World Thinkers 2015: Naomi Klein

Since 1999’s No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, which became a kind of set text for the anti-globalisation movement, Klein has been leading the charge against the excesses of consumer capitalism. The New Yorker described her as “the most visible and influential figure on the American left,” though her books are read around the world.

Last year’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate saw her move on to the environmental damage that she argues corporations have inflicted on the world. The book won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust prize for non-fiction. However, reaction to it has not been uniformly favourable, with some critics finding Klein’s prescriptions for dealing with climate change worryingly vague. Noting her calls for a carbon tax, the New York Review of Books observed that this “hardly seems to challenge the basic logic of capitalism.”