Home » Opinion » Book review
The case for personal effort to fight climate change
By Wan Lixin |
October 16, 2010, Saturday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
NO word can be so buzzy as "low-carbon" nowadays.
Officials, advertisers, office clerks, friends, even aggressive auto makers all like to roll the fancy term on their tongues.
It has the magic of making one look trendy and soothing one's conscience, while celebrating one's power to spend.
But as Chris Goodall elaborates in "How to Live a Low-Carbon Life: The Individual's Guide to Stopping Climate Change," "The threat from climate change requires each of us to take personal responsibility for reducing our impact on the planet's atmosphere ..."
Individuals must provide the leadership because it is hopeless to place our faith in the government and much-touted science and high technology.
The government simply has no incentives to distract from it infatuation with growth and economic boosterism. The business of government anywhere today is business, even though it prefers not to advertise this fact.
"The government praises car reduction plans in its press releases, and then discourages them, in practice, by making car travel quicker, easier and cheaper than the alternatives," the author observes.
Unfortunately for us, this insight is most pertinent in China, especially in such glamorous cities as Beijing and Shanghai.
When low-carbon initiatives have business implications, the government is brimming over with enthusiasm.
"Fantasizing about a hydrogen car may reinforce our optimism that science, rather than behavioral change, will solve our problems," Goodall explains.
The much-hyped carbon-trading schemes boost optimism and profits, without affecting the industries.
Biofuels development schemes drive up grain prices, beef up demand for fertilizers and other chemicals, and the additional emissions more than offset the asserted savings.
Modern lifestyle is sustained on the assumption that the world has an inexhaustible supply of fossil fuel, and that replacing human labor with fuel-driven machines is cheap and progressive.
But the surplus of stuff thus manufactured needs human consumption, hence systematic and persisting effort to excite human greed.
The desire for more fancy goods fuels the business cycle, and fetishes for things reduces human aspirations to a villa, a luxury car, or other pleasures denominated in money.
Thus, individual decisions not to consume or to consume less would discourage the use of resources and energy by depressing the user demand.
Of course, this attitude is essentially reactionary in our civilization.
"Self-restraint ... is a subversive idea in an economic system which has as its core the proposition that greater happiness will follow every increase in our personal incomes and spending," the book points out succinctly.
The book does provides some useful tips that are at once sensible and practical.
Insulate house and keep the thermostat on a low setting.
Use appliances less, minimize standby losses by disconnecting devices, and buy smaller appliances.
Line-dry clothes outside instead of throwing them in the dryer.
As the clothesline is increasingly frowned upon as uncivilized in some parts of China, such as Shanghai, maybe residents have to do this unseen.
Cook organic, locally grown products.
"Buy organic where possible, local when available, and keep away from processed and packaged food," the author cautions.
Use bikes, public transport, or trains, and avoid flying. "The growth of aviation is so clearly incompatible with temperature stability that scientists ... simply cannot understand why government is failing to hold back the growth," the author wonders.
Putting these initiatives into practice is much more challenging than flirting with some fancy concepts, but our very future - the survival of our posterity - seems to depend on individuals like you and me.
Officials, advertisers, office clerks, friends, even aggressive auto makers all like to roll the fancy term on their tongues.
It has the magic of making one look trendy and soothing one's conscience, while celebrating one's power to spend.
But as Chris Goodall elaborates in "How to Live a Low-Carbon Life: The Individual's Guide to Stopping Climate Change," "The threat from climate change requires each of us to take personal responsibility for reducing our impact on the planet's atmosphere ..."
Individuals must provide the leadership because it is hopeless to place our faith in the government and much-touted science and high technology.
The government simply has no incentives to distract from it infatuation with growth and economic boosterism. The business of government anywhere today is business, even though it prefers not to advertise this fact.
"The government praises car reduction plans in its press releases, and then discourages them, in practice, by making car travel quicker, easier and cheaper than the alternatives," the author observes.
Unfortunately for us, this insight is most pertinent in China, especially in such glamorous cities as Beijing and Shanghai.
When low-carbon initiatives have business implications, the government is brimming over with enthusiasm.
"Fantasizing about a hydrogen car may reinforce our optimism that science, rather than behavioral change, will solve our problems," Goodall explains.
The much-hyped carbon-trading schemes boost optimism and profits, without affecting the industries.
Biofuels development schemes drive up grain prices, beef up demand for fertilizers and other chemicals, and the additional emissions more than offset the asserted savings.
Modern lifestyle is sustained on the assumption that the world has an inexhaustible supply of fossil fuel, and that replacing human labor with fuel-driven machines is cheap and progressive.
But the surplus of stuff thus manufactured needs human consumption, hence systematic and persisting effort to excite human greed.
The desire for more fancy goods fuels the business cycle, and fetishes for things reduces human aspirations to a villa, a luxury car, or other pleasures denominated in money.
Thus, individual decisions not to consume or to consume less would discourage the use of resources and energy by depressing the user demand.
Of course, this attitude is essentially reactionary in our civilization.
"Self-restraint ... is a subversive idea in an economic system which has as its core the proposition that greater happiness will follow every increase in our personal incomes and spending," the book points out succinctly.
The book does provides some useful tips that are at once sensible and practical.
Insulate house and keep the thermostat on a low setting.
Use appliances less, minimize standby losses by disconnecting devices, and buy smaller appliances.
Line-dry clothes outside instead of throwing them in the dryer.
As the clothesline is increasingly frowned upon as uncivilized in some parts of China, such as Shanghai, maybe residents have to do this unseen.
Cook organic, locally grown products.
"Buy organic where possible, local when available, and keep away from processed and packaged food," the author cautions.
Use bikes, public transport, or trains, and avoid flying. "The growth of aviation is so clearly incompatible with temperature stability that scientists ... simply cannot understand why government is failing to hold back the growth," the author wonders.
Putting these initiatives into practice is much more challenging than flirting with some fancy concepts, but our very future - the survival of our posterity - seems to depend on individuals like you and me.
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