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Climate change is not just a moral question: it is the moral question of the 21st century. There is one position even more morally culpable than denial. That is to accept that it's happening and that its results will be catastrophic, but to fail to take the measures needed to prevent it.

– George Monbiot

Articles

Index:
Save the Planet in 10 Steps - by George Monbiot
The Boiling Point - DVD
We can make a difference

Save the planet in 10 steps

With the publication of the Stern report, the consensus on climate change is clear. Here's what we need to do.

It is a testament to the power of money that Nicholas Stern's report should have swung the argument for drastic action, even before anyone has finished reading it. He appears to have demonstrated what many of us suspected: that it would cost much less to prevent runaway climate change than to seek to live with it. Useful as this finding is, I hope it doesn't mean that the debate will now concentrate on money. The principal costs of climate change will be measured in lives, not pounds. As Stern reminded us today, there would be a moral imperative to seek to prevent mass death even if the economic case did not stack up.

But at least almost everyone now agrees that we must act, if not at the necessary speed. If we're to have a high chance of preventing global temperatures from rising by 2C (3.6F) above preindustrial levels, we need, in the rich nations, a 90% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030. The greater part of the cut has to be made at the beginning of this period. To see why, picture two graphs. One falls like a ski jump: a steep drop followed by a shallow tail. The other falls like the trajectory of a bullet. The area under each line represents the total volume of greenhouse gases produced in that period. They fall to the same point by the same date, but far more gases have been produced in the second case, making runaway climate change more likely.

So how do we do it without bringing civilisation crashing down? Here is a plan for drastic but affordable action that the government could take. It goes much further than the proposals discussed by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown today, for the reason that this is what the science demands.

Set a target for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions based on the latest science. The government is using outdated figures, aiming for a 60% reduction by 2050. Even the annual 3% cut proposed in the early day motion calling for a new climate change bill does not go far enough. Timescale: immediately.
Use that target to set an annual carbon cap, which falls on the ski-jump trajectory. Then use the cap to set a personal carbon ration. Every citizen is given a free annual quota of carbon dioxide. He or she spends it by buying gas and electricity, petrol and train and plane tickets. If they run out, they must buy the rest from someone who has used less than his or her quota. This accounts for about 40% of the carbon dioxide we produce. The rest is auctioned off to companies. It's a simpler and fairer approach than either green taxation or the EU's emissions trading scheme, and it also provides people with a powerful incentive to demand low-carbon technologies. Timescale: a full scheme in place by January 2009.
Introduce a new set of building regulations, with three objectives: A. Imposing strict energy-efficiency requirements on all major refurbishments costing £3,000 or more. Timescale: in force by June 2007. B. Obliging landlords to bring their houses up to high energy-efficiency standards before they can rent them out. Timescale: to cover all new rentals from January 2008. C. Ensuring that all new homes in the UK are built to the German passivhaus standard (which requires no heating system). Timescale: in force by 2012.
Ban the sale of incandescent light bulbs, patio heaters, garden floodlights and other wasteful and unnecessary technologies. Introduce a stiff "feebate" system for all electronic goods sold in this country. The least efficient are taxed heavily while the most efficient receive tax discounts. Every year the standards in each category rise. Timescale: fully implemented by November 2007.
Redeploy the money currently earmarked for new nuclear missiles towards a massive investment in energy generation and distribution. Two schemes in particular require government support to make them commercially viable: very large wind farms, many miles offshore, connected to the grid with high-voltage, direct-current cables; and a hydrogen pipeline network to take over from the natural gas grid as the primary means of delivering fuel for home heating. Timescale: both programmes commence at the end of 2007 and are completed by 2018.
Promote the development of a new national coach network. City centre coach stations are shut down and moved to motorway junctions. Urban public transport networks are extended to meet them. The coaches travel on dedicated lanes and never leave the motorways. Journeys by public transport then become as fast as journeys by car, while saving 90% of emissions. It is self-financing, through the sale of the land now used for coach stations. Timescale: commences in 2008; completed by 2020.
Oblige all chains of filling stations to supply leasable electric car batteries. This provides electric cars with unlimited mileage: as the battery runs down, you pull into a forecourt. A crane lifts it out and drops in a fresh one. The batteries are charged overnight with surplus electricity from offshore wind farms. Timescale: fully operational by 2011.
Abandon the road-building and road-widening programme, and spend the money on tackling climate change. The government has earmarked £11.4bn for new roads. It claims to be allocating just £545m a year to "spending policies that tackle climate change". Timescale: immediately.
Freeze and then reduce UK airport capacity. While capacity remains high there will be constant upward pressure on any scheme the government introduces to limit flights. We need a freeze on all new airport construction and the introduction of a national quota for landing slots, to be reduced by 90% by 2030. Timescale: immediately.
Legislate for the closure of all out-of-town superstores, and their replacement with a warehouse and delivery system. Shops use a staggering amount of energy (six times as much electricity per square metre as factories, for example), and major reductions are hard to achieve: Tesco's "state of the art" energy-saving store at Diss in Norfolk, has managed to cut its energy use by only 20%. Warehouses containing the same quantity of goods use roughly 5% of the energy. Out-of-town shops are also hardwired to the car - delivery vehicles use 70% less fuel. Timescale: fully implemented by 2012.

These timescales might seem extraordinarily ambitious. They are, in contrast to the current plodding pace of change. But when America entered the second world war, it turned the economy around on a sixpence. Carmakers began producing aircraft and missiles within a year, and amphibious vehicles in 90 days, from a standing start. And that was 65 years ago. If we want this to happen, we can make it happen. It will require more economic intervention than we are used to, and some pretty brutal emergency planning policies (with little time or scope for objections). But if you believe that these are worse than mass death, then there is something wrong with your value system.

Climate change is not just a moral question: it is THE moral question of the 21st century. There is one position even more morally culpable than denial. That is to accept that it's happening and that its results will be catastrophic, but to fail to take the measures needed to prevent it.

George Monbiot
October 30, 2006

The Boiling Point DVD

This Ross Gelbspan DVD is available for sale through North Coast Climate Action Group, cost for DVD packaged and posted is $15. Please either email or phone to arrange for your copy to be sent to you.

[For more information visit the Boiling Point website]

We can make a difference

Yesterday, humans living in affluence exceeded our biosphere’s capacity for 2006.

Using more in one year than nature can regenerate in that same year is called “overshoot”. Each year, the date at which we exceed earth’s resources gets earlier and earlier. Humanity’s first Overshoot Day was December 19, 1987. By 1995 it had jumped back a month to 21 November. This year’s Overshoot Day was yesterday. It would now take one year and about three months for the Earth to regenerate what is being used in one year.

Here in Australia, we are constantly sold the myth that economies can keep growing: not only that we can keep using earth’s resources indefinitely, but that we should. A very small handful of people are exhorting us to buy, buy, buy – but what are we spending and who gains? Our consumption keeps a few people very wealthy and very powerful, but the resources we’re expending right now were supposed to be for our kids.

We could say we’re borrowing, but really, it’s theft. At our current rates of consumption, there’s no way we could ever repay the resources we’ve used up: how can we make more oil, replace old growth forests, re-create minerals, reclaim our wasted water from the seas, resurrect extinct species? If you’ve seen An Inconvenient Truth, you’ll have an insight into the irreversible damage we are doing to our home.

My thinking is that whilst we can’t repay what we’ve already taken, we in affluent places have to do something to stop the theft.

Many people think that their consumption doesn’t make a difference. At one level, that’s true. My ecological cost is massive despite all that I choose to do differently in my life, because the society I live in (and benefit from) is so wanton with resources. That’s why I engage in ongoing political action in my local community (see Friends of the Earth).

But when we start to limit our consumption (of everything!) and try to minimise our interactions with big companies that drive the growth economy, we make an important statement to ourselves and each other: that we don’t want to be complicit in the theft of the next generation’s resources and that we are willing to share responsibility for stopping it. Every time we challenge the fundamental assumptions of our society (it’s okay to consume more than we have, someone will fix it later, everyone does it), we open up a tiny space for things to be different. We can start to upset things just by saying ‘But it doesn’t have to be so.’

Thus whilst all manner of political action is important, so too is what you do in your daily life. Collecting warm-up water in the shower might not make a huge difference to water supplies in real terms (irrigated agriculture comprises 72% of Australia's total water use), but the practice of conservation helps us to understand and value the place of water in our lives. Likewise with minimising waste; choosing food that is in-season/organic/unprocessed/locally produced/appropriate for the growing conditions; catching the train instead of driving; banking with a credit union or community bank instead of a big bank; choosing products that have a long lifespan and can be recycled afterwards; taking into account the costs of production at each step along the way. These are small things, to be sure, but they are easy places to start.

You can get more information about Overshoot at Global Footprint Network or ideas about reducing your ecological cost at the websites below. Check out your own eco footprint at Ecological Footprint Quiz.

It would be great if you would send this email on to your family, friends and colleagues.

The day that we begin living beyond our ecological means is creeping ever earlier in the year as human consumption grows. If you have already celebrated your birth this year, what can you do to make sure that overshoot day doesn’t happen on your birthday in the future?

Elizabeth Wheeler - 2006