On Fire

April 1, 2019

Moving from the threatened Great Barrier Reef, West Coast forest fires, and hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico to the environmental consequences of rapid human evolution, journalist/crusader Klein argues for bold new moves that will counteract climate change while assuring social justice. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2019
An impassioned anthology of the author's evidence-based pleas to alleviate climate change. In her latest book, Intercept senior correspondent Klein (Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies/Rutgers Univ.; This Changes Everything: Capitalism Versus the Climate, 2015, etc.) presents pieces, some of which have been updated, from 2010 to 2019. Whether revised or not, most still resonate; the masterful, newly composed, 53-page introduction alone is worth the cover price. What separates Klein from many other advocates for a Green New Deal is her balanced combination of idealism and politics-based realism. The idealism shines through as she discusses the need for systemic change across the globe. The realism becomes apparent as she explains the huge obstacles to progressive policies put in place by elected politicians, private-sector corporate leaders, and omnipresent lobbyists, most of whom rarely care about the overarching public interest and can spend money at will to further their agendas. Throughout her urgent essays, Klein lucidly expresses her incredulity that huge swaths of humanity fail to recognize the critical nature of our current climate crisis. She believes that mass destruction will occur during many readers' lifetimes, with their children and grandchildren suffering even greater losses. Alterations in individual behaviors--if enough individuals willingly participate--can lead to short-term alleviation, but long-term systemic change must follow immediately. The author's most compelling extended example is the account of how 15-year-old Greta Thunberg of Sweden has influenced countless people to join in her advocacy. "Listening to Thunberg speak about how our collective climate inaction had nearly stolen her will to live seemed to help others feel the fire of survival in their own bellies," writes Klein. The author also explores historical instances of systemic change to determine if the New Deal proposed by Franklin Roosevelt serves as the most appropriate analogy for the currently circulating Green New Deal. Klein wisely ranges beyond the U.S. and her native Canada when presenting evidence and explaining obstacles. Another important addition to the literature on the most essential issue of our day.

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August 5, 2019
Klein (This Changes Everything) makes a case for a Green New Deal in a treatise high on passion, but low on specifics. It consists largely of reprinted writings—reporting, think pieces, public talks—with brief notes providing updates. After an account of speaking at a 2015 Vatican press conference on Pope Francis’s climate change encyclical, Klein comments that the Church’s encouraging gesture now seems overshadowed by a lack of accountability over its sexual abuse crisis. These retrospective pieces lack the urgency of the book’s lengthy introduction about fostering “economies built both to protect and to regenerate the planet’s life support system and to respect and sustain the people who depend on them.” In the brief epilogue, Klein returns to the book’s main thrust and argues the Green New Deal still has a “fighting chance.” But even that formulation acknowledges the difficulties involved, and her more extravagant proposals—for instance, transforming every post office in her native Canada into a “hub for green transition”—don’t encourage confidence in her ambitious program. Klein’s cri de coeur (“when the future of life is at stake, there is nothing we cannot achieve”) will galvanize some and depress others. Agent: Anthony Arnove, Roam Agency.

September 1, 2019
As the Green New Deal becomes a staple of 2020 presidential campaigns and languishes in the quagmire of Congress, the public may become confused as to what this potentially landmark piece of legislation actually entails, why it is necessary, how it was created, and who stands in its way. Long a vocal advocate for environmental activism and awareness, journalist and bestselling author Klein (No Is Not Enough, 2017) has investigated climate change on a global scale and brings her informed perspective to a series of probing essays and rousing speeches that trace the movement from climate concerns to an environmental emergency. Whether speaking at a Vatican conference on a papal climate encyclical or investigating the extreme disasters of wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, and floods, Klein's passion for action reflects the political, social, and scientific gridlock that makes such sweeping, transformational legislation imperative. Her zeal and eloquence will inspire, engage, and motivate those who are concerned about the planet's future to become even more involved in taking any and all possible steps to curb or reverse further disruption and destruction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)