Features > June 22, 2007

Two Degrees From Devastation (cont’d)

All this brings me back to the question of carbon offsets. Given that we have to make these cuts as quickly as possible, offsetting is an absolute disaster. If you pay an offset company to wash away your environmental sins and reabsorb that carbon by some other means, whether it’s by planting a tree or by changing light bulbs in Jamaica or altering waste compacting process in South Africa—whatever it might be—that will take years to mature.

So you’re swapping what could have been a carbon cut today, with a possible carbon cut in the future. That is a bad swap. When it comes to something like tree planting it can take 16 years.

Tree planting, anywhere other than the tropics, now turns out to actually be counterproductive.

Don’t get me wrong—we should be planting trees! I love trees! But it’s not going to stop climate change. Not as a carbon offset. And the reason for this, unfortunately, is that trees are darker than other land—during the summer—they absorb more heat. They actually encourage further planetary warming. In the tropics, that’s not the case because of the hydrological cycling of the water.

It’s a similar effect to what we’re seeing in the Arctic with the disappearance of the ice. As the ice disappears, you have a white surface giving way to a dark surface, which is the sea, and it absorbs more heat, which is why the Arctic warms two or three times as fast as the rest of the planet. So, these tree planting schemes are just not going got work.

I have a sister that lives in Nairobi. And it’s tough because I’ve decided that I can’t go and visit her. She does come to Britain about twice a year. I’d like to see her much more than that, not least because we have a baby and they get along very well together. I’m very sorry about it, but I can’t reconcile it in my conscience.

A little bit. I cannot say to people, “You cannot see your family.” Believe me, it’s an extraordinary paradox that the world could be destroyed by love. Of all the things! Hatred, greed, fear, it’s very easy to see how the world could be destroyed by those things. This is a problem of morality. We need a whole new morality, a morality that we’re completely unaccustomed to.

Yes. It’s remarkable how few people have been campaigning on climate change until now. It’s also interesting to see how people have gone from the position of being in total denial that anything needs to be done, to total despair that nothing can be done, with no in-between. You would have thought there would have been this evolution from, “It’s not happening,” to, “Oh my God, it’s happening, we need to do something.” It’s much tougher to say, “It’s not too late.” That means you’ve got to do something about it. And that’s a far tougher challenge than throwing up your hands in despair and tearing your hair out. Anyone can do that.

Yes, it’s sometimes taxing. But I’m always struck by the incredible diversity of human skills and human determination, and of the will to overcome adversity. It’s amazing what some people manage to do from the most unpromising beginnings. If we can tap into some of that collective genius of humanity there’s nothing we can’t do. We really can turn this around. But it’s going to be quite tough.

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• Reader Comments

  Al Pacino and Robert De Nero were truly convincing in HEAT, the movie — but this book is a non-starter.
  
  Monbiot’s response to a legitimate question is equal to the best Clintonesque diversion/avoidance style.
  
  Q: “Are there still scientists today debating the inevitability of two degrees? Or is there a consensus on this matter?”
  
  A: “The EU, the British government and other governments have all been saying two degrees is the point beyond which we cannot go.”

  This is the same bunch who was so sure Y2K was going to be an international disaster.

  ---------------

  • What do we know?

  — Some recent data indicate a slight rise in world temperatures.
  
  — The issue has gotten a lot of attention lately.

  • What do we not know?

  — We do not know if it is primarily due to human activity.

  — We do not know if this is a new phenomenon or a repeat of a log term cycle.

  — We do not know if there are other unknowns.

  Regardless of the possible warming effects of pollution, we do know the air quality should be improved for reasons much more short term than a rising water table.

  I think he should visit his sister without guilt. Life is short.

  Posted by whattheheck on Jun 22, 2007 at 9:13 AM

  “George Monbiot has a challenge for those concerned about global warming: Stop flying.”

  How funny! One has to hearken back to those horrible days of September 12-14 2001 to know the real irony of this “challenge”. We gained fascinating data due to all US flights being grounded on those sad days. And we learned something of great interest. Condensation trails in the upper atmosphere actually cause an effect called “global dimming’. They reflect a very significant amount of sunlight, causing temperatures to cool on a worldwide basis.

  Furthermore one has to wonder what the sun’s role is on global warming. For those who care about such things, the solar wind influences the amount of cosmic rays that enter the atmosphere. We are in a period of high solar activity and this causes the cosmic rays to be deflected away from the earth. This is important since cosmic rays facilitate cloud formation, which help cool the earth.

  Of course, all that being said, we should still try to tread lightly on this earth for a variety of reasons. And anything we can do to stop giving money (and hence weapons) to the crazies in the Mideast can only be beneficial to us and them. I use compact flourcecents in my house and dream of the day i can install photovoltaics (solar cells) on my house.

  Posted by wolf on Jun 22, 2007 at 9:19 AM

  Sorry to derail, and I’m not commenting on climate change, but I read this:

  “This is the same bunch who was so sure Y2K was going to be an international disaster” and get a little ticked.  It frustrates me when people point to Y2K as the paragon of public and media Chicken Littleism.  It’s easy to say that Y2K was little more than hype as nobody died and elevators didn’t drop, etc, but this conveniently ignores millions of programmers and IT professionals working billions of hours in the years leading up to the year 2000 on preventative measures, testing and of course the recoding/debugging innumerable critical applications.  Obviously there is no way to know what would have happened on Jan 1st, 2000 without the massive technical effort put forth across the globe, but to declare Y2K a bust because no planes crashed and banks still worked is unfair and lazy at best and dishonest at worst.

  Posted by the_seanald on Jun 22, 2007 at 12:47 PM

  the_seanald

  So you are confident that all the computers were upgraded to compensate for the date “problem”? That’s why no calamities.

  IMO the worst thing about that whole “Chinese Fire Drill” was that in the rush to fix a nonexistent problem the US State Dept. allowed eastern European programmers in to work on our systems. Now there’s something to be ticked about.

  Thanks to Madeline Halfbright.

  Posted by whattheheck on Jun 22, 2007 at 1:32 PM

  What the fuck, WTF.  It was a “nonexistent problem” because it was prevented from becoming a problem, before all those greedy, liberal lawyers could march up the courthouse steps and sue the crap out of all those innocent, conservative corporations for ignoring it.  Nobody gets elected for preventing a problem.  People get elected for creating the problem and then reacting to it, like priests who create the guilt and then absolve the sinners for feeling guilty about committing their crimes.  It’s usually more dramatic to convict the criminal than prevent the crime.  Cheaper, too, unless we regard the value of life to be greater than the value of property.

  Posted by Major Major on Jun 23, 2007 at 6:58 AM

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