Reply #4: I just finished HEAT this morning - it didn't cheer me up. [View All]

The suggestions he makes that are technically feasible will only become socially or politically acceptable after the crisis hits. He fails to address the global scope of the problem and the potential for selfish national actors to undermine any mitigation effort. Worst of all from my perspective is that he fails to address the interactions between climate change, oil depletion and food scarcity - interactions that will make each problem harder to mitigate as the others get worse. In the last chapter of the book he basically says, "It's a long shot, but we just might pull it off, but we won't because we'd be asking people to voluntarily become poorer, and they just won't do that." That statement I agree with.

In my opinion any mitigation proposal that starts from a premise of maintaining Business As Usual is fatally flawed and isn't worth the skull-sweat it took to commit to paper. Monbiot is a nice guy and his heart's in the right place, but he hasn't yet worked up the courage to tell either us or himself the hard truth about the predicament we're in.

Here's the global problematique:

• Climate change
  
• Oil and natural gas depletion
  
• Depletion of soil fertility and fresh water reserves
  
• Deforestation and desertification
  
• Decline in the global grain supply
  
• Depletion of ocean fish stocks
  
• Massive extinctions
  
• Biodiversity loss
  
• Socioeconomic instability

All of these problems interact. You can't deal with them one at a time in isolation. They are all coming to a head and making their consequences felt simultaneously, right now.

I suspect very strongly that the opportunity to avoid calamity is long past. If we had one of these problems to face we might be able to mitigate it. It would be a stretch, but we could do it. Two at a time? I start to get doubtful. Three at once? Not a chance. There are nine problems in my little list. Any approach to saving our skins that begins "In order to retain our current standard of living we must..." is contemptible hoodwinkery.

It was a brave try, Mr. Monbiot, but all it has done is solidify my conviction about the true depth of the problem. For that I am, perversely, grateful.