If you’re been in journalism long enough, you notice trends. Once, financial writers were pretty low on the journalistic food chain. The economy usually only made it to the front page on Budget day. But for some time now, business journalism has been part of the mainstream.
Even lower on the food chain was the IT journalist, who wrote incomprehensible stories about incomprehensible subjects. But IT, too, has gone mainstream, the internet demanding that the subject feature on the front page and be written in a way that is understandable to ordinary people.
Now it is the turn of environmental journalism, an area too often governed more by emotion than reason.
The green lobby often exhibits similar characteristics. I remember a conversation with a pro-Earth campaigner on alternative technologies. We were having an agreeable chat until I raised the question of costs, only to be told he does not deal with numbers. This is like the scientist who told us that the pebble bed modular reactor is a technology we have to have, but could not begin to discuss the costs of this technology against other options.
The environment is now in the mainstream. Some go further; they say it is the new religion. Concerns over global warming are throwing up a set of individuals who have messiah-like status. George Monbiot, author of Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning, is one such individual.
Monbiot, an activist, lecturer and columnist, marries economics with environmentalism. He is as sharp with his analyses as he is at destroying dissidents who, like tobacco apologists and HIV denialists in their own spheres, muddy the water in the climate change debate.
Monbiot’s test is that a credible source on climate change is one that has appeared in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. He is equally hard in his assessment of alternative technologies, which are generally believed to offer a non-fossil fuel future, but sometimes don’t stack up against the claims their supporters make on their behalf.
A case in point is micro-wind turbines for the home. Monbiot shows just how hard it would be to produce even 50% of the electricity required. The turbine would have to be 4m in diameter. “If you attached a beast like this to the gable of your house, the lateral thrust it exerted would rip the building to bits,” he writes.
Monbiot argues that rich nations must cut carbon emissions by 90% by 2030 to contain global warming before it reaches two degrees above pre-industrial levels, the point at which major ecosystems begin collapsing because they are no longer able to absorb carbon dioxide, but now rather release it.
It is an extremely depressing thought. Consider everything you take for granted, and then stop to think how much of it would be there if you personally had to reduce your carbon energy take-up by 90%.
But Monbiot’s self-imposed task is to come up with a strategy to reduce emissions by 90% by 2030 without sacrificing the many comforts fossil fuels give us today.
It is a huge task. Our world is one in which the major protagonists cannot agree on even something as relatively simple as trade reform. Will the rich, fossil fuel-pampered north really be prepared to tackle the single biggest challenge of human history?
Some of us in the south, while facing our own developmental challenges, are making a sizeable contribution to global warming. South Africa’s carbon dioxide emissions are only slightly lower than the United Kingdom’s, which has 3,6 times our GDP.
Monbiot takes you on a step-by-step journey, focusing on housing, transport, aviation, retailing and cement as case studies.
With the exception of aviation, his analysis suggests the desired 90% emission cut is possible. Homes need to be far better designed and incorporate the sophisticated systems used in the German Passivhaus, which requires no heating or cooling, is relatively inexpensive to build and uses a system in which outgoing stale air is used to warm incoming fresh air.
Transport needs hubs established near freeways, where you can board a bus for your road journey, with the buses speedily travelling along dedicated lanes. Retailing requires your order to be placed via the internet and delivered to you. Cement substitutes with lower-energy content will have to be brought to market. And aviation? Well, people have to reduce their use of air travel by 90%.
Monbiot’s contribution goes much further. The denial industry and its apologists can expect to hear from him, via his website, www.turnuptheheat.com.
Here, for instance, you can read about the hapless David Bellamy, a famous conservationist and tele-vision personality best known for a huge beard and a lisp, who published an article in New Scientist saying that, rather than retreating, 555 of the world’s 625 glaciers were advancing.
You can cruise around the web with Monbiot as he finds that Bellamy’s ultimate source is a cranky nutter whose claims include that modern science is a conspiracy against human potential.
Celebrities do not escape Monbiot’s scrutiny. Nigella Lawson is tackled for promoting jet-imported food. “Why shouldn’t we be grateful that we live in an age of jet transport and extensive culinary imports. More smug guff is written on this subject than almost anything else,” she writes.
Monbiot responds with a paragraph-long list of veggies that can be grown locally and brought to market without burning up the environment.
It is worth noting just how much carbon dioxide is produced by jet travel — a return flight from London to New York produces 1,2 tonnes, the same amount every British resident will be entitled to emit annually after emissions have been cut by 90%.
In South Africa, we make light of the subject of global warming. Columnist David Bullard, for instance, recently reviewing the new Audi 7, wrote that if you are to have a carbon footprint, you might as well have a large one.
You have to sense that the great civilisations of the past, the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, did not know what was their undoing. In our case, we do.
The optimist in me tells me that humanity will rise to the challenge. If you intend reading only one book between now and 2030, make sure it is Heat.