On Fire
The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal
Lavin Exclusive Speaker
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and the #1 international bestselling author of seminal books The Shock Doctrine and No Logo. In her book This Changes Everything, and in powerful new talks, she exposes the myths of the climate debate. It’s “the most momentous and contentious environmental book since Silent Spring” (The New York Times). Her newest book, On Fire, takes on the global climate justice movement and makes an urgent case for a Green New Deal.
Since This Changes Everything was published, Klein’s primary focus has been on putting its ideas into action. She is one of the organizers and authors of Canada’s Leap Manifesto, a blueprint for a rapid and justice-based transition off fossil fuels. The Leap has been endorsed by over 200 organizations, tens of thousands of individuals, and has inspired similar climate justice initiatives around the world. Her most recent book, On Fire: The (Burning ) Case for a Green New Deal, is an expansive exploration that frames the battle for climate justice as inextricably linked to the fight for our lives; capturing burning urgency of the climate crisis—and lifting up the inextinguishable energy and passion of a rising, vital political movement. Hailed by LA Times as “an antidote to despair”, On Fire is already inspiring environmentalists seasoned and blossoming alike: with Klein being called the “intellectual godmother of the Green New Deal,” by 350.org founder Bill McKibben, and as the “great chronicler of our age of climate emergency, an inspirer of generations,” by Greta Thunberg.
A true force of nature herself, Klein’s powerful influence has had a ripple effect on an international level. In The Battle for Paradise, is a startling investigation into the ways disaster capitalism undermines a nation’s recovery, and all royalties go to disaster relief in Puerto Rico. Klein was awarded Australia’s prestigious Sydney Peace Prize, for “exposing the structural causes and responsibility for the climate crisis, for inspiring us to stand up locally, nationally and internationally to demand a new agenda for sharing the planet that respects human rights and equality, and for reminding us of the power of authentic democracy to achieve transformative change and justice.”
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the international bestsellers, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, and No Logo. An instant New York Times bestseller, This Changes Everything is being translated into over 25 languages. Nominated for multiple awards, it won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. The documentary inspired by the book, and directed by Avi Lewis, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Klein is a member of the board of directors for climate-action group 350.org. In 2015, she was invited to speak at the Vatican to help launch Pope Francis’s historic encyclical on ecology, Laudato si’. She is a Senior Correspondent for The Intercept, and was named the inaugural Gloria Steinem Chair for Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University. She is also a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, and contributor to the Nation Magazine. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, the London Review of Books and Le Monde. She has multiple honourary degrees and received the International Studies Association’s IPE Outstanding Activist-Scholar award.