Under siege

Vandalised! Decapitated! Choice words for a planet under siege. In this case, we are the hostages and we are the terrorists too.

Climate models have repeatedly underestimated the speed and scale of major climate change impacts. One of the highest glaciers in the Himalayas is losing mass at an alarming rate, according to a new study. ‘Decapitated like a west Virginia coal mountain’, says the Energy Collective site. If Naimona’nyi is characteristic of other glaciers in the region, alpine glacier meltwater surpluses are likely to shrink much faster than currently predicted with substantial consequences for approximately half a billion people.

New report by the Public Interest Research Centre (Pirc) shows, climate scientists are now predicting the end of late-summer Arctic sea ice within three to seven years. This means more warming of the waters and permafrost begins to be exposed. Already is. Releasing huge quantities of carbon.

In a typical hard-hitting article, Monbiot says: As the Pirc report suggests, the years of sabotage and procrastination have left us with only one remaining shot: a crash programme of total energy replacement.

A paper by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research shows that if we are to give ourselves a roughly even chance of preventing more than two degrees of warming, global emissions from energy must peak by 2015 and decline by between 6% and 8% per year from 2020 to 2040, leading to a complete decarbonisation of the global economy soon after 2050.

The 80% cut by 2050 which Brown and Obama suggest means reducing emissions by an average of 2% a year, which would still mean an average rse of 4-5 degrees, Monbiot calculates and concludes as a ‘collapse of human civilisation’.

Total energy replacement alone will do, he says. The costs are high but he notes how a similar amount has been deployed in response to the financial crisis, amounting to more than that spent in the second world war!

For the change to renewables, enormous new infrastructure is required which calls for a huge front-load of fossil fuels. So, can we afford that or is it a better option to ask people to ‘sacrifice’ comforts by cutting 50 percent of energy consumption, as advocated by American thinker Sharon Astyk?

Monbiot believes such a cut would lead to further depression of the economy leading to collapse. Besides the fact that it is a highly idealistic proposal.

Hear Sharon on that: I do not believe is that the self-indulgence has driven out the capacity for sacrifice -instead, they are sides of the same coin. We indulged because our collective definition of goodness was defined by consumer culture. But the vast void and emptiness of this has left people literally longing for something richer and deeper. Service to community, nation and family is likely to be bread and meat to many who have been starving for something other than the empty calories consumer culture has served them.

There are people like Sharon and Arnold Schwarzenegger who belive that despite the economic downturn, the shift must happen. If we cannot address climate change while managing a massive economic decline, there is a good chance that we cannot manage it at all.

The question to ponder over is: Will voluntary cuts work? Anywhere? Can poor nations afford a total energy replacement?