The Hot Topic by Gabrielle Walker and Sir David King

[slowfox]

The most depressing thing about this book is that it was published in 2008, and as 2009 draws to a close it feels to me that we're not really moving any closer to society being willing to make sufficient changes on a global scale to minimise the risk of CO₂ equivalent concentrations breaking the 550ppm barrier, let alone the probably unrealistic 450ppm threshold that we're hoping represents the 2°C over pre-industrial levels that the IPCC were originally aiming for.

In many respects, The Hot Topic: How to tackle global warming and still keep the lights on is remarkably positive in its outlook, but this optimism is tempered, as above, by the fact that I'm reading it well over a year after it's been published, and if anything it feels like the momentum behind climate change awareness is diminishing as the sceptics' arguments make all too wearisome appearances on the Grauniad's bulletin boards, in the tabloid press and so on.

Personally, I think that Peak Oil and resource depletion are going to represent more immediate problems to the welfare of the human race - climate change is a problem that we've set in motion already, but due to the long time lags inherent in the system (the oceans take a long time to warm up, but then that heat will make its presence felt), other constraints are going to hit first.

And really I think this is going to boil down to a question of aspirations: what kind of lifestyle do we aspire to? What kind of lifestyle is sustainable? And should the random geography of place of birth determine that lifestyle, or should we aim to develop a society, globally, where everyone has access to the same quality of life?

Almost half the world's population lives on less than a dollar a day... I spend more than that on my dog.

Comments

[uninvitedcat]

Almost half the world's population lives on less than a dollar a day...
And I thought I was doing well to aim to have a daily food budget of <£10. Certainly brings home some perspective and reality.

[slowfox]

It does, indeed, bring home some perspective, and it genuinely troubles me how much of life's fortune seems to be determined by geography of birth.

And I wonder if it's actually reasonable of me to feel that the Earth's resources should be shared equitably amongst its population, or whether that's simple-minded in the extreme...

[aome]

Those are good questions to ask. I suspect that, as much as we might, ideally, want to aspire to everyone having access to the same quality of life, that the muckity mucks will cry "Socialism!" - or, at least, the American muckity mucks - much in the way they have protested a plan for nationalised health care. Never mind that we have had nationalised social security for ages, and no one complained. :P

So, if we set that idea aside for now - I suppose the quality of life we aspire to is much the same as what we have now, or just above it. I doubt there will be many - of any station - willing to go significantly downward from wherever their at; no matter that the next class down manages just fine at that level, the person higher up will think it's too dreadful to contemplate.

[slowfox]

I doubt there will be many - of any station - willing to go significantly downward

Absolutely - it's going to be really, really hard to engender a revolution that demands less of itself.

This question of aspiration is one that's been on my mind for a while now: what would a truly equitable world look like? One where, on a day-to-day, year-to-year basis, I was using no more than my 'share' of the world's resources (energy, pollution, raw materials etc). I don't think it'd send us crashing back to the stone age, but I'm also pretty certain that it wouldn't allow me 2 cars, multiple plasma tvs and round the world flights every year.

Somewhere between those extremes, there's a balance - a point that I'm sure would represent an improvement for those currently living on $1/day, but might seem unreasonable austerity for people like myself.

[aome]

what would a truly equitable world look like?

We'd all go around in matching jumpsuits. :P

[carolanne5]

It's odd, the percentage of people that seem to believe in climate change has improved significantly in the last five years but the percentage of people willing to change their lifestyle doesn't.

I imagine it's either "it's not me it's all those people with two cars" or "my actions are insignificant in the grand scale so it doesn't matter what I do" or possibly "if my neighbours not cutting back why should I?".

Part of the wider problem of people accepting responsibility for their own actions.

[slowfox]

It's also, partly, the fact that we like our 2 cars, our foreign holidays, our plasma TVs and stuff like that. They're fun.

Part of the wider problem of people accepting responsibility for their own actions.

I think you're right, and, specifically, I think this is an issue where people need to see that we all have to accept the responsibility at the same time... The UK did it with drink-driving, though - transforming an 'accepted transgression that doesn't harm anyone' through to the social taboo that it is now. But that took 20 years, mebbe?

The Hot Topic talked a bit about including in goods' cost a carbon allowance, and that we'd all have an annual carbon budget to use as we saw fit. If we were all engaged in the carbon economy as well as the sterling one, and people saw in explicit, numerical terms just how much more (carbon) expensive the 4x4 was going to be over the Prius, they'd perhaps be more inclined to adjust their choices.

However, the cynical part of me suspects that what'd really happen is people would just resent the imposition of another 'tax', and given how convoluted the chemical and physical aspects of climate science can be, it's unlikely that an equitable scheme would be simple, nor a simple one particularly fair :-/