[1] Klein argues that the climate crisis cannot be addressed in the current era of neoliberal market fundamentalism, which encourages profligate consumption and has resulted in mega-mergers and trade agreements hostile to the health of the environment.

[5] In Rolling Stone, Roy Scranton wrote that the book "superbly dramatizes the seemingly intractable ways that global capitalism is locked into a carbon death spiral, and how small bands of activists are fighting worldwide to stop it, against increasingly punishing repression.

It's the single strongest statement we have for why carbon-fueled capitalism (or 'extractivism') with its imperative of relentless growth and exploitation, is fundamentally incompatible with ecological sensibility and climate justice.

[9] This Changes Everything was also reviewed across different scholarly disciplines in the academic literature,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] with Australian business professor, Christopher Wright, commenting:This is a book that should be read by everyone with an interest in climate politics, the contradictions of capitalism and our increasingly precarious existence on this planet.

[17]In the Monthly Review, Professors John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark provided detailed counter-arguments in response to what they term are the "liberal critics" of the book.