Scientists are watching a melting glacier roughly the size of France in western Antarctica. In May 2014, NASA and University of California scientists reported the melt “appears unstoppable” and this will spell the end of the entire region’s ice sheet, resulting in a sea-level rise of about 10 to 16 feet.

That tidbit was presented in the first 14 pages of Naomi Klein’s latest effort, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate” and she builds from there in a book that will both anger and depress many.

The anger will come to some readers, when they wonder, “Can we as a people really be THAT stupid to allow a climate catastrophe to happen?” It will depress readers when they realize that if the end of the world doesn’t happen there will still be a “hotter and wetter” future we face.

Of course, climate change-deniers needn’t read it because it won’t change their minds. This might be because of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by fossil fuel companies, including Koch Industries, to cloud the issue by advancing their argument that the all the science isn’t in and climate change is a massive “hoax” or, as one congressman put it, “Lies from the pit of hell."

Environmentalists already know what the book reports and what must be done if we don’t want the planet to become “a smoldering, lifeless” rock in space. They will argue that climate change theory has been known for more that 20 years and, 98 percent of climate scientists agree that climate change is manmade and something must be done now.

Klein writes that International Energy Agency warns “that if we don’t get our emissions under control by 2017, our fossil fuel economy will ‘lock-in’ extremely dangerous warming.”

Klein is the author of  “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” “No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies,” as well as being a contributing editor for Harper’s magazine, a reporter for Rolling Stone and a syndicated columnist for The Nation and The Guardian.

“This Changes Everything” is a well-written, well-documented and well-argued book that contains 100 pages of footnotes, an index and even more footnotes scattered at the bottom of pages throughout the book.

She argues that what is needed is a total change in how the world does business and an environmental Marshall Plan to save the planet by switching to renewable energy sources as some countries such as Germany and Denmark are attempting. And, she writes, we only have about a decade in which to do it.

This is where it will get tricky: It pits fundamentalist capitalist philosophy against the survival of the world.

She argues that capitalist philosophy that has prevailed during the last 30 years -- unfettered, deregulated, expand-or-die globalization, profits-over-all capitalism – is wrong and must change and that government regulation will be necessary in order to save the planet.

This government regulation, among other things, must include leaving about $10 trillion in known fossil fuels reserves in the ground; income and property redistribution; more spending on mass transit and public housing; carbon taxes; doing away with Big Oil subsidies; ending projects such as tar sands pipelines, coal terminals, the decapitation of mountains and strip mining for minerals; and, higher taxes on the wealthy.

Of course, she argues, the extremely wealthy, Big Business through their wholly-owned minions – Congress – will try to prevent that from happening.

But some sectors understand that climate change may be real and have been hedging their bets. Klein reports that between 2005 and 2006 there was a booming trade in “weather futures.” The weather derivatives market jumped nearly five-fold from $9.7 billion to $45.2 billion. Global reinsurance companies are making billions, in part, by selling new kinds of protection schemes and soon, Klein writes, everyone will have to have disaster insurance. And, she noted, as with every disaster, gun sales to individuals and demands for weapons systems by countries go up. Also, she noted that private militias are already forming.

Indeed, one possible scenario includes the wiping out of dozens of coastal cities, low-lying islands and countries. Hundreds of millions will be refugees and millions more dead from more powerful storms, droughts and famine. A dystopian barbarous society could emerge, she said, in which the world’s “winners” will still profit and the “losers,” of course, continue their losing streak.

Klein ends her book with some optimism, hopeful a world resistance movement by grass-roots groups and indigenous people could win in the courts by citing treaty terms and threats to drinking water and the environment. However, she explains that even with a victory, people will still have to endure “a hotter and wetter” future for centuries.

She also reminds the fossil fuel industries that, in the beginning, lawsuits against tobacco companies were routinely tossed out of court -- but not recently.

Near the end of the book, she quotes a cartoon showing a man at a climate change summit who asks: “What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?”

“This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate” by Naomi Klein. Simon & Schuster. September 2014; 566 pages.

William L. Haacker is an award-winning journalist and editor who has worked for various New Jersey newspapers, including Gannett New Jersey.