In September of 2014, Naomi Klein published her soon-to-be-award-winning book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. What she refers to as “a book about climate change for people who don’t read about climate change,” This Changes Everything succeeded in, as promised, significantly changing the way the public eye focused in on climate issues.

The book was an instant hit – #5 on the New York Times list, not to mention countless other bestsellers lists; winner of the Hilary Weston’s Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction; translated in over 20 languages; etc., etc., etc. And it isn’t alone: her two previous books, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism were also phenomenal hits. And frankly, considering Klein’s writing oeuvre, you can’t be all that surprised. (A few notable bragging points include her position as contributing editor for Harper’s, reporter for Rolling Stone, and regular columnist for The Nation and The Guardian, which are both sourced for the New York Times’ Syndicate; and her acceptance of the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, the International Studies Association’s IPE Outstanding Activist-Scholar Award, and the Izzy award for achievement in independent journalism.)

I was first exposed to Naomi Klein’s work towards the beginning of my third year here at NYU (I’m now preparing to graduate). On September 21, 2014 – about the time that This Changes Everything was released, I took to the streets with friends, covered in paint and chanting about rising sea levels, for the People’s Climate March. Though I’ve been dedicated to environmental and social issues for a long time, this was my first brush with environmental activism , and my first exposure to the true scope of climate change. Because of the March, I started to seek out ways to educate and involve myself in environmental organizing and climate action. I started reading books like This Changes Everything, and building a broader systems understanding of environmental issues as they relate to social justice, economics, and politics. I started to become one of the critically-minded, civically engaged university students that had always held my admiration and curiosity growing up (being raised by two vegetarians that were women’s rights organizers back in their day can do that to you).

This Changes Everything is one of the most influential publications in a growing collection of pieces that are working to expose faults in our systems, which have until now been so deeply ingrained in how our global networks function that we have failed to notice the harms they cause. The environment is so closely intertwined with all other aspects of society that it’s becoming impossible to disentangle, and Naomi Klein is tackling this entanglement head-on. As Rob Nixon from the NYTimes says, “To call This Changes Everything environmental is to limit Klein’s considerable agenda.”

It’s going to take many more critical, visionary, and inspirational women like Naomi Klein to expose, take on, and solve these faults in our system, and to truly build towards a more sustainable, responsible and just way of inhabiting this planet.

Cheers to the celebration of women every day of every month, and to a brighter future!