Saving the planet

‘How We Can Save The Planet’ by Mayer Hillman; Penguin, 2004. 192pp

Reviewed by Dave Clements | 5  June 2004

We will live in a ‘carbon-literate’ society, where carbon is a parallel currency and carbon credits tradable on ‘cbay’. We will exist within the confines of carbon budgeting, subjecting ourselves to a regime analogous to our present day penchant for calorie counting with weekly visits to Carbon Watchers. Our internal climates, that is, central heating and air conditioning, will be considered so much ‘thermal monotony’. There will be no supermarkets as they will be deemed extravagances totting up the food miles of those foolhardy enough to desire the energy-guzzling exotic and convenience foods to which we had formerly been accustomed. Indeed, there will be a return to the larder. And if this all gets too much to bare, there are always the eco-helplines helpfully listed at the back of the book. This is a world in which the winners are domestic tourism and bicycle repair shops. This is the future according to Mayer Hillman.

Under headings such as ‘What should scare you most’ or ‘these figures should shock you’ the author berates us for our energy-profligacy. Rising expectations, he makes the equation, inevitably mean continued climate change. It’s as simple as that. We must divorce resource use from illusory notions of well being without delay, if we are not to succumb to the threat posed by what he describes as the single biggest problem facing humanity. But the fiscal route advocated by many of those sympathetic to his cause lacks the ‘moral basis’ or ‘psychological resonance’, he says, to usher in a new blitz spirit, and the kind of sacrifices we must inevitably endure. The energy embodied in manufacture, transport and retail must become a social ill, rather than understood as a by-product of the relentless motion of the wheels of progress as might once have been the case. We must narrow our ‘spread-out lifestyles’ if we are to affect the necessary change to avert imminent disaster on a global scale.

Hillman tells the reader that Asia’s consumption has tripled since 1970. The developing world’s third share of the global shop in 1990 is predicted to rise to 2/3 by 2050. And China’s growth, standing at an annual rate on average of 8% since 1980, will result in its economy growing 4 times over within just two decades. Reason to celebrate perhaps? Except this will not herald the kind of world that the author deems equitable; at least, it offends against his tenets of thrifty internationalism and intergenerational leveling. The common-held belief that the generations to follow might expect to be better off than those that preceded them is anathema to all he holds dear. Instead Hillman claims to seek historical redress for a developing world that is both ‘least responsible’ for a world ravaged by climate change, and ‘most vulnerable’ to what this holds for the future.

Surely, you might argue, in a world committed to development, those nations so compromised might be better equipped to cope with, even influence, their fates. But that is to underestimate Hillman’s profound pessimism. He is blind to the past gains and dismissive of the future claims for ‘human ingenuity’. Fortunately, however, for those more optimistic and with an ear to historical precedent, the case against the author – as the figures he himself presents attest – tell a very different story.

The UK, given its now reluctant status as the first offender on the industrial roll call, has contributed 15% of global emissions since 1750. However, in it’s regrettably sluggish contemporary period, between 1990 and 2000 the UK economy grew by 26%, with energy demand increasing by just 8%. Government too has recently played its part, with the cumulative impact of strict building regulations ensuring that new housing uses up just 60% of the heating energy typical of the existing stock. And, by 2008, new cars are expected to emit a quarter less carbon dioxide than they did in 1995 thanks to a voluntary agreement between manufacturers and the EU.

Other interventions – distorted by the eco-friendly orthodoxy adopted by officialdom, (despite Hillman’s radical pretensions and protestations to the contrary) – have been less welcome. Methane emitted from landfill sites, as the author acknowledges, has been the most fruitful of renewable energy sources to date. This will, nonetheless, be curtailed consistent with the rationale of EU legislation aimed at reducing organic waste. The decommissioning of nuclear power stations – taken as a given by Hillman, rather than a good contender for the solution – goes unchallenged despite the author recognizing that they would otherwise have a future of at least 250 years from known reserves of uranium.

The coincidence of the decline of the UK economy – with the consequent rise of transport and domestic use to the top of the energy charts, meaning that today 51% of energy-use is by individuals – and the apocalyptic individualizing of the environmental problem are instructive. As Hillman freely admits, what divides him and his detractors is not the science so much as attitudes to risk and uncertainty. He prefers to dismiss both his critics, and the reader reluctant to follow his lifestyle tips, as guilty of ‘repression, suppression, denial, projection and dissociation’. Over-consumption is the problem and obesity the appropriate metaphor, we are told, for our decadent times. Rational debate and contestation don’t get a look-in. This can only delay things.

So far, says Hillman, all we’ve done is ‘muddle through’. If that’s the case, then we’d be well advised to continue doing just that.

 

Author: austinwilliams

Austin Williams is the director of the Future Cities Project and author of a number of books on the environment and on China. The latest are "China's Urban Revolution" (Bloomsbury) and "New Chinese Architecture: Twenty Women Building the Future" (Thames and Hudson).

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