CLASSROOM

CURRICULUM
GUIDE
 In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another
issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix
an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds
the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to
simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and
rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the
climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and
the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates
precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead
make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction
methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.

NAOMI KLEIN
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times/Redux

and author of the New York Times and #1 international bestseller

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Her first
book, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, was also an
international bestseller, translated into over 25 languages with
more than a million copies in print. The New York Times called
it “a movement bible.” Klein is a contributing editor for Harper’s
Magazine and reporter for Rolling Stone, and writes a syndicated column for The Nation
and The Guardian. She is a member of the board of directors of 350.org, a global
grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at
The Nation Institute, and a former Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics.

Follow @NaomiAKlein | @ThisChanges

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

This classroom guide was created by Carolina S. Sarmiento, an
Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the
School of Human Ecology and an affiliate with the Department
of Urban and Regional Planning. She is a graduate from both
World Arts and Cultures and Urban Planning from UCLA, where
she obtained her BA and MA. She received her PhD from UCI
in Planning, Policy, and Design. Her research investigates the
intersection between urban development, governance, and the creation and destruction
of cultural spaces in working class communities of color.

Contact her at [email protected].

“What we’re really talking about, if we’re honest with ourselves, is transforming
everything about the way we live on this planet.”
—Rebecca Tarbotton, Executive Director of the Rainforest Action Network, 1973–2012

THIS CHANGES
EVERYTHING
THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS CURRICULUM IS TO SERVE AS A
COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING.
All of these activities require application to specific classroom contexts and student
experiences. According to popular education philosophy, individuals’ own life
experiences are integral to the learning environment. The classroom is a place where
the student’s own knowledge and experiences are acknowledged and where they
can engage with new ways of learning and information. Learning planning requires
an understanding of how practice is linked to the personal and to the theoretical.
The challenge is to teach skills that not only deal with the reading but can also help
students become active and conscious members of a community that is not limited to
geography but is historically, politically, and socially linked to larger global processes.
Teaching is part of social transformation and the classroom is not a place for passivity
or false consensus but rather a place to critique, discuss, and engage in new ways of
learning and knowledge. Discussion questions are meant to engage the students in
conversation and further exploration of concepts and ideas after reading each chapter.
Essay questions require further exploration through reading, research, and analysis.
Classroom activities include individual, group, and class exercises that may require
more than one day. Suggested further readings are only a few suggestions to bring in
new perspectives to the conversation.
“I love that smell of the emissions.” —Sarah Palin, 2011

INTRODUCTION
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. How do you conceptualize the relationship between the environment, society,
and nature?

2. What do you understand by the politics of austerity? How is austerity

determined? How do we measure it? And who decides when a period of austerity
is over? How would you/we know?

3. Why might some progressives be climate deniers besides the reasons that Klein
states?

4. What do you understand is the “this” and “everything” in the title? What kind of
“change” is Klein referring to?

5. What are some of the issues that intersect with climate change that move us
toward a deeper understanding of climate justice?

6. What are some of the different frameworks and perspectives that might help us
understand issues of climate change? What framework is Klein coming from?
Are there certain perspectives that she doesn’t mention in this introduction that
you think are important?

7. What are some of the distinguishing characteristics between mass movements

and political transformations?

8. As climate events are related to migration, what political and economic impact
do these have on nation states, citizenship, and rights? Can you provide
examples of rights and protections that exist beyond the nation state either at
higher scales or even locally?
ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. According to Klein, some mass movements have won major political victories.
She includes civil rights, abolitionism, sex discrimination, and apartheid. What
are some of the conditions that led to these developments? What are the
necessary conditions for this transformation? What are some challenges that
political movements face? Are mass movements always political?

2. What were the historical conditions that led to the Marshall Plan? What were
some of the economic and political motives involved? Draw a comparison
to some of those and today’s political and economic conditions. Draw up a
Marshall Plan for the Earth. What elements would it include? Who would be
involved? How would decisions be made?

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Whose problem is it? Take the climate of the classroom by measuring how
urgent students think climate change really is. Create a thermometer for
different issues and see what students think is important. What are some of the
differences? Who thinks certain issues are important? What process should you
use to determine priorities?

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Herman, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky. 1988. Manufacturing Consent: The Political
Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon: New York.

Harvey, David. 2008. “The Right to the City.” New Left Review.

Norgaard, Kari Marie. 2011. Living in Denial: Climate change, Emotions and Everyday
Life. MIT Press: Cambridge.
1 | THE RIGHT IS RIGHT:
THE REVOLUTIONARY POWER
OF CLIMATE CHANGE
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Pinpoint how and why worldviews and political beliefs shape attitudes toward
global warming. How important are attitudes in making change? How do
attitudes change?

2. What did you understand by cultural cognition and how does this inform your
own preferred vision for the good society? How does this relate to questions of
objectivity when discussing research and solutions to global climate change?

3. Where does the right and capacity of humankind to establish a mastery over
nature come from? What are some of the mechanisms that help sustain and
reproduce these perspectives?

4. What role and responsibility do researchers have in managing the political

consequences of research and scientific findings? Who is ultimately responsible
for how the research is used?

5. We often use “egalitarian” and “communitarian” as political concepts and

discussions. Does this change when cultural cognition studies vindicate them as
laws of nature? Does this challenge the division between nature and politics?

6. Klein argues that “adaptation” is not enough. Do you agree with this argument?

7. What are some values that can be considered outside of capitalism? What are
some spaces that express these values? Are spaces “outside of capitalism” even
possible?

8. How would you measure global equity and how would you know when you see it?
What different methodologies would you use to study global equity?

ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Identify distinct visions and worldviews of the good society. What are the values
included in each? How does the way in which information is filtered shape these
visions and plans?
 2. Provide examples of “gentle market mechanisms” versus “heavy duty
interventions.” What are the different discourses and what are the intended
consequences of each?

3. Draw connections among seemingly disparate struggles. What are the histories
behind these struggles and what current conditions are significant in bringing
them together (e.g., police brutality, wages, health care, gun reform, and the
climate)?

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Review newspapers and make an inventory of when and how the environment is
mentioned. Describe when and how it is mentioned and for what purpose. What
type of article is it about? What is the tone?

2. Divide the class into groups. Have each group examine a cultural narrative
about what people are doing here on earth, such as a creation story about our
purpose here on earth. How do these relate to the narrative behind a policy or
community based movement?

3. Follow the money for a policy. Identify the political actors, the campaign
contributors, and the discourse behind each of the policies. As part of the activity,
keep track of some of the barriers to following the money. What information is
available? What skills are necessary (Freedom of Information Act requests)?

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Friedmann, John. 1979. The Good Society. MIT Press: Cambridge.

Friedmann, John. 2000. “The Good City: In Defense of Utopian Thinking.” International
Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24(2): 460–72.

Boykoff, M. and D. Crow. Eds. 2014. Culture, Politics and Climate change. Routledge
Press: London.

Sinclair,Upton, 1935. I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked.

McCright and Riley Dunlap. 2011. “Cool Dudes: The Denial of climate change Among
Conservative White Males in the United States.” Global Environmental Change 21:
1167–1171.

Solnit, Rebecca. 2009. Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary communities that Arise
in Disaster. Penguin: New York.

Gudeman, S. and A. Rivera. 1998. “Sustaining Community, Resisting the Market:

Guatemalan Perspectives” in J.F. Richards (ed.), Land, Property and the Environment,
86–118. ICS Press: Oakland.
2 | HOT MONEY:
HOW FREE MARKET FUNDAMENTALISM
HELPED OVERHEAT THE PLANET
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What are some examples of policies that require governments to not make
distinctions between goods produced by local companies and goods produced
by foreign firms?

2. What does the hierarchy between trade and climate agreements imply about our
political values?

3. What are the connections between trade agreements, pollution, and labor
exploitation?

4. What implications does localizing our economies have on climate change? Are
there some negative consequences?

5. What are some of the dangers of solely considering economic development as

economic growth?

6. What is deindustrialization and how can green industry serve as a response? Or

can it?

7. What are some of the deterrents to the free market argument that consumers
need the cheapest products so that the green transition can happen as quickly
as possible?

8. Explain how the structure of food systems drives climate change.

ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. What is the history of NAFTA and what is the connection between pollution and
labor exploitation? How does this set a low precedent for new trade agreements?
Give a more current example.

2. Read the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and document the most obvious trade implications.
What are some climate implications of trade agreements?

3. Describe two of the policy pillars of the neoliberal age and provide contemporary
examples and impacts on everyday life. Provide a comprehensive policy or program
that makes low carbon choices easy but would also present a challenge to one of
these pillars.

4. What are some examples of how the political trumps the legal and vice versa?

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Create a timeline that draws the parallels between climate and trade
negotiations post 1989. Include different mass mobilizations and sites of
resistance.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Bluestone, B. and B. Harrison. 1982. “Capital vs. Community”. The Deindustrialization
of America. 3–21.

Stern, Nicholas. 2012. The Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change.
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

Vermeulen, Sonja J. Bruce M. Campbell and John SI Ingram. 2012. “Climate Change
and Food Systems.” Annual Review of Environment 37: 195.

Jackson, Tim. 2009. Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet.
Earthscan: London.

Agyeman, Julian and Tom Evans. 2003. “Toward Just Sustainability in Urban
Communities: Building Equity Rights with Sustainable Solutions,” ANNALS 590
November.

Bell, Michael. 2009. “The Problem of the Original Capitalist.” Environment and
Planning: 1–16.
3 | PUBLIC AND PAID FOR:
OVERCOMING THE IDEOLOGICAL
BLOCKS TO THE NEXT ECONOMY
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What are some examples of privatization that impacts us everyday? What would
reversing privatization look like?

2. What is the logic of austerity? Who is responsible and what are some of the
most often-proposed austerity solutions?

3. What makes natural disasters unnatural? What else besides disasters could help
surface that “something” that Klein argues is “uncovered”?

4. Is the idea of rationing American? Are examples of companies who have paid for
their pollution (forced to do so by law) American?

5. What different forms of public can we think of (space, services, places)? Does
any of this make a difference in terms of privatization?

6. Can you construct a more populist critique of American consumerism? Is

consumerism a form of populism?

7. What are some of the forms of governance at different scales that can impact
climate change? Is one scale inherently more or less democratic?

ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Define the concept of public. Where does this concept come from and what
different theoretical frameworks can we use to understand what the public means?
Are there implied values? How has the concept of the public changed most
recently?

2. Investigate one of Klein’s options for equitably coming up with the funds to prepare
for storms while also radically lowering our emissions. Are these realistic? Cite
research to backup your argument.

3. Take a feminist perspective on the public. How does this overlap with ecological
perspectives? What new insights could you provide policy-makers when including
these perspectives?
CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Create an activity that examines conceptions of fairness in the classroom. Is
fairness simply when one set of rules applies to players both big and small? One
side of the room is fair and the other extremely unfair. Read different policies
and regulations and have students physically move from one end to the other
end of the classroom depending if they think the policy is fair or unfair. Have
individuals on each end explain why they chose that position. Have statements
become progressively more polemic (example, move from failing for cheating to
rationing).

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Dye, Jerel. Food Chain Avengers: A Food Justice and Worker Justice Comic Book.
FoodChainworkers.org. <http://foodchainworkers.org/?p=3605>

Hayden, Dolores. 1995. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History.

Davis, Mike. 1990. City of Quartz. Verso: London.

Jacobson, Mark Z. and Mark A. Delucchi. 2009. “A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the
Planet with Renewables.” Scientific American: 58–59.
4 | PLANNING AND BANNING:
SLAPPING THE INVISIBLE HAND,
BUILDING A MOVEMENT
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. This chapter considers the crisis of 2008 as a chance to change. What stops
politicians from seizing these political moments? What determines what is
politically possible and politically impossible? Have you seen what is possible
change in your lifetime?

2. What is the role of social movements in shaping political opportunities?

3. What is the role of planning in allowing the market to determine the future? Who
are planners and whom are they working for? Does the market have planners as
well? Is long term national planning a departure from neoliberal orthodoxy?

4. How are the political and economic interests behind certain “bridge fuels”
linked to preventing us from making a full switch to zero carbon sources of
energy? Who are the local actors and players who can become renewable energy
providers?

5. What is the role of labor in transition to good jobs in clean sectors? Who is
labor? Who isn’t?

6. Who are the actors determining local policies? Who are the experts? What is the
role of local communities in determining policies?

7. What is the climate movement and what are the politics of reconnection?

ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Describe a core battle of ideas to democratically determine what kind of economy
we need. What role do different actors play? What values guide certain decisions?
What priority do questions of participation, transparency, and accountability have?
Is there a role between power decentralization and successful climate action?

2. Provide two examples and examine if and how the climate movement considers
questions of class and race within its strategies.

3. What are some battles that have brought labor with community groups together
 around sustainability issues? What are some of the barriers that impede these
groups from working together?

4. What different types of models exist for governance? Research theories on

how economic relations shape individual relationships and the ways in which
organizations govern. Provide two examples of different organizations.

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Define and map the alternative projects in your area, including cooperatives,
community gardens, and sustainable projects and do some participant
observation to see who does and doesn’t participate.

2. Create an interview guide and interview a local cooperative ownership model.

What are some of the pros and cons of this model?

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Bakker, Karen. 2007. “The ‘Commons’ Versus the ‘Commodity’: Alter-globalization,
Anti-privatization and the Human Right to Water in the Global South.” Antipode
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/1/13/worker-run-cooperatives.html

Pickerill, Jenny and Paul Chatterton. 2006. “Notes Towards Autonomous Geographies:
Creation, Resistance and Self-Management as Survival Tactics.” Progress in Human
Geography 30 (6): 730–746.

Patel, Raj. 2007. Stuffed and Starved. Portobello Book: London.

J. DeFilippis, “Alternatives to the ‘New Urban Politics’: Finding Locality and Autonomy
in Local Economic Development,” Political Geography 18 (1999): 973–990.

Ostrom, E. et al. 1999. “Revisiting the Commons: Local Lessons, Global Challenges.”
Science 284 (5412): 278–282.

Harvey, David 1998. “Marxism, metaphors and ecological politics.” Monthly Review,
April, 94(11): 17.

Marcuse, P. 1998. “Sustainability Is Not Enough.” Environment and Urbanization, 10:

103–111.

Bollier, David. 2014. Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the
Commons. New Society Publishers: Vancouver.

Bland, William and Michael Bell. 2007. “A Holon Approach to Agroecology.”

International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability (5): 280–29.

Merchant, Carolyn. 2003. “Shades of Darkness: Race and Environmental History.”

Environmental History 8(3): 380–394.
5 | BEYOND EXTRACTIVISM:
CONFRONTING THE CLIMATE
DENIER WITHIN
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. How do you relate questions of history and memory to symptoms of “solastagia”
(Albrecht)? Do you personally relate to this symptom?

2. Extractivism is a nonreciprocal, dominance-based relationship. What different

form of power does this entail when reducing life into objects for the use of
others? The production and power in spite of nature (example of the steam
engine) is based on the right to conquer nature. Does this also include human
beings?

3. Has the difficulty of recognizing that the power relation between humans and
the earth is reverse changed in the past couple of generations?

4. Some of the revolts against privatizing communal lands are based on the idea
of “communal.” How is this concept developing in our society? What communal
lands would you be willing to defend?

5. “Progressive extractivism” is evident in Latin America. Is this type of

redistribution enough? Can the road out of poverty lead to a road of climate
justice?

6. What are some contemporary urban strategies that often work to eliminate poor
and not poverty? What are some policies that help avoid this type of outcome?

7. What are natural sinks, and how is the need for more natural sinks one of the
most powerful part of limiting growth? Does this impact our understanding of
the effectiveness of greener strategies such as recycling?

ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. How does extractivism link to notions of imperialism, colonialism, and development
and modernization theory? And how does this history relate to contemporary
examples of extractivist or sacrifice zones? Provide examples and ground each in
theory and current practice.

2. Provide a feminist ecological critique to the extractivist relationship to the earth.

 3. Explore the division between populist and environmentalist movements; include the
ideas that were influential in their evolution and provide historic examples.

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Divide the class into various groups: the company, the community organized
to respond to the day-to-day impacts of pollution (services), and the part of
the community willing to organize to address the company directly. With what
different strategies do each community team come up? Some should address
the daily needs of survival while the others should come up with how to address
the company directly. What does the company owner decide to do? What kind of
negotiating strategies can they use?

2. Design a feminist city that responds to climate change. What different uses
would be included? What would public and private space look like? What would
public transportation look like? Design in different teams and then discuss how
elements could be combined.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Banerjee, Subhabrata Bobby. 2003. “Who Sustains Whose Development? Sustainable
Development and the Reinvention of Nature.” Organization Studies 24(1).

Galeano, Eduardo. 1971. Open Veins of Latin America. Monthly Review Press: New
York.

Escobar, Arturo. 1997. Encountering Development: the Making and Unmaking of the
Third World. Chapter 2: The Problemization of Poverty: The Tale of Three Worlds and
Development.

Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place.

Leopold, Aldo. 1953. A Sand County Almanac. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Fried, M. 1966. “Grieving for a Lost Home: Psychological Costs of Relocation.” Urban
Renewal: The Record and the Controversy. Edited by James Q. Wilson. MIT Press:
Cambridge. 359–379.

Davis, Mike. 2001. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the
Third World. Verso: London.

Fanon, Frantz. 2004. The Wretched of the Earth. Grove: New York.

Lubitow, Amy and Thaddeus R. Miller. 2013. “Contesting Sustainability: Bikes, Race,
and Politics in Portlandia.” Environmental Justice 6(4): 121.
6 | FRUITS, NOT ROOTS:
THE DISASTROUS MERGER OF BIG
BUSINESS AND BIG GREEN
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Does the end justify the means? Why does it matter where funds come
from? What are the central dangers of the merge between the environmental
movement and the economic interests behind soaring emissions? What might be
other unintended consequences?

2. Why can’t market-based climate solutions deal with the root cause? Is this really
inherently impossible? What other problems have we tried to address through
market mechanisms?

3. What would be the “low hanging fruit” in other social movements? Is this always
problematic or can it be strategic?

4. How does environmental justice provide a different frame for understanding

environmentalism? Who are the actors involved? And what do these wins look
like versus other environmental victories?

5. Getting the polluter to pay for the clean up has measurable and real world
results. Is this the ultimate goal? What other strategies have these same
measurable results?

6. What does Klein mean by “insider and outsider environmentalism” and how do
we distinguish their strategies, relationships, power, and options?

7. What are some of the barriers to form a unified front against public sector
cutbacks and joining greens with a coalition of unions, civil rights groups, and
pensioners who are also facing attacks?

ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Identify an environmental organization with funding and policy prohibiting from
investing in certain companies, for example, fossil fuel companies. How did this
policy come about? Why did it change? And what were some of the factors that
contributed to this change?
 2. Classify the distinct strategies and tools with which the environmental movement has
won its greatest set of victories. Identify the actors, the strategies, the tactics, and the
wins. Describe the political moment of each of these victories and struggles.

3. How do the principles adopted at the First National People of Color Environmental
Leadership Summit in October 1991 compare to some other principles used today?

4. What are some underlining theories and principles that serve as the foundation to
the cap and trade approach? What are some practical implications that either have
been ignored or not accounted for? How would you improve this approach, if at all?

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Ask students to come up with new ways or include existing ways in making the
school more “green.” Then analyze those responses that focus on consumption
rather than the development of political actors. Have a discussion regarding
collective consumption, such as public transportation and where the agency lies.

2. In different groups, analyze separate companies’ partnerships with

environmental organizations. Look at Walmart, McDonalds, FedEx, and AT&T.
Collect different types of advertisements and articles, and analyze their framing
strategies, but also the specific outcomes of these partnerships.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. 2009. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded:
Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. South End Press: Brooklyn.

Dowie, Mark. 1996. Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the
Twentieth Century. MIT Press: Cambridge.

Fox, Josh. Gasland. Film.

Skocpol, Theda. 2003. Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in

American Civic Life. University of Oklahama Press: Norman, Oklahoma.

Piven, Frances Fox and Richard Cloward. 1978. Poor People’s Movements. Random
House: New York.
7 | NO MESSIAHS:
THE GREEN BILLIONAIRES
WON’T SAVE US
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. How would you differentiate the planet savior persona versus regulatory action
in other related movements? If this is a spectrum then where do different actors
and strategies fit?

2. What is the role of big businesses and powerful people or the “green
billionaires” in the climate movement if not to save us?

3. How is the idea that technology is going to save us from the effects of our
actions based on both fact and fiction? How does this affect our actions?

4. Who are some local messiahs? How does this idea of messiahs influence the
way we see change in other social movements as well? How does this idea
relate to our own power and agency and citizenship? How does this connect to
questions of democracy?

5. What does it mean when capitalism, and only capitalism, can save the world
from crisis created by capitalism? What are some examples of how this belief
plays out in real life?

6. Do we believe more in technology that our own power to change? What shapes
this belief?

ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. There’s an old discussion about structure versus agency. Where does agency
lie in our society? How has technology shifted or influenced this discussion?
Present various theories in relation to the environmental movement.

2. What other forms of magical thinking does culture reproduce besides

technology? Compare magical thinking to magical realism. Write two different
stories to illustrate the strategy of each in relation to global climate change.
CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Framing exercise. Find pictures of certain climate disasters and only highlight
certain parts of the picture. Notice the different stories this specific frame
provides when only certain parts of the story are told. Also, find different
pictures for the same event that tell different parts of the story. Link pictures to
the words individuals use to describe the picture.

2. Magical realism can help reveal the truth behind magical thinking. Create a
poster, a story, or a graphic that reveals local messiahs or technologies that we
put our faith in, or what we put our faith in.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Center for Story based strategy
http://www.storybasedstrategy.org

Reinsborough, Patrick and Doyle Canning. 2010. Re:Imagining Change—How to Use

Story-Based Strategy to Win Campaigns, Build Movements, and Change the World. PM
Press: Oakland.

Payne, Charles. 1989. “Ella Baker and Models of Social Change.” Journal of Women in
Culture and Society (14)4: 885–898.

Smith, Ron. 2005. “Magical Realism and Theatre of the Oppressed in Taiwan:
Rectifying Unbalanced Realities with Chung Chiao’s Assignment Theatre.” Asian
Theatre Journal. (22)1.
8 | DIMMING THE SUN:
THE SOLUTION TO POLLUTION IS…
POLLUTION?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What do you understand the term “geoengineering” to mean?

2. What did you understand about the Solar Radiation Management Governance
Initiative?

3. Who is responsible for regulating SRM? Are the individuals who gave us the
climate crisis capable of properly regulating SRM?

4. How does the idea of technological advance put us in further danger of

perpetuating the view that the earth can be manipulated in our interests? Or
does it have to?

5. How are these decisions being made? By who? Where? Are these spaces where
decisions get made part of ensuring the knowledge doesn’t go out or is it
purposefully keeping certain lessons from coming in? Is this “geoclique” part of
keeping power in, or keeping power out?

6. Failure of foresight is also part of a failure to plan for the future. Do you think it
is part of a societal dilemma? How much do we focus on individual planning vs.
collective planning?

7. What do you think about the finding that older respondents are more amenable
to geoengineering than younger ones? Is this a generational difference? Access
to information? Faith in technology?

ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. What are “alternative” forms of governance (for example, indigenous communities,
cooperatives) that stand in contrast to more hierarchical systems? Explain how
decision-making takes place, by who, and how and why this matters.

2. Ed Ayres in God’s Last Offer distinguishes between building rockets and building
communities. What does building community and community development
mean? What is the meaning of community sustainability in the face of these
adversities?
 3. Compare and contrast two Hollywood action movie narratives on the earth
where human beings attempt to save themselves. Provide the political context
when they were released and discuss the relationship between the narrative and
the politics.

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Provide the students with signs that say “promote,” “regulate,” or “prohibit.”
Call out different sets of practices and ask the students to raise their individual
signs as part of voting for each. Increasingly get more polemic with the
suggestions. For example, some practices would include fracking, drilling,
and also driving, bioengineering, etc. Then, gather up the votes and try and
introduce new practices or policy for each category.

2. Earth timeline. Provide different pictures of the earth to separate groups

of students and ask each group several questions about the perception
of the earth. What do the pictures say about the earth changing, our
interconnectedness, and the role of humans? Create a visual timeline with
the images of the earth and link them to environmental policies and change.
Discuss their connections and the political moment of each.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Robock, Alan. 2008. “20 Reasons Why Geoengineering May Be a Bad Idea” Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists 64: 14–18.

Burns, Wil C.G. and Andrew L. Strauss. 2013. Climate Change Geoengineering:
Philosophical Perspectives, Legal Issues and Governance Frameworks. Cambridge
University Press: New York.

Ayres, Ed. 1999. Gods last Offer. Four Walls Eight Windows: New York.

Gaston and Kennedy. 1987. “Capital Investment or Community Development? The

Struggle for Land Control by Boston’s Black and Latino Community” Antipode 12(2):
178–209.

Liverman, Diana. 2004. “Who Governs, at What Scale and at What Price? Geography,
Environmental Governance, and the Commodification of Nature.” Annals of the
Association of American Geographers: 94.

Sarmiento and Beard. 2013. “Traversing the Border: Community-Based Planning and
Transnational Migrants.” Journal of Planning, Education and Research 80(2): 168.
9 | BLOCKADIA:
THE NEW CLIMATE WARRIORS
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Klein presents the control over resources as critical to collective survival, but
how does this link to a deeper form of democracy?

2. What do you think are some of the most significant achievements of grassroots
environmental activism? What is the relationship between grassroots organizing,
movement building, and policy work?

3. The role of the military in responding to environmental action represents a very

specific type of power. What other daily illustrations of this power do we see or
experience? Are these related? How is this power expressed at different scales?

4. Klein presents the argument that we are all in sacrifice zones, yet we do see
different rates of state violence and displacement in low-income communities
of color. How do these stark forms of state violence place different pressures on
certain communities to participate in different ways?

5. We’re caught in a catch-22 when the fossil fuel economy weakens other
economic drivers and makes fossil fuel companies the only game in town. Are
we really stuck? What could be a way out in these communities?

6. What is the connection between research, moments of political awakening, and

finding nonnegotiables for movements? Who is considered a researcher and
what would be an example of a nonnegotiable?

7. What did you understand by the author’s use of “culture of ethnical failure”
(page 334)—whose culture is that? What practices are involved in this culture
and how are they reproduced? Is it correct to call it a culture?
ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Does place matter? What are some common characteristics and strategies of
some of the successful fights at the front line? Where is the front line? How
does place distinguish these struggles and why does it matter? Distinguish
places like Cornell, Richmond, etc.

2. What are cross current economic development strategies? Take the examples
of south France, the residents of the Department of Var. How are these related
to local economic development strategies? Or are they working in opposite
directions? What new actors should be involved in building a local economy and
environmental resistance?

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Global Blockadia. Draw a global, national, or local map describing sites of
Blockadia and pinpointing key wins and struggles.

2. Simulate a coalition building exercise in class and have students represent

the interests of trade unions, community groups, neighborhood residents,
developers, and factory workers. Use a local struggle to figure out the politics
of building coalitions and developing local policies. What are some of the
challenges of building alliances and coalitions?

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Roy, Arundhati. 1997. The God of Small Things. Random House: New York.

McKibben, Bill. 2012. The Global Warming Reader: A Century of Writing About Climate
Change. Penguin Books: New York.

Newman, Kathe and Elvin K. Wyly. 2006. “The Right to Stay Put, Revisited:
Gentrification and Resistance to Displacement in New York City.” Urban Studies 43(1):
23–57.

Eltantawy, Nahed. 2008. “Pots, Pans, and Protests: Women’s strategies for resisting
Globalization in Argentina.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. 5(1): 46–63.
10 | LOVE WILL SAVE THIS PLACE:
DEMOCRACY, DIVESTMENT,
AND THE WINS SO FAR
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What love is Klein referring to? Love as a collective felt expression for the world?
That cannot be bought? Linked to collective action? How does this challenge our
conception of love today?

2. Our practices around health and identity are tied to our forebears. Food is an
easy example. How is food tied to who we are? What traditions around food do
we have? How is this tied to our identity as family, people, and communities?

3. Klein mentions survival practices that workers use to help separate themselves
from the environment. What are some other practices of denial that we use
to avoid reality? And are these based on any truth or just simply conflicting
interests?

4. How does funding shape fracking bans and moratoriums? How does it shape any
policy making process?

5. What is the media’s role in accounting for victory and failure? How important is
this for movement building? What other strategies exist to tell our stories?

6. Pollution can be a unifying element but can it really be a catalyst for power
building?

7. How are trade agreements exemplifying the corrupted state of our political
systems?

8. Who is ultimately responsible for classifying activists as terrorists and the

increased levels of resident surveillance? Do we have a choice? How does this
impact the public’s perception on strategies such as civil disobedience?

ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. What are particularities of the local scale (e.g., Bella Bella’s case and the
spills on the Kalamazoo River) that make local politics as important sites of
resistance? Is the local always dependent on national and global politics? What
role do community engagement and planning meetings have? What are some
 ingredients of resilience?

2. What is the relationship between sovereignty, autonomy, and collective action?

3. Provide the political and historical context for disinvestment strategies and
campaigns particularly for environmental struggles. What are some common
principles and what other implications do these strategies have on the role of
public interest institutions? What role does deligitimization play in this scenario?

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. What is popular education? Create a popular education tool to engage students
in learning about environmental issues. A game board, an activity, a comic
book, a play, etc. Make it fun and accessible.

2. Map a resource and the communities linked to this collective good, like a local
lake, a river, an ocean, or a park. How are communities linked to the space?
How is this collective good maintained? Who is responsible?

3. What types of equity assessment tools exist? Create your own version of
an equity assessment tool for your school and present it to the students,
department, and then the school.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Darder, Antonia. 2002. Reinventing Paulo Freire: Pedagogy of Love. Westview Press:
Boulder, Colorado.

White, M. M. 2011. “D-Town Farm: African American Resistance to Food Insecurity and
the Transformation of Detroit.” Environmental Practice 13(4): 406–417.

Pickerill, Jenny and Paul Chatterton. 2006.“Notes Towards Autonomous Geographies:

Creation, Resistance and Self-Management as Survival Tactics. Progress in Human
Geography 30(6): 730–746.
11 | YOU AND WHAT ARMY?
INDIGENOUS RIGHTS AND
THE POWER OF KEEPING OUR WORD
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What does it mean if the last line of defense is the law? Where is the last site
of struggle then? What are the roles of nation states in a time of globalization?
What about global and international law, treaties, and rights?

2. What other types of rights exist that are not protected by law? At different
levels, what does it mean to not be allowed to practice those rights even when
they are protected by law? Who is ultimately responsible?

3. What does it mean when the water systems are neglected in terms of
strengthening collective action? Does collective action around the commons
require that the commons be in good health and worth fighting for?

4. Is the lack of alternatives linked to a lack of power? Who has access to

alternatives or the possibility of alternatives?

5. What is the relationship between movements fought in courtrooms and those

fought in the streets?

6. What was the old trap line? Compare it to some benefits of the oil sands.

7. As non-native communities reach out to native communities saying “we need

help,” what does this say about the way we see coalition building?

ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Klein suggests that the last line of defense are legal rights. What does this
mean when a community’s legal right to pursue their avocations is threatened
by pollution? What do legalities have to do with enforcing rights and citizenship?
What different types of citizenship exist?

2. What is the history of Idle No More and the Zapatista movement and what
different ways of understanding the environmental movement have emerged
from these movements?

3. Mark the important court decisions designed to test the limits of aboriginal
titles (page 370).
CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Create an alternative map of your school that includes the history of people of
color on campus (e.g., important struggles, wins, original landmarks, significant
events, and people). Take a group of students on this tour of the school with this
map and create a handout for future reference. How does this history connect to
the understanding of our environment?

2. Create a timeline of both wins and losses for different indigenous communities
in your area. Include other struggles for different communities, and include your
own community. Include pictures and callouts.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Mora, Mariana. 2007. “Zapatista Anticapitalist Politics and the ‘Other Campaign’:
Learning from the Struggle for Indigenous Rights and Autonomy.” Latin American
Perspectives 34(2): 64–77.

Mary Harris Jones. Autobiography of Mother Jones. Dover: Mineola, New York.

Peet, Richard and Michael Watts, eds. 1996. In Liberation Ecologies.

Irazabal, Clara and Anita Punja. 2009. “Cultivating Just Planning and Legal
Institutions: A Critical Assessment of the South Central Farm Struggle in Los Angeles.”
Journal of Urban Affairs 31.1: 1–23.
12 | SHARING THE SKY:
THE ATMOSPHERIC COMMONS AND THE
POWER OF PAYING OUR DEBTS
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. In Cheyenne the word for water is the same as the word for “life.” What kind of
impact does losing resources linked to customs and traditions have?

2. What is the “partnership ethic” and how does it go beyond the idea of
collaboration or most partnerships?

3. Part of the climate movement makes a strong case that communities who have
suffered most from unjust resource relationships should be first to be supported
in their efforts to build an alternative economy. How would this idea translate to
the local scale?

4. Jobs and steady revenues for impacted communities rather than one-off
payments and temporary employment is part of making lasting change. What
makes the first so much more difficult than the latter? Is there a relationship
between both?

5. Is there a real dichotomy between environmental protections and jobs? What

would be a “transformative yes” (page 400) in this case to help build blocks for
our next economy?

6. The argument for new reparations is that it’s the right thing and that our
collective survival depends on moving to a low emission economy. What
worldviews, experiences, and beliefs make this reality difficult to understand?

7. If the shock doctrine is linked to a radically shrinking public sphere, how can we
connect it to the building of an environmental movement?

8. Natural disasters serve to dramatically push and educate the public. Do we have
any examples of disaster response that is different than the top-down model of
the shock doctrine which has led to radical change and soul searching?

ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Drawing on the battle over the EPA‘s highest quality classification in 1977, what
do we need to obtain the highest level standards and regulations versus only
 symbolic wins? What type of critical planning does this entail?

2. As Favianna Rodriguez’s art piece states, green is not white. How can we ensure
that renewable and development projects do not replicate colonial patterns?
Provide historic examples and identify specific strategies such as proper
consultation and ethical agreements that keep profits from going to outsiders.
Provide examples at both the global and local level.

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Dreaming the impossible. Develop a transition plan for a low-income
employment sector that would be greatly impacted by the transition to a life-
base economy (e.g., gardeners). How can we finance the transition to the kind of
healthy alternatives we need?

2. Create a UN environmental summit. Provide different groups of students a

county to represent and review the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change in 1992. What would each country propose? Each team must
take the political role of the country they represent. Dispute climate debt,
responsibility, emissions, etc.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Merchant, Carolyn. Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World. Routledge: New
York.

McAfee, Kathleen and Elizabeth Shapiro. 2010. “Payments for Ecosystem Services
in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State.” Annals of the
Association of American Geographers 100(3): 579–599.

Sivan Kartha, Tom Athanasiou, and Paul Baer. 2012. “The North-South Divide,
Equity and Development—the Need for Trust-Building for Emergency Mobilisation.”
Development Dialogue (61): 62.

Wright, Erick Olin. Chapter 7 Real Utopias II: Social Empowerment and the Economy.
Envisioning Real Utopias: 191.

Shear, Boone. 2014. “Making the Green Economy: Politics, Desire, and Economic
Possibility.” Journal of Political Ecology 21: 193–209.

Brosius, Peter. 1997. “Endangered Forest, Endangered People: Environmentalist

Representations of Indigenous Knowledge.” Human Ecology 25: 47–69.

Solomon, Susan, et al. 2010. “Persistence of Climate Changes Due to a Range of

Greenhouse Gases.” Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences 107(43): 18355
13 | THE RIGHT TO REGENERATE:
MOVING FROM EXTRACTION
TO RENEWAL
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Klein compares her experience with infertility to the earth facing a great many
fertility challenges of her own. What did you draw from this comparison?

2. How does turning to high risk technologies at the first sign of trouble in facing
different social and environmental issues link to the failure of addressing the
root causes and fundamental questions?

3. Klein says that she included her own experience with infertility in part to be
honest. What kind of honesty is she referring to? Do you think this type of
honesty is helpful?

4. Clusters of infertility and infant illness are first warning signs of a broader health
crisis. How have these realities been treated individually versus collectively? As
a national versus as a global problem?

5. Displacement is an important result of climate change. Is fleeing pollution or

a climate-related disaster different than other forms of displacement linked to
development?

6. Is ignoring questions of infertility related to the way we treat women and the
jobs traditionally associated with women?

7. Climate change has direct impacts on reproduction and endangers the youngest
members of a species. How does this impact the way we understand the politics
of evolution and the development of our communities?

8. If one of the most essential survival tools is the ability to create new life and
carry on genetic life, what does this mean for the role of bio-genetics?

9. Why does Klein argue that human resilience and the capacity for adaptation can
be misleading when trying to build the environmental movement?
ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. What makes a community resilient? What are different theories of resistance
versus resilience and subsistence (e.g., the Zapatista’s Resistencia)? How are
culture and customs linked to these different theories?

2. What specific role have youth played in Blockadia and what new perspectives do
they provide to planning and organizing?

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. What images do we link to the idea of life? Water? Earth? Mother? Bring images
to class and discuss how gender is associated to the environment and our
priorities. Where does life-generating fit into our priorities?

2. Divide the class into groups and have each group research the politics behind
the reproduction of a specific species. Have each draw up the reproductive
system and add the political elements that intersect at different moments (for
example, the impact of drilling on an ecosystem and the actors and interests
involved).

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Jackson, Wes. 2010. Consulting the Genius of the Place. An Ecological Approach of a
New Agriculture. Counterpoint: Berkeley.

Merchant, Carolyn. 2013. Earthcare: Women and the Environment. Routledge: New
York.

Newman, Kathy and Elvin K. Wyly. 2006. “The Right to Stay Put, Revisited:
Gentrification and Resistance to Displacement in New York City.” Urban Studies 43(1):
23–57.

Fried, M. 1966. “Grieving for a Lost Home: Psychological Costs of Relocation.” Urban
Renewal: The Record and the Controversy: 359–379. Edited by James Q. Wilson. MIT
Press: Cambridge.
CONCLUSION | THE LEAP YEARS:
JUST ENOUGH TIME FOR IMPOSSIBLE
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What do you consider a radical revolution of values? Are we moving to a
“person-oriented society” and what would this look like?

2. Does this huge “block in the road” clear a path for alternatives or is it not
changing anything? Where do you see hope?

3. Where and what do you consider “real wins” that can not be purchased at
“bargain rates”? How are “bargain rates” barriers to “real wins”? How do you
know when you’ve accomplished a “real win”? What would be some of the
characteristics?

4. What do you consider a transformative movement?

5. How are we still experiencing the cost of the dependency of the US economy on
slave labor? How does this connect to climate justice?

6. How are anti-colonialism, the redistribution of wealth, and liberation linked to

climate justice?

7. How do we reproduce this division between “activists” and “regular people” and
how does this division impact our ability to change society?

ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Closely examine historic movements when an economic shift that Klein is
referring to has taken place. What kind of changes did this require in society?
How did these changes take place? What were some of the conditions necessary
for this type of shift to happen?

2. What are some feminist challenges to the free market that go beyond equal pay
for equal work? Consider different movements throughout the globe. How have
third world ecological movements helped push the feminist movement forward?
CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Have each student reflect on how they can incorporate activism as a normal
activity, in everyday spaces, and not just part of a certain group. Then come
together and discuss the necessary spaces to continue these discussions and
join other students in the discussion. Come up with various proposals and
organize a school event to present these proposals.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Robles, Wilder. 2001. “The Landless Rural Workers Movements (MST) in Brazil.” The
Journal of Peasant Studies 28(2): 146–161.

Gibson, Katherine. “Building Community Economies: Women and the Politics of Place”.
W. Harcourt and A. Escobar, Eds. Women and the Politics of Place: 130–57. Kumarian
Press: Bloomfield, Connecticut.

Maloutas, T. 2003. “Promoting Social Sustainability.” City: Analysis of Urban Trends,

Culture, Theory, Policy, Action. 167–181.

Davis, David Brion. 2006. Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New
World. Oxford University Press: New York.

Marcuse, P. 1998. “Sustainability is not enough.” Environment and Urbanization 10:

103–111.
THIS CHANGES
EVERYTHING
THE DOCUMENTARY
WHAT IF CONFRONTING THE CLIMATE
CRISIS IS THE BEST CHANCE WE’LL EVER
GET TO BUILD A BETTER WORLD?
Filmed over 211 shoot days in nine countries and five continents over four years, This
Changes Everything is an epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change.

Directed by Avi Lewis, and inspired by Naomi Klein’s international nonfiction bestseller
This Changes Everything, the film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on
the front lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the
coast of South India to Beijing and beyond.

Interwoven with these stories of struggle is Klein’s narration, connecting the carbon in
the air with the economic system that put it there. Throughout the film, Klein builds
to her most controversial and exciting idea: that we can seize the existential crisis of
climate change to transform our failed economic system into something radically better.

The extraordinary detail and richness of the cinematography in This Changes Everything
provides an epic canvas for this exploration of the greatest challenge of our time. Unlike
many works about the climate crisis, this is not a film that tries to scare the audience
into action: it aims to empower. Provocative, compelling, and accessible to even the
most climate-fatigued viewers, This Changes Everything will leave you refreshed and
inspired, reflecting on the ties between us, the kind of lives we really want, and why the
climate crisis is at the center of it all.

Will this film change everything? Absolutely not. But you could, by answering its call to action.

An official selection of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival

Visit ThisChangesEverything.org
“This may be the first truly honest book ever written about climate change.”
—BRYAN WALSH, TIME

“This is the best book about climate change in a very long time—in large
part because it’s about much more.” —BILL McKIBBEN, author of
THE END OF NATURE and cofounder of 350.org

“Naomi Klein’s latest book may be the manifesto that the climate move-
ment—and the planet—needs right now.” —MASON INMAN,
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

FORGET EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING.

The really inconvenient truth is that it’s not about carbon—it’s about
capitalism. The convenient truth is that we can seize this existential crisis to
transform our failed economic system and build something radically better.
In her most provocative book yet, Naomi Klein, author of the global
bestsellers The Shock Doctrine and No Logo, tackles the most profound
threat humanity has ever faced: the war our economic model is waging
against life on earth.

“Gripping and dramatic.” —ROY SCRANTON, R­OLLING STONE

“[Klein’s] stirring vision is nothing less than a political, economic, social,

cultural, and moral makeover of the human world.” —MIKE HULME,
NEW SCIENTIST

“A gifted writer.” —PILITA CLARK, FINANCIAL TIMES

For a downloadable version of this guide visit

SimonandSchuster.net/Higher-Ed
For exam or desk copies, please email
[email protected]
Visit ThisChangesEverything.org
Follow @ThisChanges /ThisChangesEverything

TP: 9781451697319