Mark Lynas - The God Species - How Humans Really Can Save the Planet...

TOWARDS A TECHNOFIX?

Having said all that, solving climate change is actually a lot simpler than most people think. Global warming is not about overconsumption, morality, ideology or capitalism. It is largely the result of human beings generating energy by burning hydrocarbons and coal. It is, in other words, a technical problem, and it is therefore amenable to a largely technical solution, albeit one driven by politics. I often receive emails telling me that fixing the climate will need a worldwide change in values, a programme of mass education to reduce people’s desires to consume, a more equitable distribution of global wealth, ‘smashing the power’ of transnational corporations or even the abolition of capitalism itself. After having struggled with this for over a decade myself, I am now convinced that these viewpoints – which are subscribed to by perhaps a majority of environmentalists – are wrong. Instead, we can completely deal with climate change within the prevailing economic system. In fact, any other approach is likely doomed to failure.

Here are two options that certainly won’t work. First, we could try to reduce the global population. Certainly, fewer people by definition means lower emissions. But getting to 350 ppm by reducing the number of human carbon emitters on the planet is impossible as well as undesirable: at a first approximation it would require the number of people in the world to be reduced by four-fifths down to just a billion souls or less. Short of a programme of mass forced sterilisation and/or genocide, there is no way that this could be completed within the few decades necessary. Certainly there are a multitude of reasons why giving people access to family planning is a good idea, but climate-change mitigation is not among them. The best reason for promoting birth control is that people want it, and everyone should be able to choose how many children they have. The future of the planet doesn’t come into it.

The second option is to restrain economic growth, as GDP is very closely tied to the consumption of energy and therefore carbon emissions. No one disputes that recessions do tend to reduce emissions: the global financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 led to a fall in CO 2emissions worldwide by 1.3 per cent within a year. 53 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. But imagine that the recession had been caused not by solvency problems within financial institutions but by government policies to tackle climate change. Jobless totals would be rising, government cutbacks in welfare services hitting the poor, and a new age of austerity dawning – all because of the tree-huggers. If you thought the debate on climate change was ill-tempered now, imagine that particular future and its implications.

Greens have for years called into question GDP as a measure of true progress, but the reality is that increasing prosperity – measured in material consumption – is non-negotiable both politically and socially, especially in developing countries. This may one day need to change, but that is a different debate, and one that needs to be had for different reasons. As the climate scientist Roger Pielke Jnr writes in his 2010 book The Climate Fix , ‘if there is an iron law of climate policy, it is that when policies focused on economic growth confront policies focused on emissions reductions, it is economic growth that will win out every time.’ Greens may despair, but I think Pielke Jnr is right. The implication, however, is not that we are all doomed, but that any successful policy to decarbonise the global economy ‘must be designed such that economic growth and environmental progress go hand in hand’. 54 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

In a related sense, although Greens often insist that energy is too cheap, this too is incorrect. Energy is actually too expensive, certainly for the 1.5 billion poor people in the world who lack access to electricity because they do not have the purchasing power to demand it. Well-fed campaigners in rich countries may fantasise romantically about happy peasants living sustainably in self-reliant African villages, but the fact is that people across the developing world are desperate to increase their economic opportunities, security and wealth. They want to have enough to eat, they want to have clean water and they want their young children not to die of easily treatable diseases – and that is just for starters. They want the benefits of being part of the modern world, in other words, which is why so many young people across the developing world are moving to cities in search of a job and a better way of life. And this better way of life is coming, as the soaring rates of economic growth in China, India, Brazil and many other developing countries demonstrate. The fact is that most of the world needs more growth, not less: China has lifted 300 million people out of poverty in the last couple of decades due to its economic miracle. Hundreds of millions more, in Africa now too as well as Asia and Latin America, are determined to follow, as they have every right to.

By mid-century, in other words, we will see a world of many more, much richer people. Most Greens view this prospect with dread, for how can the world possibly reduce carbon emissions under such a scenario? The London-based New Economics Foundation (NEF), for example, writes in a recent report: ‘If everyone in the world lived as people do in Europe, we would need three planets to support us.’ 55 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. This is nonsensical, for everyone in the world is going to live like Europeans within this century (and Europeans too will also get richer) whether NEF likes it or not, and we will still only have one planet. NEF’s ‘Happy Planet Index’ was recently topped by Costa Rica (with the Dominican Republic in second place and Jamaica in third), apparently suggesting that the best country in the world to live is one where 10 per cent of the population still survive on just $2 a day. 56 Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. Certainly, the fact that GDP does not necessarily equate to happiness is an important point to make. But it won’t cut much ice with the billions of people – a majority of humanity – who are poor, insecure or malnourished in today’s world. For them economic growth is not a choice but a necessity.