I’ve been a big fan of George Monbiot’s writing since reading his column for The Guardian newspaper and especially after reading his insightful book, The Age of Consent. I was reluctant about going to the trouble of buying and reading his latest book about climate change ‘Heat‘.
I didn’t need to be convinced that climate change was real, we were causing it and we had to act quickly and decisively to prevent a runaway global catastrophe. So what use was reading the dry detailed policy outlines going to be? I put my faith in Monbiot’s ability to surprise and shock my preconceptions and I was not disappointed.
The power of Monbiot’s book is that he cuts through so much of the obfuscation and hedging you hear in the political debate so that you get an unfiltered view of the scientific reality of climate change. Unless you flatly refuse to believe in climate change you cannot come away from reading this book without agreeing that climate change is the great moral crisis of our time.
What makes grassroots action so obviously important is that this is a fight against gluttonous consumption and therefore the interest of the uber-wealthy. Money can and is always found in the trillions to be invested in ways of destroying, people, cities and countries, war is a most profitable enterprise. But investing money in renewable energy while there is still ‘black stuff’ in the ground is incomprehensible to big business. And restraint is incomprehensible to the consumers of a first world economy that is based on greed and living beyond one’s means.
Heat is a must read for people who want to size up the promises from their leaders on climate change action and an effective way to galvanize personal responsibility and action. We cannot sit around waiting for an answer whilst we slouch towards calamity.
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