| When I meet George Monbiot, a journalist for the Manchester Guardian, to discuss his new book Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning (Random House, 277 pp.), we both admit these are strange times. Shortly after his book was published, the British Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change attached a $7 trillion price tag to climate change, focusing a lot of attention Monbiot’s way, where he suggests cutting our carbon dioxide emissions 60 per cent by 2030 and 90 per cent by 2050.
"It’s a strange feeling," he says. "This is an issue I’ve been concerned about for a very long time, but had very little success managing to impress upon people. Suddenly everybody’s talking the same language. It’s a bit damaging to your identity. I was like a lone voice in the wilderness and now there’s a lot of other people out there. It’s very flattering, but also frustrating that it couldn’t all have happened 20 years ago. I just have this powerful sense of lost time and lost opportunity."
Timing, for Monbiot is everything. His research for Heat was prompted by several recent climate change reports suggesting that with only a few further changes in global temperature, the world could be heading for ecological disaster by 2050. Other reports, including the British Stern Review, state that the temperature change could be closer to five degrees and occur by 2030. The day before we meet, however, Canada is ranked 51st of 56 countries dealing with climate change.
"Canada is in serious danger of becoming an international pariah on this issue. It’s a big shock to us in Europe, because Canada has always been seen as a country with such strong environmental credentials. Now that it’s effectively keeping company with countries like the United States and Australia – that’s not a position we expected at all. It’s a bit of a puzzle, but mostly it’s just revulsion. I mean, here’s Bush stumbling and bumbling, dropping the baton and along comes Harper, who picks it up and runs with it.
"I’ve read (the Clean Air Bill) and I was just gobsmacked by it," he continues. "I mean, picking up this Republican Party idea of intensity of carbon emission – reading that, I thought the people who crafted this bill think the public is stupid, that they can confuse people on climate change versus cleaning up local air quality. If I was a Canadian, I would have felt profoundly insulted by it because I would have thought, ‘They think we are dumb’ and now it seems like there’s going to be some movement on it, and the government’s going to have to change its tune somewhat."
If Monbiot sounds critical, it’s because he’s spent the last nine months researching and evaluating various proposals and technologies of climate change. In Heat, he traces out the costs and savings in an attempt to find a way to meet his targets. He takes a multi-pronged approach in the hopes of demonstrating how many small changes and several large ones could easily have the desired effect. While much of the technology currently exists, what is lacking is the political and economic will. Towards that end, Monbiot is among those who would see the development of a carbon ration system.
"The one thing that would kick the whole thing off would be a carbon rationing system, because everyone would understand it right away. If you were to try the same thing with taxation, you would either make it very unfair, in that it hit the poor primarily, or else very complicated so that it doesn’t hit the poor. The rationing system must affect everyone, and the one great thing about it is it generates a virtuous circle. You’re going to want to keep the energy going all the time, but you’re going to want that to be low-carbon energy.
"Countries have to set this up on their own," adds Monbiot. "The only way of this working internationally is if a bunch of countries converge on it. If international bodies tried to impose this, people are going to react against it. It has to be a national decision.
"When it comes to going abroad and killing people, there’s no end of international leadership. But when it comes to taking action, which is designed to save lives, that leadership is absent. When it comes to climate change, there’s this total abnegation of the idea of local government. I don’t see why Britain, Canada and the U.S. can’t exercise the same leadership they have on war."
Although many of his ideas are aimed towards implementation and co-ordination by national governments, Monbiot is happy to offer the following advice for individuals.
"Don’t go for the glamorous high-end technology like the mini-wind turbines. You can make a much bigger difference making sure your house is energy efficient. Make sure that you have no gaps in your insulation. Switch to energy efficient light bulbs. Get a fridge with vacuum packaged panels. It’s easy to do when you’re doing a complete refurbishment. It gets more expensive as you try to retrofit them." |
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