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More heat than light?
Heat: How to stop the planet burning
By George Monbiot
Penguin/Allen Lane, 2006, £17-99 (hbk)
Reviewed by
Pete Mason
"WE HAVE a short period – a very short period" in
which to act, explains leading environmentalist George Monbiot as he
discusses how to stop the planet burning up. Monbiot presents a vast
torrent of facts. Since 2005, "there is no longer any data contradicting
the predictions of global warming models".
Monbiot seeks a 90% reduction in carbon emissions in
the ‘rich countries’ by the year 2030 to keep global temperatures from
soaring past the point of no return, although there is a "30% chance" it
is too late. The British government seeks a 60% reduction by 2050, which
is still "next to useless". Monbiot’s book brings a welcome emphasis on
solutions.
His solution to global warming is to propose
rationing in a market system. Not always prominent in the book, this
rationing concept exposes Monbiot’s weakness and contrasts with his
courageous advocacy of change. While everyone in the world is to start
out with the same carbon emissions entitlement, "if you can afford it,
you can burn your entire ration in a single carbon orgy, then buy what
you need for the rest of the year from other people".
Freely tradable carbon allocations are becoming a
‘mainstream’ idea, says the business editor of The Independent, Jeremy
Warner (5 October). This can mean only one thing. They will benefit the
rich and further impoverish the poor. But there needs to be "a massively
accelerated programme to improve the condition of the poorest people’s
homes", Monbiot adds. "Simply creating a market [in carbon allocations]
and expecting it to solve the entire greenhouse gas problem is like
asking the people of the slums of Manchester in the 1840s to sort out
their own sanitation". Precisely. Monbiot has consistently argued on the
need for ‘effective regulation’. But you can’t effectively regulate what
you don’t own and control. No one demonstrates this better than Monbiot
himself, but he does not draw the conclusions. It is, he says,
ultimately, a "moral question, not an economic one".
Warner points out: "Climate change is perhaps the
best example there is of what economists call market failure". (The
Independent, 16 September) Protecting the environment is an extra cost
which, in most cases, individual companies cannot bear because they will
lose their competitive edge and go bankrupt. So, Warner admits, "the
system breaks down".
Consider transport. Monbiot correctly says: "A
rational, efficient system, producing 10% of current emissions or less,
would save us billions. But the real problem is neither technological
nor economic. It is political or, more precisely, psychological".
Monbiot argues that the growth in car driving is a primary source of the
psychology of our individualistic, alienated, ‘free-market’ society.
Yet it was Ford Motors which consciously promoted
mass production consumerism in the early 20th century: the planned
obsolescence, continual replacement of one model for another, and
attempts to influence our behaviour. All the earth’s resources are being
feverishly consumed and thrown on the scrap heap, quite unnecessarily, a
mass production of shoddy goods. Furthermore, this continual tumult
requires enormous energy, the generation of which produces much of the
carbon emissions which threaten our planet.
Monbiot was right the first time: it is political.
Our society is shaped by the market-based, competitive mode of
production, which came to dominate through a historical process of wars
and revolutions, not a psychological process. This mode of production,
once so potent it created ‘wonders of the world’, has become destructive
in the highest degree, and requires replacing.
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem, says Monbiot, when
discussing alternative fuels: "The filling stations won’t supply it
until they have a market, and the market can’t develop until there are
supplies". The system breaks down. Yet, although Monbiot discusses a
rational transport system (based on coaches), he does not even place in
his schema the renationalisation of the railways, which is immensely
popular since the privatisation of the railways decisively showed the
failures of ‘the market’ for large-scale infrastructure.
He does not demand a massive reduction in pricing,
which would result in a big transfer of people from cars to public
transport. This was proved with London’s 1982 ‘Fare’s Fare’ campaign,
when the once radical Ken Livingstone was head of the Greater London
Council. Monbiot shows that bus and coach fares have risen by 66% since
1975, while car costs have fallen by 11%.
In addition, a publicly-owned car industry, freed
from ‘market forces’ and under the control of car workers, as part of an
integrated and democratically agreed plan of production, could
immediately undergo a complete conversion to the production of transport
which runs solely on nationally agreed carbon-free fuels. (See: The Car
Industry, The Socialist, 12 October)
Transport accounts for 22% of our carbon emissions,
our homes account for a third. Monbiot shows that houses can be and have
been designed and built, at no more than 10% extra cost, which "save
around three-quarters of the energy of an ordinary modern home". They
are termed ‘passive houses’ and generally do not require heating, even
in winter. If all houses met this standard, this would achieve the
required 90% cut in carbon emissions in the housing sector, Monbiot
points out. He gives the most conservative figure for passive houses. An
article in Scientific America by Eberhard K Jochem in September 2006
gives a reduction to one sixth of the average energy requirement.
Monbiot quotes figures for a 79% saving in a development in Freiburg,
Germany. But the government does not favour an ‘unwarranted
intervention’ into ‘the market’, it says.
The system breaks down. In the 1970s, Labour
governments boasted of building a million homes a year. In the 24 years
between now and Monbiot’s target year of 2030, this equates to
practically the entire housing stock, built to the standard of passive
houses, or renovated, at varying approximations, to that standard. In
addition, solar panels (not necessary for passive houses) would ensure
renovated houses at least approached the standard, while better-equipped
or situated houses would be positive suppliers of energy.
Monbiot finds this inconceivable. Bucking the system
clearly requires public ownership of the major construction companies
and an ambitious plan. Monbiot is fearful of a "statist" approach. Yet
the example of Liverpool city council, led by the Militant (now the
Socialist Party) in the mid-1980s, elected precisely on a massive
programme to build and renovate houses, shows in microcosm what a
socialist state could do. The council fully involved tenants from the
design board to the completion of thousands of homes with front and back
gardens.
Monbiot appears aggrieved to discover that workers,
such as shop assistants, seem to be more aware of climate change than
"the professional classes", who "don’t want to know". The big, highly
competitive supermarket chains contribute significantly to global
warming in various ways, although Monbiot has misinterpreted the Royal
Commission on Environmental Pollution figures (pp191-92). But the
supermarket bosses don’t want to know: "retail is a very harsh
environment". The system breaks down. The solution is clear: a socialist
government will have to bring into public ownership the big retail
concerns and put the shop assistants in charge.
Monbiot examines everything from nuclear power to
effluent, searching for a way to generate the electricity and heat we
need free from carbon emissions, without initial success. But, "I have
been looking at the problem the wrong way round". Instead of looking at
electricity and heat "as commodities supplied over great distances from
major sources", Monbiot embraces the alternative, "micro-generation" or
the "energy internet", the generation of power and heat at the point of
use.
Monbiot’s solution, a very important, holistic
contribution to the discussion, suggests a "micro-generation system
using solar panels with battery storage and either hydrogen boilers or
hydrogen fuel cells", all linked to the national grid. It would be more,
rather than less, reliable than the current supply. In addition,
grid-based electricity is provided by "a few very large power stations"
burning natural gas and pumping their carbon emissions underground, and
offshore wind and wave machines. But, as with every viable technology
Monbiot discovers, the market system cannot make the leap to implement
the technology or infrastructure. It requires, as Monbiot says, "a
massive and extremely ambitious government programme".
This book presents excellent research and mature,
informed discussion on the much maligned carbon-free technologies. But,
as Monbiot comments when discussing the car industry’s duplicity and its
Faustian pact with fossil fuels, "it is beginning to look like the last
days of the Roman Empire". Rather than let the outmoded, self-consuming
system of capitalism decline into barbarism in a burning desert, we
urgently need socialism, a mode of production based on democratic
planning, with the power to produce a new ‘wonder of the world’, the
saving of the planet.
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