1988. The issue is still relevant, if not more relevant today.

Cover story extract-

‘No, not forever. At the outside limit, the earth will probably last another 4 billion to 5 billion years. By that time, scientists predict, the sun will have burned up so much of its own hydrogen fuel that it will expand and incinerate the surrounding planets, including the earth. A nuclear cataclysm, on the other hand, could destroy the earth tomorrow. Somewhere within those extremes lies the life expectancy of this wondrous, swirling globe. How long it endures and the quality of life it can support do not depend alone on the immutable laws of physics. For man has reached a point in his evolution where he has the power to affect, for better or worse, the present and future state of the planet.’

'The marked based climate solutions favored by so many large foundations and adopted by many greens have provided an invaluable service to the fossil fuel sector as a whole. For one, they succeeded in taking what began as a straightforward debate about shifting away from fossil fuels and put it through a jargon generator so convoluted that the entire climate issue came to seem too complex and arcane for non-experts to understand, seriously undercutting the potential to build a mass movement capable of taking on powerful polluters'

As I progress with reading the book the focus shifts to the irony of many large organisations in favour of 'saving the environment'. The fact then many have direct links, funding or investment within these companies shocked me. The system is built for profit and a large scale mentality shift will be needed to alter this infrastructure. Unfortunately, the same structure is so intertwined with politics and international affairs that separation seems  unlikely without intervention. The compliance of the everyday onlooker, or the small campaigns/action is not enough to alter the issue. Modern climate action can no longer be viewed from a past lenses. The lack of time is the first reason and the scale of the problem is the second.

Therefore, as I continue into reading and research around the subject I begin to struggle with everyday interaction. Interaction with those I feel feed the problem more than others, interaction with individuals so unaware of the world's problems. This drives my desire to understand willful blindness and social cognition more to aim to ultimately alter it.

'Vast economic incentives exist to invent pills that would cure alcoholism or drug addiction, and much snake oil gets peddled claiming to provide such benefits. Yet substance abuse has not disappeared from society. Given the addiction of modern civilization to cheap energy, the parallel out to be unnerving to anyone who believes that technology alone will allow us to pull the climate rabbit out of the fossil-fuel hat....The hopes that many greens place in a technological fix are an expression of high- modernist faith in the unlimited power of science and technology as profound-and as rational-as Augustine's faith in Christ'Political scientist William Barnes and intellectual historian Gils Nilman, 2011

'Building a world is not rocket science its far more complicated than that'

Technology is believed to being a saving force within our world. Medicine creates solutions to the problems of unnatural content in our foods making us unwell. Ever developing social interaction allows us to seemingly become closer to our loved ones. This virtual age however, has done more harm than good when concerning global response to crisis. This is due to the overemphasis on personal gain and profit. The drive to have the best technologies through a good wage leaves the overall collective lacking greatly. Therefore uniting against the providers of such technologies becomes near impossible due to the unconscious belief of many that money equates success.

'In a sane world, this cluster of disasters, layered on top of a larger climate crisis, would have prompted political change. Caps and moratoriums would have been issues, and the shift away from extreme energy would have begun. The fact that nothing of the sort has happened, and that permits and leases are still being handed out for ever more dangerous extractive activities, is at least partly due to old-fashioned corruption'

'So how do you change a worldview, an unquestioned ideology? Part of it involves choosing the right early policy battles- game~changing ones that don't merely aim to change laws but change patterns of thought. That means that a fight for a minimal carbon tax might do a lot less good than, for instance, forming a grand coalition to demand a guaranteed minimum income. That's not only because minimal income makes it possible for workers to say no to dirty energy jobs but also because the very process of arguing for a universal social safety net opens up a space for a full-throated debate about value'

In the final chapter of this amazing book I was greeted with the questions that my own art practice has been addressing for a long time. How do we change mindsets and the views of individuals that live everyday engrossed within the problem, surrounded by capitalist greed and self interested consumerism. One route is to re-ignite pride and collectivism, something that can unite us all, something such as nature. As nature is most at risk from our current behaviours, this is why my work fights to appreciate the natural forms and highlight the failings of the 'powers that be'to protect it. The viewer can therefore recognize that although the governments are meant to have their best interests at heart, they so often do not or legislation would have been passed already reducing the need for mass movement and mobilizations against the detrimental future for the human race and other life forms. Therefore I am working for a collaboration with a psychologist to try and investigate how these long standing mindsets can be addressed. 

'As the sociologist Kari Norgaard  puts it in 'living in denial'. a fascinating exploration of the way almost all of us suppress the full reality of the climate crisis, 'denial can and I believe should-be understood as testament to our human capacity for empathy, compassion, and an underlying sense of moral imperative to respond, even as we fail to do so'
'Fundamentally, the task is to articulate not just an alternative set of policy proposals but an alternative worldview to rival the one at the heart of the ecological crisis-embedded in interdependence rather than hyper-individualism, reciprocity rather than dominance and cooperation rather than hierarchy' 

This willful blindness is also an aspect I aim to investigate within my art through links to surrealism and the subconscious suppression of thoughts. This often surfaces through the use of colour within my work or the repeated pattern of lines tracing one another, this is what I call the 'minds trace' as it mimics how all thoughts and therefore aspects of life are intertwined and can not be separated. This metaphorically shows how society functions the same with every action having a consequence, often detrimental to the poorest and most disadvantaged people.