reading log: heat by george monbiot

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 ## 2026-04-15
 
+### @{heat}
+
+George Monbiot had a hard-nosed pop-science proposal for the cheapest way we
+could run the UK with a 90% cut in carbon emissions. He described what consumers
+would need to be consuming, what infrastructure would need to exist. He didn't
+attempt to explain the political route to get there. So, a utopian vision rather
+than Realpolitik? His ultimate plea to his readers is to join a campaign group,
+so that politicians will start making regulations to prohibit us from making
+polluting consumption choices, albeit in ways which minimise the cost to our
+lives of luxury. I was struck by his account (Chp 11) of how he struggled to
+connect his abstract technological proposals to the people he beholds with his
+eyes.
+
+In his view, the problem with much environmental political campaigning up to now
+is that it has assumed that consumers need to carry a very heavy burden, we need
+to stop living the lives of luxury which fossil fuels have enabled, but this is
+not politically feasible, because people don't want to give up their lives of
+luxury.
+
+Chp 1: in the Permian extinction, 90% of species and nearly all plants died. We are already on a course for droughts and shortages of water and food, and the melting of the Greenland ice cap. 2C of warming will unleash feedback loops.
+
+Chp 2: Exxon funds climate misinformation, which ends up in mainstream media and
+high politics.
+
+Chp 11: it's hard to turn abstract scientific discussion into something
+concrete. It's hard to connect it to the people I see with my eyes. I'm
+vulnerable to hoping of a technological deus ex machina, but it's a dangerous
+hope and must be extinguished. You need now to join a climate change campaign
+group to pressure politicians to limit our freedom to continue polluting.
+
 ### @{turned-out-nice-again}
 
 Richard Mabey pushed me to indigenise myself with my weather environment. He