This Changes Everything

by Naomi Klein

  48. Howarth provides a helpful overview of subsequent research on methane emissions from shale gas, arguing that this work has bolstered the key conclusions of the 2011 paper, in: Robert W. Howarth, “A Bridge to Nowhere: Methane Emissions and the Greenhouse Gas Footprint of Natural Gas,” Energy Science & Engineering 2(2014): 47–60. FIRST PEER-REVIEWED: Howarth, Santoro, and Ingraffea, “Methane and the Greenhouse-Gas Footprint of Natural Gas from Shale Formations,” 687; QUICK TO VOLUNTEER: Bryan Schutt, “Methane Emissions ‘Achilles’ Heel’ of Shale Gas, Cornell Professor Contends,” SNL Daily Gas Report, May 23, 2011; LACK OF TRANSPARENCY: Robert W. Howarth, Renee Santoro, and Anthony Ingraffea, “Venting and Leaking of Methane from Shale Gas Development: Response to Cathles et al.,” Climatic Change 113 (2012): 539–40; FOOTNOTE: “U.S. Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 2012,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, October 2013, p. ii; Scot M. Miller et al., “Anthropogenic emissions of methane in the United States,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110 (2013): 20018–20022; “Changing the Game? Emissions and Market Implications of New Natural Gas Supplies,” Energy Modeling Forum, Stanford University, EMF Report No. 26, Vol. 1, September 2013, p. vii; Shakeb Afsah and Kendyl Salcito, “Us Coal Exports Erode All Co2 Savings from Shale Gas,” CO2 Scorecard Group, March 24, 2014, http://www.co2scorecard.org.

  49. Stefan Wagstyl, “German Coal Use at Highest Level Since 1990,” Financial Times, January 7, 2014; Stefan Nicola and Ladka Bauerova, “In Europe, Dirty Coal Makes a Comeback,” Bloomberg Businessweek, February 27, 2014.

  50. Chester Dawson and Carolyn King, “Exxon Unit Seeks Canada Approval for Oil-Sands Project,” Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2013; “Environmental Responsibility,” Kearl, Operations, Imperial, http://www.imperialoil.ca; “Fuel for Thought: The Economic Benefits of Oil Sands Investment for Canada’s Regions,” Conference Board of Canada, October 2012, pp. 3, 9.

  51. Leila Coimbra and Sabrina Lorenzi, “BG to Spend $30 Billion on Brazil Offshore Oil by 2025,” Reuters, May 24, 2012; “Chevron Announces $39.8 Billion Capital and Exploratory Budget for 2014,” Chevron, press release, December 11, 2013; “Gorgon Project Overview,” Chevron, May 2014, pp. 1-2, http://www.chevronaustralia.com; Andrew Callus, “Record-Breaking Gas Ship Launched, Bigger One Planned,” Reuters, December 3, 2013; “A Revolution in Natural Gas Production,” Shell Global, http://www.shell.com.

  52. “Gorgon Project Overview,” p. 1; “Prelude FLNG in Numbers,” Shell Global, http://www.shell.com; “Operations: Kearl Oil Sands Project,” Overview, Imperial Oil, http://www.imperialoil.ca; “Sunrise Energy Project,” Husky Energy, http://www.huskyenergy.com; Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows, “Beyond ‘Dangerous’ Climate Change: Emission Scenarios for a New World,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369 (2011): 35.

  53. “Reserve-Replacement Ratio,” Investopedia Dictionary, http://www.investopedia.com.

  54. Fred Pals, “Shell Lagged Behind BP in Replacing Reserves in 2008,” Bloomberg, March 17, 2009; “Royal Dutch Shell Plc Strategy Update 2009—Final,” Fair Disclosure Wire, March 17, 2009; Robin Pagnamenta, “Anger as Shell Cuts Back on Its Investment in Renewables,” The Times (London), March 18, 2009; “Royal Dutch Shell Plc Updates on Strategy to Improve Performance and Grow,” Royal Dutch Shell, press release, March 16, 2010; Robert Perkins, “Shell Eyes 2012 Output of 3.5 Million Boe/d,” Platts Oilgram Price Report, March 17, 2010.

  55. “World Energy Outlook 2013,” International Energy Agency, 2013, pp. 471–72.

  56. “Exxon Mobil Corporation Announces 2011 Reserves Replacement,” ExxonMobil, press release, February 23, 2012.

  57. The figures given in this passage can vary, as there are different estimates of the carbon budget for limiting warming to 2°C. The original Carbon Tracker report relied on a seminal Nature paper published in 2009: James Leaton, “Unburnable Carbon: Are the World’s Financial Markets Carrying a Carbon Bubble?” Carbon Tracker Initiative, 2011, pp. 6–7; Malte Meinshausen et al., “Greenhouse-Gas Emission Targets for Limiting Global Warming to 2°C,” Nature 458 (2009): 1161. For an updated analysis from Carbon Tracker, refer to: James Leaton et al., “Unburnable Carbon 2013: Wasted Capital and Stranded Assets,” Carbon Tracker Initiative, 2013. For 2 degree carbon budget estimates in the latest IPCC Assessment Report, see: “Summary for Policymakers,” in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. T. F. Stocker et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 27–28. “THE THING TO NOTICE”: Bill McKibben, speech, New York City, Do the Math Tour, 350.org, November 16, 2012.

  58. John Fullerton, “The Big Choice,” Capital Institute, July 19, 2011; Leaton, “Unburnable Carbon,” p. 6.

  59. Total oil and gas industry lobby spending in 2013 was $144,878,531, according to the Center for Responsive Politics: “Oil & Gas,” OpenSecrets.org, Center for Responsive Politics, https://www .opensecrets.org; ELECTION SPENDING: “Oil and Gas: Long-Term Contribution Trends,” OpenSecrets.org, Center for Responsive Politics, https://www.opensecrets.org.

  60. Daniel Cayley-Daoust and Richard Girard, “Big Oil’s Oily Grasp: The Making of Canada as a Petro-State and How Oil Money is Corrupting Canadian Politics,” Polaris Institute, December 2012, p. 3; Damian Carrington, “Energy Companies Have Lent More Than 50 Staff to Government Departments,” Guardian, December 5, 2011.

  61. Google Finance historical price records for ExxonMobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips, BP, Anglo American, and Arch Coal between the dates of December 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009, particularly December 18.

  62. Suzanne Goldenberg, “Exxon Mobil Agrees to Report on Climate Change’s Effect on Business Model,” Guardian, March 20, 2014; “Energy and Carbon—Managing the Risks,” ExxonMobil, 2014, pp. 1, 8, 16.

  63. Personal email communication with John Ashton, March 20, 2014.

  64. Mark Dowie, Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 25.

  65. Yotam Marom, “Confessions of a Climate Change Denier,” Waging Nonviolence, July 30, 2013.

  66. “Paxman vs. Brand—Full Interview” (video), BBC Newsnight, October 23, 2013.

  67. “System Change—Not Climate Change,” A People’s Declaration from Klimaforum09, December 2009.

  68. Miya Yoshitani, “Confessions of a Climate Denier in Tunisia,” Asian Pacific Environment Network, May 8, 2013.

  69. Nick Cohen, “The Climate Change Deniers Have Won,” The Observer, March 22, 2014.

  70. Philip Radford, “The Environmental Case for a Path to Citizenship,” Huffington Post, March 14, 2013; Anna Palmer and Darren Samuelsohn, “Sierra Club Backs Immigration Reform,” Politico, April 24, 2013; “Statement on Immigration Reform,” BlueGreen Alliance, http://www .bluegreenalliance.org; May Boeve, “Solidarity with the Immigration Reform Movement,” 350 .org, March 22, 2013, http://350.org.

  71. Pamela Gossin, Encyclopedia of Literature and Science (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002), 208; William Blake, “And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time,” poem in The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 95.

  72. Personal interview with Colin Miller, March 14, 2011; Simon Romero, “Bus-Fare Protests Hit Brazil’s Two Biggest Cities,” New York Times, June 13, 2013; Larry Rohter, “Brazil’s Workers Take to Streets in One-Day Strike,” New York Times, July 11, 2013.

  CHAPTER 5: BEYOND EXTRACTIVISM

  1. Steve Stockman, Twitter post, March 21, 2013, 2:33 p.m. ET, https://twitter.com.

  2. Ben Dangl, “Miners Just Took 43 Police Officers Hostage in Bolivia,” Vice, April 3, 2014.

  3. Rodrigo Castro et al., “Human-Nature Interaction in World Modeling with Modelica,” prepared for the Proceedings of the 10th International Modelica Conference, March 10–12, 2014, http://www.ep.liu.se.

  4. Personal interview with Nerida-Ann Steshia Hubert, March 30, 2012.<
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  5. Hermann Joseph Hiery, The Neglected War: The German South Pacific and the Influence of World War I (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1995), 116–25, 241; “Nauru,” New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, updated December 9, 2013, http://wwww.mfat.govt.nz; “Nauru” (video), NFSA Australia, NFSA Films.

  6. Charles J. Hanley, “Tiny Pacific Isle’s Citizens Rich, Fat and Happy—Thanks to the Birds,” Associated Press, March 31, 1985; Steshia Hubert interview, March 30, 2012.

  7. “Country Profile and National Anthem,” Permanent Mission of the Republic of Nauru to the United Nations, United Nations, http://www.un.int; Jack Hitt, “The Billion-Dollar Shack,” New York Times Magazine, December 10, 2000.

  8. Hiery, The Neglected War, 116–25, 241; “Nauru,” New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

  9. Hitt, “The Billion-Dollar Shack”; David Kendall, “Doomed Island,” Alternatives Journal, January 2009.

  10. “Nauru” (video), NFSA Films.

  11. Philip Shenon, “A Pacific Island Is Stripped of Everything,” New York Times, December 10, 1995.

  12. Hitt, “The Billion-Dollar Shack”; Robert Matau, “Road Deaths Force Nauru to Review Traffic Laws,” Islands Business, July 10, 2013; “The Fattest Place on Earth” (video), Nightline, ABC, January 3, 2011; Steshia Hubert interview, March 30, 2012.

  13. Hitt, “The Billion-Dollar Shack”; “Nauru,” Country Profile, U.N. Data, http://data.un.org.

  14. “Nauru,” Overview, Rand McNally, http://education.randmcnally.com; Tony Thomas, “The Naughty Nation of Nauru,” The Quadrant, January/February 2013; Andrew Kaierua et al., “Nauru,” in Climate Change in the Pacific, Scientific Assessment and New Research, Volume 2: Country Reports, Australian Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO, 2011, pp. 134, 140; “Fresh Water Supplies a Continual Challenge to the Region,” Applied Geoscience and Technology Division, Secretariat of the Pacific Community, press release, January 18, 2011.

  15. Glenn Albrecht, “The Age of Solastalgia,” The Conversation, August 7, 2012.

  16. Kendall, “Doomed Island.”

  17. “Nauru: Phosphate Roller Coaster; Elections with Tough Love Theme,” August 13, 2007, via WikiLeaks, http://www.wikileaks.org.

  18. Nick Bryant, “Will New Nauru Asylum Centre Deliver Pacific Solution?” BBC News, June 20, 2013; Rob Taylor, “Ruling Clouds Future of Australia Detention Center,” Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2014; “Nauru Camp a Human Rights Catastrophe with No End in Sight,” Amnesty International, press release, November 23, 2012; “What We Found on Nauru,” Amnesty International, December 17, 2012; “Hundreds Continue 11-Day Nauru Hunger Strike,” ABC News (Australia), November 12, 2012.

  19. Bryant, “Will New Nauru Asylum Centre Deliver Pacific Solution?”; Oliver Laughland, “Nauru Immigration Detention Centre—Exclusive Pictures,” Guardian, December 6, 2013; “Hundreds Continue 11-Day Nauru Hunger Strike,” ABC News (Australia); “Police Attend Full-Scale Riot at Asylum Seeker Detention Centre on Nauru,” ABC News (Australia), July 20, 2013.

  20. “Nauru Camp a Human Rights Catastrophe with No End in Sight,” Amnesty International, press release, November 23, 2012; “UNHCR Monitoring Visit to the Republic of Nauru, 7 to 9 October 2013,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, November 26, 2013; Mark Isaacs, The Undesirables (Richmond, Victoria: Hardie Grant Books, 2014), 99; Deborah Snow, “Asylum Seekers: Nothing to Lose, Desperation on Nauru,” Sydney Morning Herald, March 15, 2014.

  21. “The Middle of Nowhere,” This American Life, December 5, 2003, http://www.thisamericanlife .org; Mitra Mobasherat and Ben Brumfield, “Riot on a Tiny Island Highlights Australia Shutting a Door on Asylum,” CNN, July 20, 2013; Rosamond Dobson Rhone, “Nauru, the Richest Island in the South Seas,” National Geographic 40 (1921): 571, 585.

  22. Marcus Stephen, “On Nauru, a Sinking Feeling,” New York Times, July 18, 2011.

  23. Francis Bacon, De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum, Works, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Devon Heath, Vol. 4 (London: Longmans Green, 1870), 296.

  24. William Derham, Physico-Theology: or, A demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, from His Works of Creation (London: Printed for Robinson and Roberts, 1768), 110.

  25. Barbara Freese, Coal: A Human History (New York: Penguin, 2004), 44.

  26. Emphasis in original. Many of the sources in this recounting were originally cited in Andreas Malm, “The Origins of Fossil Capital: From Water to Steam in the British Cotton Industry,” Historical Materialism 21 (2013): 31.

  27. J. R. McCulloch [unsigned], “Babbage on Machinery and Manufactures,” Edinburgh Review 56 (January 1833): 313–32; François Arago, Historical Eloge of James Watt, trans. James Patrick Muirhead (London: J. Murray, 1839), 150.

  28. C. H. Turner, Proceedings of the Public Meeting Held at Freemasons’ Hall, on the 18th June, 1824, for Erecting a Monument to the Late James Watt (London: J. Murray, 1824), pp. 3–4, as cited in Andreas Malm, “Steam: Nineteenth-Century Mechanization and the Power of Capital,” in Ecology and Power: Struggles over Land and Material Resources in the Past, Present, and Future, eds. Alf Hornborg, Brett Clark, and Kenneth Hermele (London: Routledge, 2013), 119.

  29. M. A. Alderson, An Essay on the Nature and Application of Steam: With an Historical Notice of the Rise and Progressive Improvement of the Steam-Engine (London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, 1834), 44.

  30. Asa Briggs, The Power of Steam: An Illustrated History of the World’s Steam Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 72.

  31. Jackson J. Spielvogel, Western Civilization: A Brief History, Volume II: Since 1500, 8th ed. (Boston: Wadsworth, 2014), 445.

  32. Herman E. Daly and Joshua Farley, Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2011), 10.

  33. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, “What’s in a Name? Rivalries and the Birth of Modern Science,” in Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery, and the Genius of the Royal Society, ed. Bill Bryson (London: Royal Society, 2010), 120.

  34. Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1903), 70.

  35. Clive Hamilton, “The Ethical Foundations of Climate Engineering,” in Climate Change Geoengineering: Philosophical Perspectives, Legal Issues, and Governance Frameworks, ed. Wil C. G. Burns and Andrew L. Strauss (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 58.

  36. Esperanza Martínez, “The Yasuní—ITT Initiative from a Political Economy and Political Ecology Perspective,” in Leah Temper et al., “Towards a Post-Oil Civilization: Yasunization and Other Initiatives to Leave Fossil Fuels in the Soil,” EJOLT Report No. 6, May 2013, p. 12.

  37. Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith (London: Verso, 2004), 154; Tim Flannery, Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet (New York: Grove), 185.

  38. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, as cited in John Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), 155.

  39. “Yearly Emissions: 1987,” CAIT database, World Resources Institute, http://cait.wri.org; Nicholas Stern, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [2006] 2007), 231; Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Mara Hvistendahl, “China’s Three Gorges Dam: An Environmental Catastrophe?” Scientific American, March 25, 2008; Will Kennedy and Stephen Bierman, “Free Khodorkovsky to Find Oil Industry Back in State Control,” Bloomberg, December 20, 2013; Tom Metcalf, “Russian Richest Lost $13 Billion as Global Stocks Fell,” Bloomberg, March 4, 2014.

  40. ROUGHLY 81 PERCENT: “Stockholm Action Plan for Climate and Energy, 2012–2015: With an Outlook to 2030,” Stockholm Environment and Health Administration, p. 12; MAJORITY STATE-OWNED: “Annual Report on Form 20-F,” Statoil, 2013, p. 117, http://www.statoil.com; TAR SANDS: “Oil Sands,” Statoil, http://www.statoil.com; ARCTIC: “Large-Scale Arctic Oil an
d Gas Drilling Decades Away,” Reuters, November 29, 2013; “Statoil Stepping Up in the Arctic,” Statoil, press release, August 28, 2012; IRAQ: “Iraq,” Our Operations, Annual Report 2011, Statoil, http://www.statoil.com; Stephen A. Carney, “Allied Participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom,” Center of Military History, United States Army, 2011, http://www.history.army.mil.

  41. Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (IPEA) data, http://www.ipeadata.gov.br; Mark Weisbrot and Jake Johnston, “Venezuela’s Economic Recovery: Is It Sustainable?” Center for Economic and Policy Research, September 2012, p. 26; “Ecuador Overview,” Ecuador, World Bank, http://www.worldbank.org; “Population Below National Poverty Line, Urban, Percentage,” Millienium Development Goals Database, U.N. Data, http://data.un.org.

  42. “Bolivia: Staff Report for the 2013 Article IV Consultation,” International Monetary Fund, February 2014, p. 6.

  43. Luis Hernández Navarro, “Bolivia Has Transformed Itself by Ignoring the Washington Consensus,” Guardian, March 21, 2012.

  44. ECUADOR: Nick Miroff, “In Ecuador, Oil Boom Creates Tensions,” Washington Post, February 16, 2014; BOLIVIA AND VENEZUELA: Dan Luhnow and José de Córdoba, “Bolivia Seizes Natural-Gas Fields in a Show of Energy Nationalism,” Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2006; ARGENTINA: “Argentine Province Suspends Open-Pit Gold Mining Project Following Protests,” MercoPress, January 31, 2012; “GREEN DESERTS”: “The Green Desert,” The Economist, August 6, 2004; BRAZIL: “The Rights and Wrongs of Belo Monte,” The Economist, May 4, 2013; RAW RESOURCES: Exports of Primary Products as Percentage of Total Exports, “Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean,” Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, United Nations, 2012, p. 101; CHINA: Joshua Schneyer and Nicolás Medina Mora Pérez, “Special Report: How China Took Control of an OPEC Country’s Oil,” Reuters, November 26, 2013.

  45. Eduardo Gudynas, “Buen Vivir: Today’s Tomorrow,” Development 54 (2011): 442–43; Martínez in Temper et al., “Towards a Post-Oil Civilization,” p.17; Eduardo Gudynas, “The New Extractivism of the 21st Century: Ten Urgent Theses About Extractivism in Relation to Current South American Progressivism,” Americas Program Report, Washington, D.C.: Center for International Policy, January 21, 2010.