Klein states up front that, because her background is not in climate science, that she will not provide in this book any technical description about the science of climate change, but she reminds her audience that her understanding of climate change is rooted in science, and she urges her readers to study more about the science independently.
She discusses Capitalism to begin. Primarily, she describes that in the past, capitalism was governed by only a few rules: fair competition, and competition itself. Now, having been shaped by an entire history with capitalism, she finds that Western late Capitalism is so pervasive that our social lives are hyper0individualistic, competitive, and, in a word, capitalistic.
But now, in addition to the consistent need for improvement and growth as a society, she finds that Capitalism as described, governed only be competition and fairness, cannot be our strategy for the future.
She describes some of the ways that capitalist interests having expedited global climate change, and she urges her audience to reinterpret his or her understanding of Capitalism in light of our new scientific awareness that Capitalism (especially Industrial Capitalism) does indeed take a toll on our planet. That also means that it has been doing that the whole time, so now she explains that we need to be thinking of solutions for these pressing issues.
