Protestors at the Halkidiki Courhouse in Greece, as seen in This Changes Everything (Abramorama/FilmBuff)

“This is not about polar bears,” so says Naomi Klein in this gripping documentary overview, based on her 2014 best seller. It’s to her credit that she faces head-on the notion that viewers may suffer from climate fatigue and that the film refreshingly eschews alarmism. Neither does the film scold; Klein is uninterested in debating whether being waste and overconsumption is part of human nature. She counters that there is another issue to be examined. This could be good news: maybe the focus can change.

The matter in question, she argues, started in the 17th century, when England’s Royal Society, “the world’s oldest scientific organization,” developed a conception of the Earth as a machine and decided man was its engineer. The planet was no longer a mother who must be respected or appeased but a “mother lode” created to be exploited by all possible means.

This mindset took hold during the Industrial Revolution and has led to the current environmental brink, so the argument goes. Now, natural disasters are raging as long-neglected Mother Nature finally fights back. Klein and director Avi Lewis explore six different battlefields of the climate war, where people, too, are beginning to take arms.

In Klein’s native Canada, she looks at the Alberta Tar Sands, “the largest industrial project on Earth,” where many are getting rich quick by ruthlessly extracting fossil fuels from a beautiful landscape. Members of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation fight the project and offer the film’s first (and much older) alternative to the Royal Society narrative. To them, man is a steward of the land; they do not believe in the ability to ever own it.

There are two brief stops in the United States. One focuses on the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which painfully drove home the reality of climate change to elite New Yorkers unused to victimhood. The other deals with the efforts of Montana ranchers to hold back the tide of pipelines and coal mines. Then it’s on to sunny Greece, where citizens fight plans for a gold processing plant even as their mayor calmly explains the beneficial economic impact it will have.

It’s surprising that Mayor Christos Pachtas allowed himself to be dramatically lit with heavy shadows like some kind of Machiavellian prince. Klein, whose previous book, The Shock Doctrine, was a blistering indictment of capitalism, sees parallels between the Royal Society narrative and the way politicians create a perception of the economy as a machine: it works, we’re told, according to basic scientific fundamentals, but, she adds, it can malfunction and require ever-increasing amounts of fuel. The Greeks, it seems, have had enough of this tale.

The next section, in eastern India, involves the people of the rural town Sompeta, who fight “the struggle for tomorrow” in the film’s most compelling section. Activists and peasants lay down their lives to lead protests against a coal-based power plant. Ironically, though the need for this plant is due to India’s miraculous economic growth, it would only leave the poor poorer: the electricity generated will be shipped off to the privileged, leaving behind a ravaged land. The people of Sompeta push back, and their determination is inspirational.

By the time Klein lands in China, with its epic smog, she’s in the middle of a string of success stories. She highlights a global network of activists who use simple but brave tactics to stop industries in their tracks. No, this is not about polar bears, and any shortcoming (Klein’s narration can get a tad cloying, for instance) is forgiven in the face of the powerful human message delivered.