George Monbiot
A take on what will need to be done in the next 50 years to dissuade catastrophic change in the earth’s climate.
Monbiot lays out how badly we1 indeed are frakking the world:
The problem is compounded by the fact that the connection between cause and effect seems so improbable. By turning on the lights, filling the kettle, taking the children to school, driving to the shops, we are condemning other people to death. We never chose to do this. We do not see ourselves as killers. We perform these acts without passion or intent. 22
In his book Perverse Subsidies, published in 2001, Professor Norman Meyers adds the direct payments US corporations recieve from the government to the wider costs they oblige society to carry, and arrives at an annual figure of $2.6 trillion. This is roughly five times as much as the profits they were making at the time his book was written. As well as the annual $362 billion the thirty richest governments were paying their farmers when Perverse Subsidies was published, they were spending some $71 billion on fossil fuels and nuclear power and a staggering $1.1 trillion on road transport. Worldwide, governments pay companies $25 billion a year to wreck forests. 55
He makes the comparison between now with the problem of climate change and WW2 with the problem of brutal fascism/genocide 98. In 60 odd years will people be as quick to vilify our hedonistic, carbon-gulping, wealthy nations as we now do the Nazi party? I’m sure someone witty could clone First they came... to apply here.
Unfortunately for us:
Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize that we cannot eat money. Cree Indian saying, 170
Monbiot outlines possible solutions he feels could cut back our production of greenhouse gasses significantly enough to sustain a global temperature within +2º (celsius I assume, him being a brit), a point where the oceans will not rise over-dramatically and the world shouldn’t come to an end. But at the last page doesn’t leave me with much more than slight hope. In any case, t’s looking like I’ll be lucky enough to live through some fun times.
1 We here is used to indicate the first world nations. A very small percentage of the world population is responsible for nearly all activities forbearing our current predicament. I am part of this sliver, and the fact that you’ve the leisure time to be wasting your time reading this gains you entrance to the club.
← Wired 15.03 | The Earth Manual →