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diff --git a/reading-log.md b/reading-log.md index 31d33d1..c8fcee4 100644 --- a/reading-log.md +++ b/reading-log.md @@ -6,6 +6,36 @@ author: Joe Carstairs ## 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 |