In her book, This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein discussed how capitalism and the free market affects climate change. Capitalism allows for the wealthy people to stay rich while increasing the gap between the rich and the poor. Many of the people in power are part of the one percent and do not want to make a change to the system. “We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis. We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe—and would benefit the vast majority—are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets.” (16). They do not want to lose money so they continue to process their goods and use the free market to distribute their goods.

The ideology of the free market causes an increase of production. When people are allowed to sell their goods all over the world with no tariffs or restrictions, they start to produce even more goods. This leads to the idea of materialism and extractivism. When there is a high demand for products, producers extract more resources and produce more. The more products that are produced the more fossil fuels are being burnt, causing an increase in global temperatures.

In general people like to hand off responsiblilty to others instead of taking charge themselves. People tend to deny the idea of climate change and that it is a legitimate problem that we face. They don’t learn about it and many times like to believe that the science is too complicated for them, so they leave all the work to the environmentalists. People also rationalize their behaviors, for example, people regularly think that whatever they’re doing isn’t going to really affect the environment. They tell themselves that if they don’t recycle this one time it won’t be such a big deal. But in reality, every small action we take to help the environment makes a bigger difference than we realize.

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