Frankie Occhiogrosso

Professor Tony Cape

Expository Writing

23 September 2019

The Relation Between Climate Change, Freedom, and Economics

The climate is changing, and every nation is pointing fingers at one-another. Politicians

and global leaders alike are foisting the blame for this disaster, but really it is no single nation or

political party’s fault. It just happens that the industrial revolution, trade, and capitalism have

changed society in the past one-hundred fifty years in a way that has caused a serious threat to

our planet. It isn’t just humans that have been affected either, because more and more species are

becoming extinct as a result of the changing climate (Klein, 221). In Naomi Klein’s Hot Money

the dynamic between Capitalism and trade and climate change are brought to light, supported by

many examples. The competing concepts of economic freedom, environmentalism, and morality

come to light as a result of the free market; a large contributor to the causes of climate change.

Klein explains how the World Trade Organization (WTO) greatly contributes to climate

change because of how they have interfered with many environmentally-conscious changes

made by the United Nations: “From a climate perspective, the WTO ruling was an outrage: of

there is to be any hope of meeting the agreed-upon 2 degree Celsius target, wealthy economies

like Canada must make getting off fossil fuels their top priority. It is a moral duty, one that the

federal government undertook when it signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Ontario was putting

real policies in place to honor that commitment (unlike the Canadian government as a whole,

which has allowed emissions to balloon, leading it to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol rather
than face international censure). Most importantly, the program was working. How absurd, then,

for the WTO to interfere with that success--to let trade trump the planet itself” (Klein 210). It

seems that despite the “moral duty” of the WTO, they seem to only care about the immediate

future of their company. There seems to be a psychological phenomenon which prevents people

from seeing serenity in this global crisis. Perhaps it is because the thought of major cities being

underwater within the century with no hope to reverse its effects seems like such a distant idea

that people don’t believe it. Or maybe it is the fact that this is so threatening to humanity as a

species that people can’t accept the fact that it is actually happening, and so the spread of true

information regarding our dire situation is shoved under the bed. For all these reasons, people in

power refuse to see the reality of climate change.

Despite efforts by the United Nations to decrease emissions, many negotiators from

several countries have taken serious action to cut down on the United Nations Framework on

Climate Change’s efforts: “U.S. negotiators had proposed an edit: take out all the stuff about

climate change and UNFCC commitments. In other words, while trade has repeatedly been

allowed to trump climate, under no circumstances would climate be permitted to trump trade”

(Klein 216). Again the fundamental flaw of logic is present with in the actions of these U.S.

negotiators. They are jeopardizing the entire future of planet earth so they can keep the economy

in a stable place. It is similar to how historical world leaders spend their entire life trying to be in

control of more land; they led brutal and bloody wars, spent money and resources on weapons,

all for the simple goal of being in a higher position of power. At the end of their lives instead of

being proud of how they improved the lives of their people or created a more peaceful place to

live in, they instead only have the land and money to look to.
 The effects of trade on the climate is the primary focus of Klein’s work, but a large part

of her writing is how it is purposefully ignored. For instance the benefits of cheap labor were so

large that the fact that it is consequently a climate nightmare was almost entirely ignored: “48

percent of China’s total emissions was related to producing goods for exports...Emissions from

the transportation of goods across borders-all those container ships, whose traffic has increased

by nearly 400 percent over the last twenty years-are not formally attributed to any nation-state

and therefore no one country is responsible for reducing their polluting impact” (Klein 217-218).

It is obvious that trade and climate affect one another, but because fixing the climate issue would

require “‘a pretty fundamental re-formation of our economy’” (Klein 218) people tend to entirely

ignore it.

Many factors come into play when dealing with climate change and trade, and simply

because of the position the world is currently in, there seems to be no easy solution. In

Naomi Klein’s Hot Money, the relationship between trade and climate change are really

put under a microscope, and the concepts of economic freedom, environmentalism, and

morality all come into the big picture.

 Works Cited

Klein, Naomi. Hot Money. 2019.