George Monbiot's book, “Heat”, goes much deeper than Pacala and Socolow do in their paper, and he also rejects biofuels. He starts by saying, if it is technologically impossible to have an advanced, comfortable civilization and a stable climate, then we are probably doomed, because it will be impossible to generate the kind of social movement necessary to stabilize the climate if people have to mobilize to ruin their own lives. But then he does a very careful evaluation of the technologies and some evaluation of political feasibility, and shows that it is technologically possible to have pretty much all of the comforts and conveniences we are used to and still have a stable climate – all the conveniences except mass commercial flight. Which, obviously, since I’m convinced by Monbiot, makes me feel somewhat silly for flying here from Toronto to do this talk. Perhaps next time I’ll visit by videoconference?

I should say that think that Pacala and Socolow are basically right: the scientific, technological, and industrial knowledge exists to solve this problem. But every solution that is proposed needs to be evaluated for its ecological, social, and ethical implications. . The test for any technology, any institution, any idea, any action, ought to be – what will this do to people, what will it do to nature, does it protect or destroy life?

One technology that I think does pass this test is a type of idea environmentalists are always raising. I'm presenting it as a technology following George Monbiot. The simple “technology” is called leaving the fossil fuels in the ground. It sounds crazy, but it would be very good for the atmosphere. It would also be good for society – if we could learn that not everything has to be viewed as a resource and not every resource has to be harvested, that would be positive. Since most people are not getting the benefits anyway, and since most people are being harmed, this technology isn't one that harms the poor more than the rich. So, instead of society mobilizing its people, its brains, its institutions, to take resources and burn them, we could redirect our efforts to figuring out how not to do this. And how to do what we really want without doing this.

The hard part of the solution

It would seem, then, that the path is reasonably clear. We live in a democracy, after all. So we convince enough people that the climate problem is serious. We demonstrate that the technology is available to solve it without sacrificing most comforts and conveniences. Then we convince our leaders to make the necessary technological and policy changes, and if they don’t, then we elect leaders who do. Some who make decisions for the economy, through businesses they own or manage aren’t elected, it’s true. But they, too, can be convinced by rational arguments. Business leaders meet with environmentalists regularly. British Petroleum is getting ‘beyond petroleum’, they just call themselves BP now so you can wonder whether they’re British or Beyond and whether Petroleum really has anything to do with it any more. If parts of the planet become uninhabitable and there are a series of catastrophes for nature and people, that would be bad for business, right? So they will come along with the right arguments and proposals?

I wish it was true, but I don’t think that’s how things work. The basic nature of the system we live in isn’t democratic. We are ruled by a system that takes the elements of life – nature, land, water, energy, cultures and peoples – and destroys them to turn them into money and power. The system has its own logic. If you are a player in it, you have to follow that logic. You have to take what you can grab – for most people it’s their own lives - and turn it into money. If you’re excluded from it, you’re excluded from the very means of survival. If you’re excluded and you try to get the means of survival for yourself or your loved ones outside of the system, you will be met with violence. If you’re in this system you cannot think about whether it is killing the planet, whether the whole system is basically leading us to suicide. Even if you know that’s true, so long as it would make you more money to ignore it, you will never be able to compete with someone who does ignore it unless you do. And so much of our world is based on competition: between individuals, between businesses, and between countries. Economic competition, political competition, military competition.

You have probably figured out that I am talking about capitalism. It is a system based on profits, accumulation, competition, private property, class hierarchy, the destruction of nature, backed up by force. It coexists with a culture that has what environmentalist writer Derrick Jensen calls a ‘death urge’ – a culture that hates life, that hates women, that hates indigenous peoples and encourages hatred of anyone below on the rungs of a hierarchical society.

It is leading us to a disastrous future. Naomi Klein’s book ‘The Shock Doctrine’ is about what she calls ‘disaster capitalism’. Those in power can use disasters to reconfigure the institutions of a country to make it easier to make profits. When they don’t have a disaster to hand, they can create one. One of her chapters is about Iraq. Another is about New Orleans. The book could be a picture of a nightmare future, except that it is the present. But a future along these lines can only get uglier.

Neither the climate problem nor running out of fossil fuels can be ignored. They will be dealt with. But they will be dealt with according to the principles of disaster capitalism. Yes, parts of the world will become uninhabitable. Other parts of the world will be habitable. These will be reserved for elites. Those who live there now will be displaced, by force. Yes, there will be a scarcity of energy, food, water, land. There will be some of these resources, and they will be reserved for elites. They will be used by elites to keep themselves secure from the rest. Before petroleum runs out, it will probably be reserved for exclusive use by the military. This will happen until the resources are run down and the basis for life is destroyed. Warning elites of this collapse won’t help – they know they are the only ones who have a chance of surviving it.

We know this will happen. It has happened. It is happening. And despite the ultimately suicidal nature of the system, it will defend itself against attempts to change it. That is why, as destructive as competition is, I don’t think we can completely discard it. For a stabilized atmosphere, we are going to have to defeat some people and some institutions.  Success in that competition will require all the tools of social change: organization, communication, demonstration, and actions of all kinds, at least some of which will be new and correspond to the time and place. Everybody has to join that, and we have to win it.

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