[Iowa-dx] Fwd: Review: George Monbiot's book 'Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning' (Ted Glick)

[hhart@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu]

Crisis and Opportunity

By Ted Glick
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor
20 December 2006
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/122006EA.shtml


I am firmly convinced that the passionate will
for justice and truth has done more to improve
[the human condition] than calculating political
shrewdness, which in the long run only breeds
general distrust.
- Albert Einstein, "Moral Decay," 1937


     George Monbiot, British author, professor and
Guardian columnist, has written a book, Heat: How
to Stop the Planet From Burning, that should be
required reading for all climate activists and
for everyone else who cares about the future of
life on earth.

     It's not an inspirational book. What Monbiot
has written is an extensively researched,
hard-headed, pull-no-punches assessment of what
needs to be done in a range of different areas of
industrialized human society if we are to have a
decent chance of avoiding catastrophic, cascading
climate change this century.

     Here's his starting point: "If, in the year
2030, carbon dioxide concentrations in the
atmosphere remain as high as they are today, the
likely result is two degrees centigrade [3.6
degrees fahrenheit] of warming [above
pre-industrial levels]. [It's risen 0.6 degrees
centigrade so far.] Two degrees is the point
beyond which certain major ecosystems begin
collapsing. Having, until then, absorbed carbon
dioxide, they begin to release it. Beyond this
point climate change is out of our hands: it will
accelerate without our help. The only means by
which we can ensure that there is a high chance
that the temperature does not rise to this point
is for the rich nations to cut their greenhouse
gas emissions by 90 per cent by 2030."

     Ninety percent by 2030. Right now, the best
legislation in Congress, and the legislation many
climate activists are rallying around, calls for
an 80 percent cut by 2050, 20 years later.

     Monbiot is not hopeless about 90 percent by
2030. Based upon his research and analysis, he
believes it can be done, technically. He believes
that much which is positive about what goes by
the name of "civilization" can be maintained,
that a revolutionary transformation in the
sources, production and uses of energy does not
have to mean a significant decrease in the
quality of life that many working-class and
middle-class people have become used to, although
there will have to be sacrifices. Monbiot, for
example, is convinced that some form of a
rationing system - or a "carbon currency" - will
be necessary for both companies and people.

     Heat analyzes what can and needs to be done
in a number of areas:

the heating of homes

the production and use of electricity

the development of renewable energy

decentralization of energy production and use

ground transportation

air travel

industrial processes

     The book uses as examples retailing and
cement manufacture, whose production and use
alone is responsible for at least 5 percent of
the world's carbon dioxide emissions.

     Monbiot's final chapter is entitled,
"Apocalypse Postponed." In that chapter's last
few pages he tries to grasp why, "given that this
is the greatest danger the world now faces, we
[climate campaigners] are astonishingly few ...
There is an obvious reason for this: in fighting
climate change, we must fight not only the oil
companies, the airlines and the governments of
the rich world; we must also fight ourselves ...
Governments that have expressed a commitment to
stopping climate change ... know that inside
their electors there is a small but insistent
voice asking them both to try and to fail. They
know that if they had the misfortune to succeed,
our lives would have to change."

     Change; fear of change; acceptance of an
unjust status quo; being caught up, even
knowingly, in consumerism; TV and computer
screen-watching; unwillingness to step out of
personal ruts; being weighed down with work and
family responsibilities - aren't these the
problems that face those of us who are trying to
motivate a critical mass of people to join with
us to work for a world based upon justice and
peace, peace with one another and with the earth?


     Could it be that this deep, deep crisis of
global heating, a crisis that is increasingly
appreciated by much of the world, including
within the USA - could this crisis, indeed, be
the central issue which leads to "the great
turning," in David Korten's phrase, away from the
ways of domination, exploitation,
power-over-others and war that has defined human
society for so many centuries?

     Could the climate crisis be what gets us -
"us" collectively, around the world - to join
together in the numbers necessary in the common
cause of preserving a future worth living in for
our children and grandchildren?

     I believe that it can.

     There is no way to describe what will be
necessary other than as a revolution. Energy use
is intertwined with virtually every institution
of industrial society, as Monbiot's book makes
clear and specific. There is an immediate and
urgent need to dramatically reduce energy use and
rapidly change over to clean, renewable sources
of energy. A big majority of US citizens support
or are open to this idea, in general. The fields
are ripe for the rapid emergence of a massive
popular movement for clean energy.

     This will be a movement with all kinds of
social forces. On one extreme will be corporate
executives whose particular industry is being
negatively impacted by global heating, who
appreciate the bottom line of economic savings
via energy efficiency and renewables, and/or
whose conscience or concern for their own
children has motivated them to take action. Many
will be people for whom this is their first foray
into the world of activism. On the other extreme
will be social change organizers who have been
laboring in the vineyards for decades trying to
fundamentally change society for the better.

     As the movement grows stronger, and if the
majority of its leadership keeps its heart, soul
and mind fixed on the objective of the kinds of
fundamental transformations needed to stave off
climate catastrophe, as described in Monbiot's
book, it is to be expected that this movement
will be seriously opposed by rich and powerful
corporate interests - oil companies and coal
companies in particular - and those in government
doing their bidding. As has happened with every
serious popular movement in the country's
history, repression can be expected.

     But there is probably a greater danger: the
danger that, confronted with the scope of the
social and economic changes needed, some of the
influential leaders of this movement will decide
that it's safer to go the "slower but steady"
route, under the guise of "political realism."

     When and as this approach raises its ugly
head, we should remember the words of Albert
Einstein, quoted above. Future generations are
counting on us to do the right thing.


     Ted Glick is active with the US Climate
Emergency Council, Campus Climate Challenge and
the Independent Progressive Politics Network. His
Future Hope columns are archived at the IPPN
site. He can be reached at indpol@igc.org.