I don’t have to remind you of the two forces which are converging on our lives. We are faced with an impending shortage of the source of energy which is hardest to replace – liquid fossil fuels. And we are faced with the environmental consequences of the fossil fuel burning which has permitted us to be standing here now. The structure, the complexity, the diversity of our lives, everything we know, everything that we have taken for granted, that looked solid and non-negotiable, suddenly looks contingent. All this is a great tottering pile balanced on a ball, a ball that is about to start rolling downhill.

UK targets for cutting carbon emissions by 2050 will not be met without radical changes to the engineering of buildings, a report says.

One of the study’s authors criticised the government’s “woeful track record on setting ill-considered targets”.

The Royal Academy of Engineering report lays out a groundwork for reducing the environmental impact of new buildings as well as refurbishment of old ones.

It added there was a serious skills gap in the sector that could grow worse.

Current regulations hold that new homes should be “zero-carbon” by 2016, and all other new build should reach that target by 2020.

However, the Engineering a Low Carbon Built Environment report asserts that the principles that could be applied to drastically reduce energy consumption are simply not being used.

Other recent books like The Weather Makers explain what we’re doing to cause global warming and the catastrophes it will soon cause. George Monbiot’s book Heat is devoted entirely to answering the question What Do We Do To Stop It. This is the first in a series of articles summarizing his action plan.

From the outset, Monbiot makes clear that he’s not looking for a subsistence solution: He doesn’t believe any such solution can be ‘sold’ to the majority of the people in affluent nations, so he doesn’t propose to try. We need to retain, he says, our creature comforts, our political and economic freedoms, our right to health care and education and security and freedom from fear.

The deadline for effective action to curb global warming, he argues, is 2030, and by then we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90%, nothing less. Heat prescribes the least difficult and least painful means to do so. This includes:

* dramatically improved ways to build homes and other buildings
* the optimal mix of feasible renewable and non-renewable means of supplying energy to those buildings
* radical changes to land transportation without significantly reducing mobility
* a significant curtailing of air travel, since it is a major greenhouse gas contributor for which no satisfactory way of reducing emissions by 90% is available
* mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of the retail and cement industries by 90%

Monbiot quickly dismisses voluntary approaches to achieving these ends, and asserts that “unfashionable” strict government regulation and compliance enforcement will be essential to success. “By and large”, he says, “whatever our beliefs may be, we consume as much as our incomes allow”. But beyond the regulations absolutely needed to achieve these 90% reductions, he insists that governments must maximize freedoms of citizens.

PA
Thursday, 15 January 2009

The Government flew in the face of strong opposition today by backing a third runway at Heathrow airport.

The announcement by Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon of a go-ahead for the £9 billion expansion at Heathrow came after Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the needs of the economy and the environment had to be balanced.

Monbiot, one of the clearest and wittiest writers about politically difficult subjects today, tackles the problem of phasing out fossil fuels without illusions. Books on global warming normally expend most of their words to show how dangerous the problem is. Then, at the last, they point to a few partial solutions and say “more like that, please.” Or they simply give up on a comfortable life for everyone and turn to a kind of gloating Puritanism and say “You will have to suffer, but it will be good for you in the end.” In contrast, Monbiot takes a step-by-step look at how different sectors of our economy could run on drastically less carbon.