Apart from the stock shots of effluent pipes and belching smokestacks, Naomi Klein’s concept of objectivity concerning the Alberta oilsands is to locate a worker prepared to blow his nose on a banknote in a Fort McMurray bar.
Scenes such as this make Klein’s documentary This Changes Everything, which will air on CBC on Thursday night, not only intellectually vacuous but downright objectionable.
The guy while using currency as nasal tissue might well now be from employment, not only due to the oil price collapse, but because of the prominent role played by Klein in killing the Keystone XL pipeline and therefore draining billions from the Alberta economy.
Much of the movie, that is according to Klein’s endless book of the identical name, takes the form of a series of confrontations between local people and some form of development: the oilsands in Alberta; pipelines, coal and shale in Montana and Wyoming; a coal-fired electricity plant in India; a goldmine in Greece; killer smog in Beijing.
The propaganda sequence runs roughly: riot, teargas (not necessary in Beijing), shots of individuals running and screaming, rinse and repeat.
This isn’t to point out that consultation with local neighborhoods is not necessary, but things are in fact not really simple as presented. In Kleinworld, agitation is often organized by multinational environmental NGOs with an anti-development agenda and little if any concern for local people’s welfare. Meanwhile it requires considerable chutzpah to point out that Greece’s problems might be based on any form of capitalism.
No thought is actually provided to the system that produced the bottles of San Pellegrino or even the watermelon
The wobbly intellectual substructure to Klein’s catalogue of capitalist crimes is the system’s alleged belief that Mother Nature can there be to become raped and pillaged, which resources are infinite. The film never presents anybody who actually holds this view because, like the majority of of Klein’s claims, it is demonic nonsense.
Klein’s evil capitalist clincher is, of course, climate change, which is epitomized by Superstorm Sandy. But that storm can in no way shape or form be laid at the door of man-made climatic change.
It is ironic indeed that early on in the film Klein attends a conference from the British Royal Society – home of Newton and Darwin – because the supposed epicentre from the scientific assault on spirituality. The meeting is to discuss geoengineering like a solution to climate change (“pollution to battle pollution”). But while you will find indeed many questions regarding such schemes, the implication that the Royal Society is a bastion of objectivity, particularly when it comes to climate, is almost satirical. Indeed several recent presidents of the society have gone from the reservation with regards to the climate issue and have needed to be reined in by their own members.
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The movie, which was directed by Klein’s husband Avi Lewis, scion of 1 of Canada’s most prominently canting socialist families, is outstanding just for its perspective-free hypocrisy.
Take the posturing of Crystal Lameman from the Beaver Lake Cree, who reside in the vicinity of the oilsands. Lameman, who will later appear delivering an address to some mob in Washington, spouts fortune-cookie mysticism concerning the land owning the people rather than the other way round. But the arresting point is the fact that she’s doing this while dressed making in very non-traditional fashion, against the backdrop of her modern kitchen, with its Ikea cabinetry, brushed-steel faucets and modern appliances. Then Crystal is viewed driving her Kia to a Michael-Moore-style non-confrontation at a spill site, which she knows she will ‘t be allowed to enter. Crystal, like Naomi, presumably did not reach Washington by magic carpet. She also uses a phone, which definitely wasn’t developed by “traditional knowledge.”
At a Beaver Cree band barbecue, no thought is obviously given to the system that produced the bottles of San Pellegrino or the watermelon that the child being conspicuously coddled by Klein is eating. The peak of hypocrisy is reached when it is revealed that the Beaver Cree are suing the government of Canada because oilsands development has “made traditional life impossible.”
Apparently undesirable too.
The film gets really intriguing once the credits begin to roll, and people who supported this pile of agitprop are identified. Chief among them is something known as the Sustainable Markets Foundation, SMF. Becasue it is all the rage these days to bemoan “Dark Money,” the title of Jane Mayer’s hatchet job on the Koch Brothers (Mayer was interviewed on the CBC’s The Current now), most importantly the SMF was highlighted inside a report with a U.S. Senate committee being an up-and-coming node of a progressive “Billionaires Club” full of capitalist foundations that despise markets.
“Can I be truthful along with you?” Klein asks at the beginning of this very dishonest film. “I’ve always type of hated films about climate change – Is it really possible to be bored by the end of the planet?”
No, Naomi, but it’s possible to be bored by people who prattle incessantly that the end around the globe is imminent when it isn’t, and who want to end the very best world we’ve ever had.
