Category: Environmental | Ideas
Six Degrees of Dread
Posted by Rupert on February 7, 2009
By Monica
A BBC headline this morning declared that “Global Warming is ‘Irreversible’â€. Another added that “Emperor Penguins Face Extinctionâ€. A lot was written about our many woes (oil and money, food prices, storms, refugees, wars)… It was surreal to see this unfold, lifted straight out of the very pages I’ve been reading – Mark Lynas’ “Six Degreesâ€.
I heard a brief description of this book on the radio sometime after its publication in 2007. I remember the beginning of a head ache (too little sleep?), my hand shaking a little (too much coffee?) as I wrote the title and the rousing message “buy this today†on the back of a newspaper (promptly lost).
Bookshops didn’t have it. Newsagents had never heard of it. “The book about the impact of global warming on the planet, degree by degree†– I explained with superb scientific flair.
This, I am sure, distinguished me from the pie-eating teenage mutants buying an “idiot-proof” diet book (could it be the one sub-titled “from pig to twig”???) and the teacher-type asking for “What the Swedish Butler Saw†– but it got the same reaction from the shop assistant. The same polite smile frozen in place (and finger poised on the weirdo-alert security button under the desk)… “hmm, let’s seeâ€, some tapping on the computer, and “nope, it’s not here†(unlike the diet and the butler, both widely available).
Once purchased (Amazon had it), “Six Degrees†sat on a shelf, under a bed, in a box, then another shelf in Portugal. This is because, and BE warned, it takes great courage to pick up this book. You know, even before the foreword, that you are in for a bumpy ride, some seriously scary stuff and a lot of heartbreak. I feel the same about seeing “Titanic”.
The book describes, detail by desperate detail, what happens to Planet Earth as the average global temperature goes up one degree… two… three… up to six. Beyond six, it doesn’t matter anymore. In fact, beyond TWO degrees we lose all control: we will by then have effectively pushed Mother Earth downhill into a fiery furnace.
The fact that the planet is warming fast is not an unreasonable galactic event or some cruel twist of fate, but the direct result of the way humans have been living for the past two centuries.
It seems that intelligent life on the planet has painstakingly trapped itself into a system that requires a lot of cheap energy to function. This energy comes from burning the planet’s fossil fuel stores. In the process noxious clouds of greenhouse gases are dispatched into the atmosphere. This in turn has the effect of warming our world into extinction.
You turn off the cheap energy tap and society unravels. You keep going, belching carbon, and you’re lucky if some obscure protozoa is left behind to welcome back the dinosaurs.
How intelligent does this sound? And how much of a choice does it give us now? And how many of us even KNOW that this is going on? And would “knowing†be enough to push us into “doing†something about it? Would scientific facts, the early symptoms of mass extinction make you cancel a flight, turn off the tumble drier, eat fewer pork chops?
I’ve been telling people about this book, and generally ranting on the topic. In response, sympathetic nods, rabid political rants, surely-it’s-not-so-bad assurances or a deflated “oh yeah..†where the “yeah†stretches into a yawn, while the hand reaches for the remote control.
At the very least, I tell people, reading this book will explain the rules to a new game we’re about to play, a game we really, REALLY don’t want to lose.
First, we’ll all have tickets to a geographic lottery. Many thrills and surprises await. Some regions will become deserts. Coastlines and island nations will vanish in a gentle but ample assault of the sea. Whole areas will be levelled by hurricanes. Massive loss of animal species and flora. Less food and water. Untold suffering, both slow and brutal. Migration, despair on an unimaginable scale, wars. Loss of any sense of what’s happening, or for how long.
It is also a guessing game. How much time have we got before it begins? If not ourselves, then will it be our children who wake up in a desert, who wilt away or whirl up into Oz, still in their square houses, still in their best red shoes??…
Perhaps it is a race too. Do we manage to stop the ticking bomb in time? Before the ice caps melt? Before the Amazon vanishes? Do we manage to put in any kind of a fight at all? By the sounds of it, if we don’t then we’ll find ourselves sliding into ever-gaping orbits of horror, aggrieved and unrepentant: “oh but I recycled… I changed all my light bulbsâ€. Oh poor, doomed, deluded species.
The race is on, this much is clear – before we can get going, we need to understand what is at stake. We are not extinction-proof, but continue to act with that supremely arrogant assumption. We are the cancer sufferer who still smokes thirty a day because he feels immortal. For a chance at survival, we have a lot to learn, and some things to give up. We need to find our way back to simpler lives.
With this in mind, I’ll be planting onions and cabbage. As soon as the weather improves.
9 Responses to “Six Degrees of Dread”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
February 9th, 2009 at 20:52
I’m going to move to a cottage and buy a horse called Dobbin. I will grow vegetables and every Saturday I will fill my cart with potatoes and carrots and take them to market.
My cottage will be built by me. It will be quite simple. I drew the plans myself. I will get a shovel and dig a cave in the side of the hill, and then I will make it cosy. I will put in a window and a front door. That way I will be able to stay warm and dry when it rains.
I won’t pay council tax because nobody will know I am there. And I won’t watch the telly. I will burn peat in my ceiling and poke a hole through to the top for the smoke.
I will have a little alcove for my bed which will have a mattress made from sheep’s wool and bracken, and a little curtain for privacy.
I expect lots of friends will come to visit so I will dig little holes for their legs so they can sit down.
February 10th, 2009 at 12:31
Your little floor will have lots of little holes in it, won’t that be a little dangerous for the little doggies when they come to visit too? Or maybe you’ll fill the little holes up when the friends go away? And maybe you can plant some more potatoes in them, to give poor little Dobbin enough stuff to carry to the market?
Have a look at this: http://www.simondale.net/house/ – you’re not alone in the hobbit village. I wonder if the little council tax people found them…
Oh and can you send me your presentation of the St. Leonard’s cleansing op? I had a glimpse and loved it, but Moona doesn’t want to share…
February 11th, 2009 at 16:49
Hmmm… You may have a point about the holes in te floor. Have to redraw the plans. I will send the presentation to you. What’s Moona like?
February 17th, 2009 at 16:02
Monica, concerning your doomsday thoughts and what can we do and how can we get people to move their buts of their airplane seats, well, I should tell you that I have been reading the excellent TRANSITION HANDBOOK.
The author is determined that we should consider Peak Oil and Climate Change together, in any decision making. He clearly points out why it is foolish not to. Anyway, one of the questions he asks is, ‘Which one will galvanise the populace to do something about all this: Peak Oil or Climate Change? The answer has to be Peak Oil.
Why? Because it is hard to really prove, especially to the cynics, that the climate is changing whereas if oil peaks and the downward slide is rapid, then we will act. Boy, will we ever! So roll on oil, peak and be done with it. And as Richard Heinberg says in his book, PEAK EVERYTHING I think it is called, the other fossil fuels have peaked, or are peaking too. So you see, we will have to adjust, make our holes in the ground, or join with our communities and become resilient NOW! Let’s not wait for climate change to hit us between the eyes!
February 17th, 2009 at 19:33
Then it’s good news: oil might have peaked already (according to many)… and as you know, we are already trying to change. Painful stuff, especially for my lower back, after digging and carrying earth all day up and down terraces. Tell Gavin that his hobbit bliss will come at a cost! Digging into a hill… phew, good luck!!!
February 17th, 2009 at 21:42
I’m off to the Glen tomorrow, with evil Lufthansa, and I expect to do my share of digging. Bring it on
February 18th, 2009 at 2:49
It won’t be just digging in the Glen. We have to decide what type of hens to get. Should we rescue half a dozen white maidenly hens from the intensive chicken farm in Manor Valley? Compliment them with some little black bantams and a bantam cock so they will have white chicks, their feathers laced with black? I remember we once had a lovely soft grey hen at Glenternie.
A few vegetables have survived the last 3 weeks of ice and snow: some strange looking parsnips, some sweet-tasting but spindley leeks and still, I believe, some succulent Jerusalem artichokes hiding under the soil.
Will any reader out there ever see this and be encouraged and happy that oil has peaked?
February 18th, 2009 at 10:20
I love the idea of the country life with no fossil fuels but I feel trapped into the cycles of debt, work, school, routine and comfortable city life…it is so hard to what Moona and Monica have done, not only do you need the finances in place but you have to all have the right attituude and determination…it all sounds wonderful but it aint easy
February 19th, 2009 at 17:36
Apparently parsnips are much sweeter after a good frost…
Rupert, if you fancy digging, veer this way: we’ve got loads!
P.S. … and what gave you the idea that we have all the finances in place? If I write any more about this I might hyperventilate – and I can’t, I have a class in a minute. So I’ll stop, won’t think about it, hope it’ll just go away, la la la…