Published on Tuesday, October 31, 2006 by the Guardian / UK

Drastic Action on Climate Change is Needed Now - and Here's the Plan The government must go further, and much faster, in its response to the moral question of the 21st century

by George Monbiot

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 yesterday, 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 with time on the horizontal axis and the rate of emissions plotted vertically. On one graph the line falls like a ski jump: a steep drop followed by a shallow tail. On the other it 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 yesterday, for the reason that this is what the science demands. 1. 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 The government is using outdated figures, aiming for a 60% reduction by 2050.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. 2. 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 remainder 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. 3. 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. 4. Ban the sale of incandescent lightbulbs, patio heaters, garden floodlights and other wasteful and unnecessary technologies. Introduce a stiff "feebate" system for all electronic goods sold in the UK, with the least efficient taxed heavily and the most efficient receiving tax discounts. Every year the standards in each category rise. Timescale: fully implemented by November 2007. 5. Redeploy money now 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. 6. 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. 7. 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. 8. Abandon the road-building and road-widening programme, and spend the money on tackling climate change. The government has earmarked £11.4bn for road expansion. It claims to be allocating just £545m a year to "spending policies that tackle climate change". Timescale: immediately. 9. 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. 10. 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, by contrast to the current glacial pace of change. But when the US 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's book Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning is published by Penguin. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006

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I am seeking meaningful work.

bio: http://aqalicious.gaia.com/

I spend most of my "forum time" these days on The Integral Pod: http://pods.gaia.com/ii/

"You've never seen everything." - Bruce Cockburn

A bit overwhelming, the seeming futility of it, Arthur.

Yesterday I was driving to work and thinking about this stuff - how there seems to be no plausible way for us to get out of this planetary mess. Sure, it's possible, but any one of these things - nuclear, global warming, etc., could be the death of us all, or most.

Even imagining a survival scenario is not pleasant. It seems to me that there is a big possiblity that those who survive wouldn't be the ones I'd choose, or that there'd be a few different ways to survive and that life would be very stratified indeed, i.e., an upper class of those who could afford to get to a survivable place, and a lower class of those who simply endured the worst and survived. So many scenarios, few of them hopeful in any conventional sense.

I thought of evolution and how it tends to operate very quickly, or so theory says, under these extreme conditions. There's no reason at all why we couldn't all die with little more than a brief last outcry. Poof. But what does that mean, if anything?

Evolution on this planet, getting to where we are today, is just one of countless such spirit experiments going on in the universe. Maybe we're one of the vast multitudes of planets that will perish. Maybe we're not, as we enjoy pretending while watching Star Trek, the stars of this show. Maybe we're just the red-shirts, eh? Or worse, maybe we're like krill - vast multitudes of fodder for something larger we can't begin to understand.

It may be that, paradoxically enough, there needs to be a critical mass of those of us who understand this in order to take us to the next evolutionary level. Yet it may also be that the progress to second-tier consciousness, since it relies on reaching green levels first, in and of itself will thwart our survival. Can you imagine greens turning away the populace at the door when they have the last supply of food in town?

It seems evident to me that we are much more likely to be krill than whales in this universe. But it's not a reason to give up, or seek refuge in spiritual bypasses. To the contrary, it's all the more reason to strive, in all quadrants, for realization of enlightenment and relative-world progress. If we're going to win this lottery, we'll need to buy as many tickets as possible. Somebody's gotta win, right?

OK, a little heavy on the metaphors this morning, but I find that words are inadequate for what I'm thinking. This may veer the thread off-topic, but I couldn't really think of another way to illustrate my point, which has been brewing in response to Arthur's posts of this kind.

Liz

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The debate has been on the news here a lot, and some politicians do seem to be shifting their stance.  I welcome the emphasis on money.  Like it or not, many people think in monetary terms and this will help.  The human cost should also be mentioned, so as to not alienate Green, but generrally speaking Green is happy about this sort of thing anyway.  One thing that surprises me still is how stubborn and backward some people act.  "It's not fair, why should my gas-guzzling monster have to pay more when other people who buy combi-cars get tax cuts?"  Of course, people like that will one day be in the minority, but first we need to get there, and that requires some very skillful means.

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Gavin

Haunted by the familiarity of inner softness behind frozen eyes

infimitas:

The debate has been on the news here a lot, and some politicians do seem to be shifting their stance.

It's the same here in Holland, all political parties are putting it on the agenda at the moment (we got elections coming up). The frontman of one of the more right-wing parties even announed that "the environment is way too important to leave it to lefties"...

We had also had a "Night of the night" recently, where several towns/cities turned off all unnecessary lighting for one night. That was partly for saving energy, partly because having too many lights on confuses animals, and partly because some people feel that it should just be darker at night (note that the amount of lighting in Holland and Belgium is even higher than the rest of Europe or the US). As a consequence of this, many towns are going to see if they can do more one energy saving all year round.

So it's finally catching on, and people here generally agree that Al Gore's movie caused to tipping point.

Peter

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"All nations should be like Amsterdam" -- Ken Wilber

Another plan worth checking out is Plan B 2.0 by Lester R. Brown (of World-Watch Institute fame), available on-line through the Earth Policy Institute at www.earthpolicy.org or you can purchase copies starting at $17.00 to support the effort as well (big discounts for quantities).

They say it is the first comprehensive plan for restructuring the global economy to deal with climate change, eradicating poverty, stabilizing population and protecting the earth's forrests, soils, fisheries and natural resources.  The budget for this effort comes to $161 billion per year, a fraction of the world's annual military expenditures of $971 billion.

R.K.

 

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"No problem can be solved at the level of consciousness that created it in the first place!"

887 Posts on Forum #1; 222 Posts on Forum #2......Member Since 8/8/2003

Tony Blair: "The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge." - In suggesting that the UK must follow his 'plan' I wonder if Monbiot recognises this?

I would like to address each of his points to see if they stand up to scrutiny. Maybe some of my concerns are inaccurate, i apologise for them!

1. Yes, using uptodate statistics is necessary.

2. The poor have less efficient CO2 burning machines so will pay more than the rich per km. Commuting to work can be lengthly. I can see that if the quota doesn't cover a persons yearly travel to work expenses then companies will be without workers for the last two months ( or whatever ) of a year.

3. These buildings are likely to be expensive. The rich will buy them and make savings on their 'quota'. The poor will buy the remaining quota off the rich so they can be warm during the cold winter months in their inefficient houses. Rich win, poor lose.

4. Sounds good. But technological companies will reduce investment in the UK, jobs and training will go elsewhere. Results in the UK being seen as a troublesome country to invest in. Losing out on international finance and respect. Other countries will gain from the UK's loss.

5. Taking money from the military complex is easier said than done. There are huge economic and political ramifications to do anything that annoys the US.

6. If true sounds good.

7. One problem - There are not many battery powered cars in the UK!

8. Many jobs are wrapped up in road building. The economy heavily relies on road building. The jobs are largely held by the poor. Removing these jobs results in the punishment of the poor for something that's not their fault.

9. Airport = big money. Removing the money is removing the UK's competitivity. Removing the confidence of the international investor. The UK loses out. Another country gains.

10. Fine, but what about all the jobs lost? Need i mention that it's mainly the poor who work in supermarkets? (maybe they'll all get work in the warehouses, but not likely.)

A recurring theme is the heavy costs to the poor. This is a 'moral question'. Linked to this is also the heavy loss on the international economic market for the UK. The result in less investment in the UK (or in any country) is a higher relative-poverty line.

A new, improved question must be asked: "How can we stop the planet burning, and the poor from being used as the fire blanket?"

In addition we must ask "How many countries have to take part for the governments to agree to implement the necessary changes" - ie "when does it become economically and politically viable?"

With love and hope,

Wicke

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mornin' sunshine

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JC
33° 13' N 87° 37' W

Hi Arthur,

 

I get scarred every time I see the solution in a bulleted list. I am beginning to fear that the climate change Nazi's are coming. I would like to remind us about a resource subject that has been discussed in these threads before: Donella Meadows’ Leverage Points to intervene in a system. It seems to me that George Monbiot is suggesting to intervene in the system by the upper end of the scale of ineffectiveness. Some of his ideas may be warranted if we don’t get more of a shift coming sooner rather than latter. His bans on technology would certainly require another board of judges to decide what is good and what is bad. The Lovins’ at RMI have another solution; (at least for the US) you can download a copy of their plan, “Winning The Oil End Game” for free. Click on Read The Book.

Thanks for sharing one of the solutions.

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With Love, John

"The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust

I woke up this morning thinking that my last post wasn’t such an integral embrace of George Monbiot's solution; not coming from my higher self and all. I thought I should edit it. Liz, once again you inspire me. I reread your post, found my center and thought about it some more. When I take my highest perspective of climate change I always find myself observing humanity, myself and the cosmos as an evolving process. It doesn’t have a right or a wrong. More depth verses less depth more span verses less span; a constant flux. I experience the flow of this unfolding process. In this light all of these solutions are not solutions because there is no problem, only the unfolding of spirit in action. There is no meant to be and there is. The unfolding process of this landscape may include a world with no polar bears and a beautiful arctic ocean that never sees ice. The fact is that we don’t know how this will unfold. Maybe this global warming thing is just what the world needs to reduce the population to where all of the inhabiting life can live in a more sustainable way providing a harmony in the far future through a pain in the near future. Here I find my peace in all of this.

 

From that perspective I guess I can move up or down in consciousness. I am feeling that a move down will throw me right back into the first tier space that finds first tier solutions. Yet a move up to a transcendent point of view lets me embrace the place of peace and the dualist viewpoint for implementation of skillful means. I can then reenter the marketplace with joy and help liberate sentient beings and lessen suffering. Now I embrace the world of a changing climate with 6.5 billion humans and again decide to enter the stream without attachment to my action and not fearing my karma.

 

So coffee in hand this morning let me say that I enter this stream and decide that climate change is a situation that will probably define this century I also choose to enter this debate to affect its outcome through positive means to hopefully enlighten beings through its course and through action, help foster creative solutions to lessen suffering. Returning to the subject proposed solution, while I admire and support its intention I still see this course of action not to be the best solution, but part of a larger one.

 

Wicke, your pointed assessment of the proposal is good and I agree with it. It brings to light that an imposed regulatory intervention of the system does not shift the paradigm of people or bring them joy through plentitude. It suggests that it will widen the gap between the rich and the poor in your country; and being a one country solution will tend to make it a zero-sum game. Just to mention point 7 of the plan to require electric cars and their batteries is not the best technical solution as it will shift the energy production to existing coal, gas and oil fired power plants (nuclear, wind and solar generation is not likely to be able to support transportation needs so soon) to move the same amount of mass and still producing CO2 at an alternative location. The huge demand for lead to support the required batteries will become cost and resource prohibitive and will again require a huge input of energy to extract, process and transport to production points. Also the lead adds weight to the vehicle requireing more energy. Hyper cars are a better solution.

 

Your assessment definitely shows that a regulatory push in only one quadrant will have unexpected results in the other quadrants. For a good example of this see Operation Cat Drop; a reminder to us all that integrative solutions are called for in this endeavor to negotiate a changing climate. I only wish my communicative people skills were better.

R.K., thanks for reminding me of the B2 plan. Its been on my reading list for a long time. You inspire me to buy it.

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With Love, John

"The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust

Traditional light bulbs may become a thing of the past in California

A Californian politician is aiming to bring in a law banning the sale of traditional light bulbs in the state.

California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine wants incandescent light bulbs banned by 2012, in favour of energy-saving fluorescent lights.

The planned legislation would be known as the How Many Legislators Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb Act.

The Democrat intends to introduce his bill this week. He has already forced retailers to recycle more plastic.

'Incredibly inefficient'

"Incandescent light bulbs were first developed almost 125 years ago, and since that time they have undergone no major modifications," he said.

"Meanwhile, they remain incredibly inefficient, converting only about 5% of the energy they receive into light."

Lighting currently accounts for about a fifth of the average US home's electricity costs.

California is leading the way in the US on environmental good practice.

It was the first US state to target cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, aiming for a 25% reduction by 2020.

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With Love, John

"The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust

A world with only fluorescent light = Hell

It is terrible light...unfortunately, people spend so much time under them they don't realize the difference.

R.K., thanks for reminding me of the B2 plan. Its been on my reading list for a long time. You inspire me to buy it.

Great!  Every resource is needed to overcome the still-formidable proactive inertia of our political-economic leadership during the past 35 years.  Momentum seems to be gathering though to finally drive a huge green-powered caravan of innovations through their outdated thinking and policies!! 

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"No problem can be solved at the level of consciousness that created it in the first place!"

887 Posts on Forum #1; 222 Posts on Forum #2......Member Since 8/8/2003

Today's Headlines from Reuters...

 

Global climate change is "very likely" to have a human cause, an influential group of scientists has concluded.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said temperatures were probably going to increase by 1.8-4C (3.2-7.2F) by the end of the century.

It also projected that sea levels were most likely to rise by 28-43cm, and global warming was likely to influence the intensity of tropical storms.

The findings are the first of four IPCC reports to be published this year.

"We can be very confident that the net effect of human activity since 1750 has been one of warming," co-lead author Dr Susan Soloman told delegates in Paris.

Strong language

The report, produced by a team tasked with assessing the science of climate change, was intended to be the definitive summary of climatic shifts facing the world in the coming years.

IPCC PROJECTIONS Probable temperature rise between 1.8C and 4C Possible temperature rise between 1.1C and 6.4C Sea level most likely to rise by 28-43cm Arctic summer sea ice disappears in second half of century Increase in heatwaves very likely Increase in tropical storm intensity likely Climate change: In graphics

The agency said that it would use stronger language to assess humanity's influence on climatic change than it had previously done.

In 2001, it said that it was "likely" that human activities lay behind the trends observed at various parts of the planet; "likely" in IPCC terminology means between 66% and 90% probability.

Now, the panel concluded that it was at least 90% certain that human emissions of greenhouse gases rather than natural variations are warming the planet's surface.

They projected that temperatures would probably rise by between 1.8C and 4C, though increases as small as 1.1C (2F) or as large as 6.4C (11.5F) were possible.

In 2001, using different methodology, the numbers were 1.4 (2.5F) and 5.8C (10.4F).

How computers model climate

On sea level, there has been a more fundamental debate.

Computer models of climate do not generally include water coming into the oceans as ice caps melt. So the IPCC had to decide whether to exclude this from its calculations, or to estimate the effect of a process which scientists do not understand well but which could have a big impact.

They used the former, more conservative approach, projecting an average rise in sea levels globally of between 28 and 43cm. The 2001 report cited a range of nine to 88cm.

As for climate change influencing the intensity of tropical storms in some areas of the world, the IPCC concluded that it was likely - meaning a greater probability than 66% - that rising temperatures were a factor.

'Unequivocal'

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, said: "It is extremely encouraging in that the science has moved on from what was possible in the Third Assessment Report.

"If you see the extent to which human activities are influencing the climate system, the options for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions appear in a different light, because you can see what the costs of inaction are," he told delegates in Paris.

READ THE FINDINGS IPCC report [2.2MB] Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader Download the reader here

Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said the findings marked a historical landmark in the debate about whether humans were affecting the state of the atmosphere.

"It is an unequivocal series of evidence [showing that] fossil fuel burning and land use change are affecting the climate on our planet."

Mr Steiner, whose agency oversees the operation of the Kyoto Treaty, added: "If you are an African child born in 2007, by the time you are 50 years old you may be faced with disease and new levels of drought."

He said that he hoped the IPCC report would galvanise national governments into action.

At variance

But a study published on the eve of the IPCC report suggested that the international body's previous reports may have actually been too conservative.

HAVE YOUR SAY The world needs to act but somebody needs to start it, why not us? Duncan Smallman, Aberdeen Send us your views

Writing in the journal Science, an international group of scientists concluded that temperatures and sea levels had been rising at or above the maximum rates proposed in the last report, which was published in 2001.

The paper compared the 2001 projections on temperature and sea level change report with what has actually happened.

The models had forecasted a temperature rise between about 0.15C-0.35C (0.27-0.63F) over this period. The actual rise of 0.33C (0.59F) was very close to the top of the IPCC's range.

A more dramatic picture emerged from the sea level comparison. The actual average level, measured by tide gauges and satellites, had risen faster than the intergovernmental panel of scientists predicted it would.

The IPCC's full climate science report will be released later in the year, as will other chapters looking at the probable impacts of climate change, options for adapting to those impacts, and possible routes to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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JC
33° 13' N 87° 37' W

Have a look at this http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-8/iss-2/p12.pdf It deals with the notion of capturing (solar) energy on the moon and sending this energy via microwave beam to earth (however far-out this may initially sound the details I believe are fleshed out in a very reasonable fashion in this article)

Moreover, after further contemplation this method of generating energy also has a sense of aesthetic beauty I believe, if one can imagine a sun ray that is maintained day & night (a couple thousand scattered strategically around the world and probably located on the outskirts of major urban centers I would suppose) to look at this light and know immediately (with objective evidence) that humans are living in a more harmonious and sustainable fashion from quite literally a beam of light, I think is really quite an exhilarating vision.