This book was originally published in 2006, but was re-published by Penguin with a new foreword in 2007.  Well, if you are a regular Guardian reader, I probably only need to say: 'George Monbiot has written a book on climate change.'  If not, I probably only need to quote Sir John Houghton from the back cover: 'The best book I know . . . broad, balanced and practical.'  Nonetheless, being an old cynic, I expected some hype.  Fair enough, Monbiot does not 'spoil a sheep for a ha'porth of tar', but his main conclusions are sound as a bell, being based squarely on peer-reviewed science.

 

Comfortable reading they are not.  To have around a 50% chance of keeping within a temperature rise of 2 degC above pre-industrial (essential to make it likely that very dangerous consequences can be avoided) the UK (for example) would have to 'contract and converge' CO2 emissions by 87% before 2030 (page 16).  More of this later.

 

Monbiot is the epitome of John Bunyan's Pilgrim.  It is a delight to watch him attacking 'giants and foul fiends' as well as a few cherished environmental beliefs - and pessimistic James Lovelock.  At only one point did I feel slightly smug: Monbiot says he initially welcomed the Stern Report, whereas when I first read the summary I thought 'these figures don't add up - Sir Nicholas has based his costs on a greenhouse gas concentration that will likely prove catastrophic.'

 

Chapter 1 'A Faustian Pact' is a good round-up of the current scientific thinking on the problem of climate change, although Monbiot is a little selective in his use of statistics (page 17: why not tell the reader the range of results or average result from recent climate modelling instead of selecting extreme ones? - the average is hair-raising enough!).  It would also be helpful if Monbiot quoted the risks for CO2 (rather than CO2e) because these are more easily related to our emissions.  If you are writing to politicians, I would advise quoting more objective figures.  For example, compared to today's CO2 concentration of about 380 ppmV, 'High Stakes' ippr (November 2006) gives a 9% - 32% chance of exceeding 2^oC for 360 ppmV of CO2 by 2100 and a 46% - 86% chance for 450 ppmV of CO2. [For more details see 'On the Risk of Overshooting 2 degC': figure 2, or 'KyotoPlus - Papers: <2^oC Trajectories' table 1 on page 4 (both by Dr Malte Meinhausen) but note that these are for CO2e concentrations including the cooling effect of aerosols.]

 

The main part of the book examines how the U.K. could reasonably cut its CO2 emissions by 90% by 2030, i.e. without wrecking the economy.  This is excellent.  The point is not that this is a blue-print, but that it can be done.  The text is very well referenced to the original papers and articles, although not all of these can be easily accessed on the internet.  Monbiot ends with a call for effective action.  This is nearly a sermon on the text: 'The heart is deceitful above all things' (Jeremiah 17:9).  It would be all to easy to set grand targets that (subconsciously?) we don't really want to face - and then to blame the government for failing us.

 

Lest the book should become a Bible for fundamentalist campaigners, note that some of Monbiot's own calculations are incomplete.  On pages 16 and 17, Monbiot points out that the world needs to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations at no more than today's levels to have a reasonable chance of keeping within a 2^oC rise.  On the principle of Contract and Converge, he then calculates an individual's fair allowance of emissions for 2030.  Prudently he takes a figure of 10 billion tonnes p.a. (rather than today's 14.5 billion tonnes) for the biosphere's capacity to absorb CO2.  Dividing this by the expected 8.2 billion population gives 1.2 tonnes per capita - nearly a 90% cut for the U.K.  The problems are these: (a) even an optimistic C&C scenario would see an increase of about 35 to 415 ppmV in CO2 concentrations by 2030 (using Monbiot's data this implies a CO2e concentration in 2030 around 475 ppmV); (b) more worryingly, on average, developing countries are already (2004) emitting 2.4 tonnes per capita and rising fast.  How on earth can they halve that by 2030, especially if the poorest are to have a chance of clawing their way out of poverty?  I submit that developed countries will have to cut to zero by 2050 and make massive transfers of low-carbon technology and resources to developing countries.  But can they do both at the same time?  After peak oil? Monbiot does not tell us.  We need another book.

Charles Jolly