Climate change is real; we have to cut emissions significantly and rapidly; we don’t have any alternative forms of energy supply that we can deploy fast enough; we’re already highly efficient in converting energy to work.
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"There is absolutely no question that if we – in the rich, developed economies – want to mitigate climate change, we have to use substantially less energy." |
If someone held a gun to your grandchild and said, “use a quarter the energy from now on or the kid gets it” we’d accept the cut in energy without even thinking about it. That’s what happens in war, when an externally imposed crisis creates a rapid change in behaviour and adjustment. In fact, if an external agent cut the energy supply to the UK to a quarter its current level, we’d probably have one year of discomfort, and then we’d have re-adjusted: we’d drive smaller cars more slowly and with more people in them; we’d buy fewer goods and keep them for longer; we’d heat our homes less and dress more warmly; we’d eat less meat. These are such simple actions, that we could adjust to them rapidly, and as we continued to have meals with friends, play sports and music, read and write, make things and go on holidays, we’d look back in astonishment that we used to use four times as much energy.
The conclusion of the story so far is that this is exactly the position we’re in. The gun is pointed at our heads, and we have to make a choice about whether our grandchildren “get it”. So far, we’ve shut our eyes. Incumbent business interests an ineffective political system and a lack of public interest have led us to avoid looking at the gun. But the gun’s there: climate change is real; we have to cut emissions significantly and rapidly; we don’t have any alternative forms of energy supply that we can deploy fast enough; we’re already highly efficient in converting energy to work.
So we have to face it. There is absolutely no question that if we – in the rich, developed economies – want to mitigate climate change, we have to use substantially less energy. Until we do that, we have no right to make any statement to the developing economies about climate mitigation. But actually, we could use less and live well. Not just that, we might well end up living better if we used less.