H E R T Z O G
Can we really stop global warming?
Monday Magazine - Book Review
January, 2007
Dozens of books have been written about global warming, but none have come as close as George Monbiot’s Heat: how to stop the planet from burning at making a realistic assessment of our chances of slowing global warming and heading off disastrous climate change.
But although Monbiot tries his best to solve the climate conundrum, he may instead have confirmed that we’ve gone too far down the road to planetary perdition to qualify for miraculous social or technological redemption.
“ No Kyoto signatory nation has come close to meeting its target of reducing carbon emissions to below 1990 levels by 2012. Instead, emissions have grown, with Canada one of the worst offenders. IPCC predicts that if things remain as they are, the world will experience a 2ºC rise in temperature by 2030.”
A leading UK journalist, George Monbiot’s weekly geopolitical column in the Guardian is read worldwide. He has held visiting professorships at major universities and authored two UK best-selling books Captive State and The Age of Consent. In 1995 Nelson Mandela presented him with the UN Global 500 award for outstanding environmental achievement.
Heat addresses the environmental issue of this age. No Kyoto signatory nation has come close to meeting its target of reducing carbon emissions to below 1990 levels by 2012. Instead, emissions have grown, with Canada one of the worst offenders.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that if things remain as they are, the world will experience a 2ºC rise in temperature by 2030.
Two degrees is highly significant, Monbiot explains. It’s the tipping point at which major ecosystems begin releasing stored greenhouse gases and climate change accelerate exponentially. According to the IPCC, we’re due to reach 2ºC within the next two decades.
To avoid planetary catastrophe, Monbiot suggests that we must cut current greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2030. Through a combination of carbon caps and rationing using an eco-currency he calls an icecap, he argues that we can reform our social and industrial habits.
No technology holds a magic key. We need a combination of CO2 capture and storage, offshore wind farms, energy-efficient buildings, redesigned cities, local food supply, and slower transportation using integrated transit and non-polluting delivery vehicles. Aviation is a no-no, and nuclear power is less capable of achieving carbon reductions than governments would have us believe, Monbiot suggests.
“ Although he desperately wants to prove that a 90% CO2 reduction is achievable, a dispassionate reader may conclude that Monbiot instead proves it impossible. Time and again in this thoughtful, well-researched, and ultimately disturbing treatise, Monbiot’s careful investigations of a wide range of techno fixes and energy efficiency techniques founder on over-optimistic claims, timing, or corporate propaganda campaigns.”
Although he desperately wants to prove that a 90% CO2 reduction is achievable, a dispassionate reader may conclude that Monbiot instead proves it impossible.
Time and again in this thoughtful, well-researched, and ultimately disturbing treatise, Monbiot’s careful investigations of a wide range of techno fixes and energy efficiency techniques founder on over-optimistic claims, timing, or corporate propaganda campaigns.
Monbiot even points out the Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate (I’m not making this up!), which states that energy efficiency improvements in a free market can actually increase and not reduce energy use by cutting costs so that more goods or services can be churned out.
The enemy is us, Monbiot concludes. Despite our best intentions, we like our growth-oriented, comfortable consumer lifestyle and don’t really want action on global warming. Nevertheless, we must resist. Cut energy use… join an NGO… write to politicians… but do we really want them to make the necessary changes? And hasn’t Monbiot already told us that governments aren’t listening?
But judge for yourself. If you are interested in global warming you must work your way through this fact-filled book. It may kill any false hope, but that may just be what we need to wake up and feel the heat yet to come.
Heat: how to stop the planet from burning by George Monbiot
Doubleday Canada, 2006, 277pp, $29.95