Final Exam

Question 1

Divestment movement

Answer 1

1. Puts the fossil fuel business models on trial, try to make them SOCIALLY and MORALLY unacceptable
2. People sell their shares in fossil fuel companies
3. People look at how much carbon is in fossil fuel reserves and think that we shouldn’t let companies push the Earth past its breaking point.
4. Movements have started with college students on over 300 campuses

Question 2

The Land Institute

Answer 2

1. Place in Kansas where different plants grow next to each other without human interference
2. Combines DIVERSITY and PERENNIALISM to keep the soil safe and remake grain production
3. Rewards the farmers and the landscape instead of chemical suppliers
4. If you “respect fertility”, you can “keep it going”

Question 3

Environmental Racism

Answer 3

1. State politicians give chemical plant tax breaks in areas that have a lot of people of color.
2. This causes sickness, miscarriages, and death disproportionally to minorities.

Question 4

“Is Earth Fucked”

Answer 4

1. Brad Werner’s conference with the bottom line that global capitalism has made depleting resources fast, easy, and convenient and now earth-human systems are becoming unstable.
2. Earth is “more or less” fucked, but resistance movements can help.

Question 5

History Knocked at your door. Did you answer?

Answer 5

Klein’s friend’s idea of what to ask the leader of Greece’s opposition party, she thinks this is a good question for all of us.

Question 6

Free Trade vs Fair Trade

Answer 6

1. Trade among rich countries can be free
2. Trade with poor countries should be fair and involve “socialist protectionism”
3. Little to no cross border capital flows so there isn’t incentive for companies to relocate or for countries to lower environmental policies to attract capital

Question 7

Capitalist vs entrepreneur

Answer 7

capitalists fund the ideas of the entrepreneur. In an economic democracy you can have entrepreneurs but don’t need capitalists because the state funds them

Question 8

A parade of dwarves and a few giants

Answer 8

1. Parade that is an hour long where everyone’s heights are based on their incomes
2. Increases slowly for the first 50 minutes, and then begins to skyrocket as the top 15% of incomes get so much larger and taller
3. Demonstrates how unequal the income is, because there are much more people living with an average income than the few people at the top.

Question 9

Being poor vs living in poverty

Answer 9

Being poor is having a low income, living in poverty is being sick, homeless, in pain, and hungry.
In Cuba, people are poor but there is very little poverty.

Question 10

Trouble in paradise

Answer 10

Productivity has increased since the 70’s, but wages have stayed relatively the same because new jobs are minimum wage

Question 11

Polyarchy/democracy

Answer 11

1. Polyarchy is a political order where a high amount of adults can oppose the highest officials of government, these people have citizenship
2. Democracy is where a universal electorate is reasonably well informed, is active, and isn’t obstructed by a privileged minority class.

Question 12

Marshal Plan for Earth

Answer 12

• A plan in which the nations who have contributed the most to climate change pay the smaller nations who are affected the most by climate change so they can rebuild what was taken from them
• Based off Germany after WW2

Question 13

Neoliberalism (Deregulated capitalism)

Answer 13

free market economy and laissez faire economics, government can’t interfere and wouldn’t stand in the way of damage to the environment

Question 14

The Heartland Institute

Answer 14

a group of capitalist billionaires and other individuals who deny climate change because they realize that if Climate change is real the only way to stop it is by getting rid of capitalism which has help make them and continues to make them money

Question 15

The Koch brothers

Answer 15

owners of exon mobil donated more than 1 million to the heartland institute BAD PEOPLE, non supporters of climate change

Question 16

Mark Jacobson

Answer 16

1. a professor of civil and environmental engineering at stanford university
2. developed a road map for how 100 percent of the world’s energy for all purposes could be supplied by wind water and solar power by as early as 2030

Question 17

Sacrifice zones

Answer 17

places that are poor and don’t have a lot of political power so they get pushed around and have to let richer countries control them

Question 18

BlueGreen Alliance

Answer 18

a group in the US that brings together unions and environmentalist. Estimates that $40 billion investment into high speed rails and public transit for 6 years could create about 4 millions jobs in that time period, a good reason to fight climate change

Question 19

Nauru

Answer 19

type of sacrifice zone, started out as a beautiful island but developed and mined from the inside out and affected by greater climate change. Now forced to run a concentration camp for australia in order to make a living. Used as a Warning to world on what capitalism and climate change can do

Question 20

Richard Branson

Answer 20

english business investor, philanthropist and Virgin founder, pledged $3 billion to fight climate change and only ended up giving $230 million to develop low carbon fuel

Question 21

Keystone XL

Answer 21

pipeline that goes from Canada to Texas, not good

Question 22

Fracking

Answer 22

1. the process of drilling down into the earth before a high-pressure water mixture is directed at the rock to release the gas inside.
2. Controversial because it is bad for the climate because it releases the natural gases in the ground and it is dangerous work. More fracking creates more money for companies.

Question 23

What is Klein’s answer to the question “Why can’t we change even when change can improve the quality of life for the majority of people on the planet?”

Answer 23

the sacrifices we have to make fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism. The things that would benefit the vast majority would hurt the ones in control of the economy (uber rich)

Question 24

What does Klein mean when she says that the right is right?

Answer 24

the right is denying climate change because they know that it will go against everything that makes them money and it goes against capitalism

Question 25

What does “we must grow the caring economy and shrink the careless one”/ what are her proposals?

Answer 25

we should be thinking about what would grow economy and be good for everyone not just ourselves, and changing how we think about the economy
Promote local businesses and coops
Stop trying to make jobs more efficient instead of making sure people are doing a good job
Shorter work hours
Carefully planned economy holds promise for a much more humane, fulfilling lifestyle

Question 26

How to pay for all of this?

Answer 26

The big polluters and rich people of the world should pay for it. (Polluter pays)
Low -rate transaction tax
Slashing military budgets
$50/ metric ton CO2 tax in developed countries
Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies

Question 27

What is Blockadia? What are some of the examples that Klein gives?

Answer 27

Blockadia is not a specific location but a “roving transnational conflict zone that is cropping up with increasing frequency and intensity wherever extractive projects are attempting to dig and drill whether for open-pit mines or gas fracking or tar sands oil pipelines.”
United by resistance.
Example Keystone XL the vegans and the ranchers coming together to block the road the road that was needed to bring in the equipment for the dig, laying in the pipes that weren’t laid yet, and blocking the pipeline with trees

Question 28

what does “love will save this place” mean?

Answer 28

people coming together who care about the environment and each other to create a better world for all. Nothing companies can offer as a bargaining chip. Money is not the entire solution.

Question 29

relationship between climate change and fertility

Answer 29

The earth is a fertile being however when we are pumping pollution into the air and oil into our water we are killing the earth and making it less fertile

Question 30

what are some of the elements of the new worldview

Answer 30

caring about people and not about bottom line or profit margins

Question 31

three basic institutions of the basic model of Economic Democracy and how do they compare with the three basic institutions of capitalism?

Answer 31

1. Worker self management/ vs capitalist wage labor
2. Competitive market (stay the same)
3. Social control of investment vs capitalism private ownership of the means of production

Question 32

three institutions of the extended model of Economic democracy

Answer 32

Three institutions of the expanded economic democracy:

1. The government as employer-of-last-resort: a decent society will ensure that every adult who wants to work can have a job and citizens will have a genuine “right to work.” It will pay minimum wage but will guarantee a meaningful job to anyone willing and able to work. Mostly be created by the local government with local jobs.
2. Cooperative savings-and-loan associations:
3. Some private ownership of means of production and some legalized wage labor, some capitalism under socialism

Question 33

stabilizing vs capitalist firms that keep expanding? what are the consequences of this difference?

Answer 33

economic democratic firms will tend to be smaller than capitalist firms because once a firm reaches the optimal size for technical efficiency, it will stop growing! The demand for the product remains strong then new firms, “hiving off” from parent firms, will start up to satisfy the growing demand.
Democratic firms don’t like to increase because the larger size dilutes the political significance of the original members
Con: smaller firms than capitalist counterparts and less intensely competitive

Question 34

Economic Democracy is better than capitalism for

inequality, unemployment, overwork, domestic poverty climate change, democracy

Answer 34

Inequality: Within firms, people vote and that gets rid of inequality. Public investment so everyone has a part of firms not just the rich, this model still has inequality but it’s a lot smaller and more reasonable.
Unemployment: government as employer of last resort
Overwork: people vote on whether they want to work more or have more leisure time, most of the time they choose leisure and then they don’t overwork
Domestic poverty: his model makes it possible to eliminate poverty with a lot of commitment
Climate change: it doesn’t require growth for stability, won’t degrade the environment more, success not guaranteed but possible
Democracy: democratizes work, communities have democratic control over local investment funds, income inequality is gone, no “elite class” that controls everyone