"Heat" - By George Monbiot

Reviewed by Tanya Brouwers

On June 22, 2007, Liberals introduced into parliament the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act which gives the government 60 days to prepare a climate plan with measures to ensure that Canada meet its obligations under the Kyoto treaty. For many, Steven Harper among them, the challenge seems a little daunting, even “impossible”. However, for those individuals who view inaction as an exercise in human extinction, the news is good, even relieving. The challenge now is developing a plan that is workable. Government would be wise to peruse the pages of George Monbiot’s Heat, a smart book full of science, statistics and is, most importantly, given the fact that Canada’s carbon dioxide emissions have been rising for the past ten years, full of real solutions.

Canadian “Kyotophobics” will be astonished when Monbiot proposes that a 90% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 is, indeed, both technologically and economically possible. Monbiot sets the stage for this enthusiastic claim by examining the major culprits of global warming that account for 60 per cent of our emissions, including housing energy use, surface transport, air transport and those industries which consume overt amounts of fossil fuel; shopping and cement. Each avenue is thoroughly and meticulously investigated and all solutions, including renewable energy sources, are backed by sound data from reputable sources. All the skeptics out there, especially those who claim the glaciers are actually increasing in size, will find it disconcertingly difficult to find argument with any of his conclusions.

The only area in which he self-admittedly fails to find a solution is in the ever expanding and largely unregulated air travel industry. He notes that a plane at 70 percent capacity produces a whopping 214 g of CO2 per passenger kilometre. The same passenger on a train will produce a comparatively small amount of CO2, roughly 17 g per km. Unfortunately, his attempt to resolve this astronomical inefficiency uncovers only unproven and largely unsuccessful alternatives. Monbiot almost dejectedly confesses that the only means by which air transport and carbon emission reductions can coexist is by a 97 percent cut in flights. Monbiot notes that with such a cut it will still be possible for human beings to fly, however, “it will no longer be possible for many humans to do so, indeed, it will no longer be possible for you to do so.”

To many of us who spent our youthfully formative years backpacking around Europe and who, presently, don’t mind the “dos cervezas” at the pool bar in Cabo, this solution is slightly disagreeable. In a culture such as ours, where we are promised two weeks of tropical bliss for every 50 weeks spent in an office, such a sacrifice seems unfair. However, in a world such as this, where only a small percentage of the entire population travels by air, some may argue that the environmental consequences of air travel constitute the greater sacrifice. Monbiot puts it aptly when he states, “long distance travel, high speed and the curtailment of climate change are not compatible. If you fly, you destroy other people’s lives”.

In the end, Monbiot admits that the biggest challenge to cutting carbon dioxide emissions is not the puppet politician, China or India. “We must fight not only the oil companies, the airlines and the governments of the rich world; we must also fight ourselves.” True, many individuals are fighting the fight. By refusing to utilize chemical fertilizers and pesticides proponents and practitioners of organic agriculture greatly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. Yet, despite these and other’s efforts, the battle is still one of the uphill nature because, as Monbiot notes, “unlike almost all the public protests which have preceded it, it is a campaign…not for more freedom but for less.”

Everyone on this shared planet should be made to read George Monbiot’s Heat. A fight for less freedom is a hard one to stomach. However, Monbiot so convincingly presents the reader with reality based, relatively satisfying alternatives and solutions that one is left relishing the fight, because the winner’s prize is the most important freedom of all: the right to live.


Tanya Brouwers is a Consultant for the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada. Please send comments or questions by phone to 902-893-7256 or by email to oacc@nsac.ca.


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Posted August 2007