Everyone knows that this is not going to take place. Only this month China's emissions were reported as having increased hugely. Cars are being manufactured at an ever-increasing rate, and all aspiring citizens in the new economies want to own one. Their governments are not going to stop them, or not until they have reached the level of car-ownership enjoyed by the developed nations. In other words, global emissions are all set, not to diminish, but to increase rapidly.
It's not a question of lemmings willingly heading towards their doom. It's rather one of human beings not being constructed in a way that will let us put long-term security ahead of short-term pleasure. Consumption is what the newly-prosperous want, and this is precisely what Monbiot is saying they can't be allowed to enjoy.
I'm not arguing that he's wrong. What makes this book uniquely depressing is that he's almost certainly right, but that it's not going to happen. Global temperatures are rising, will continue to rise, and almost certainly won't be diminished. But people don't like to think in this way. Scientists will come up with some devices that will save us, we assume. Electric cars will contribute a lot, plus nuclear power derived from fusion, rather than the current fission, processes. Monbiot examines these options, and in most cases concludes that they aren't going to come to pass any time soon. That's another reason why this book makes such bleak reading — George Monbiot is so determined not to be hoodwinked by false optimism.
So, what is likely to happen? Is 99 percent of life to be extinguished, as it was, apparently, at the end of the Permian Era 251 million years ago? Are people going to continue to search for the good life, emitting away like crazy, even as the temperatures go up and up — like a man condemned to death by boiling calling for another drink even as the fires under his tin bath are being lit?
My hunch is that a different, far nastier, option may prevent this scenario from becoming reality. It seems to me far more likely that nuclear weapons will proliferate uncontrollably, and just as all other weapons that have ever been invented have been used, so too will these be. Small nuclear conflicts will become the norm, and from them bigger nuclear wars will follow. Eventually all civilized life will cease and, though radiation will have effects that will continue for at the very least 30,000 years, human pollution by means of exhaust and other fumes will largely stop. It isn't an attractive prospect, but is appears more likely than the voluntary repudiation of almost all our current conveniences advocated by the austere — albeit honest, scrupulous and disinterested — George Monbiot.
One of this book's conclusions, incidentally, is that the least polluting form of public transport is the long-distance coach. Such vehicles in the UK, he observes, are reserved for the poor. They wander from one deprived area to another to pick up customers, and deliver their exhausted passengers at their final destination in a state of almost total lack of self-esteem. What the UK needs, Monbiot urges, are modern, luxurious, hi-tech coaches that pamper their passengers and speed along highways to the envy of all other travelers. Well, he only has to take a look here to see precisely that system already in operation. It's one small crumb of comfort for Taiwanese readers on this otherwise dispiriting Sunday morning.
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