“Politics begins in disappointment”. So goes Simon Critchley’s useful aphorism.[1] Naomi Klein’s version thereof could go “politics begins in missed appointments” – from the first warning shots about a “metabolic rift with nature” during the industrial revolution, through to burgeoning science about climate change from the likes of NASA in the 1960s, past the Kyoto agreement, up to the recent Copenhagen Climate Summit/Débâcle, globally speaking, we have not shown up to any of our appointments to deal with climate change. For Klein it is time to show up, and moreover it is time to name the real reason for our missed appointments – capital – and to get beyond it.

Klein is a veteran of drawing out the way class and capital suffuse key political struggles over race, gender, the built environment, war, and so on. She is self-admittedly late to the game when it comes to anti-capitalist…