TORONTO - Naomi Klein says she’s working on a new book that examines the debate over how best to rein in carbon emissions, saying the issue has galvanized people the same way the anti-corporate movement did 10 years ago.
The journalist and activist documented that time in her seminal book "No Logo," which is being re-released this weekend with an updated introduction.
The Toronto-based writer says simmering global arguments over the environment will boil over at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference, set for Copenhagen next month.
Klein predicts a clash in Copenhagen between those who believe the climate crisis can be solved by market-based solutions like carbon trading and those who want firm emissions caps.
She says she’ll be at the summit to research her book, as well as speak at a people’s summit and report daily for several alternative publications.
Klein is marking the 10th anniversary of her anti-corporate book, "No Logo," with a new edition that includes her take on the Wall Street bailout and the rise of the "Obama Brand," which she deems "the most powerful brand in the world right now."
She credits her first book’s mammoth success to good timing, noting her call-to-arms was published just as tens of thousands of protesters shut down a meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle.
They were part of the very movement Klein documented in her book, "No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies."
Today, Klein says that same grassroots spirit is fuelling a battle over the environment at the upcoming UN summit.
"It is absolutely going to be a war in Copenhagen," says Klein, noting that debate will focus on carbon trading and the notion of "climate debt," which argues that rich countries bear a responsibility to fund the environmental futures of poorer countries.
"I’m hearing more and more young environmentalists saying, ’We think the way to solve this crisis is to leave fossil fuels in the ground,’ and this is particularly important in the Canadian context where we are extracting some of the absolutely, most lethal, dirtiest forms of fossil fuels in the oil sands and the tarsands."
Meanwhile, measures that turn carbon into a tradeable commodity are drawing strong opposition from environmentalists around the world, she says.
"Particularly after witnessing the dangers of these very complex financial instruments in the context of the financial crisis, people are rightfully suspicious of the idea of trusting our most pressing challenge as a species to these same market forces," she says.
