The Global Climate Justice Movement

Two nights ago, the New Plymouth Green Party and Climate Justice Taranaki sponsored the showing of Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything. We used the Tugg theatrical-on-demand platform, which allows individuals and groups to show one night film screenings at their local theater. Our cinema was packed (with 90 people) in contrast to the 12-15 watching Hollywood films in the other auditoriums.

The documentary, based on Naomi Klein’s best selling book of the same name, is about the global climate justice movement. Both the book and film take their title from Klein’s premise that the problem of climate change can’t be solved under our current capitalist economic system.

The documentary mainly showcases the mass global protests against the environmental destruction caused by the fossil fuel industry. Klein, who narrates the film, notes a major shift in the environmental movement, with growing numbers of poor and indigenous peoples fighting a fossil fuel industry whose slash and burn mentality threatens their ability to provide food, water and other basic necessities for their families.

The main premise of the film (and the book) is the carbon pollution, like other large scale environmental damage is the result of a dysfunctional story we’ve been telling ourselves over the last 400 years – namely that nature is a kind of machine that must be mastered and dominated at all costs. According to Klein and the numerous activists she interviews, this needs to be replaced by the much older story about humanity living in harmony with nature.

One highlight of the film is her visit to an ultra right free market think tank called the Hartland Foundation. Funded by billionaire fossil fuel barons like the Koch brothers, Hartland is the primary sponsor of the US climate denial movement.

This Changes Everything can be rented from Vudu for $3.99

Groups interested in bringing This Changes Everything and other anti-capitalist documentaries to their local theater can contact Tugg at their website.