Socialist Outlook : SO/13 - Autumn 2007

Review

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

By Mark Lynas, Fourth Estate, 2007, £12.99
Patrick Scott

A difference of six degrees Celsius between one temperature and another does not sound a lot. Six degrees above freezing is still very cold, six degrees below boiling is still very hot. However the last time the world was around six degrees colder was during the ice age when most of Britain was under an ice sheet over a mile thick. A world where the average temperature is six degrees higher will be as radically different to today’s world as today is to the world of the ice age.

There are any number of differing scenarios that climatologists have come up in their predictions about a world where it is six or more degrees hotter. All scenarios though point to a world where the equatorial regions are all but uninhabitable and where the bulk of humanity (or what’s left of it) would be forced to eke a living around the Polar regions.

Mark Lynas takes the reader through a journey of what the world could become if carbon emissions are not reduced and the world gets progressively hotter. Each of the first six chapters successively describes the scenarios predicated by climatologists for every incremental increase in world temperature by one degree. Chapter one describes what the world could be like if it were one degree hotter. A world that will see greater drought, retreating glaciers and polar sea ice, the melting of permafrost in the Arctic region and so on. Though this scenario is increasingly less a description of some future world and increasingly one of the world as it is now. By the time we have reached Chapter six where the world is six degrees hotter things have got more and more scary.

One extremely scary aspect of a worst case scenario brought to our attention by Lynas is the possibility of methane escaping in large quantities into the atmosphere. Large quantities of methane hydrate (a combination of methane and water) which is only stable at very cold or very high temperatures lie at the bottom of all the world’s oceans. Ocean warming could cause the destabilisation of methane hydrate leading to methane gas quite literally bubbling up out of the ocean and into the atmosphere. Given that methane is even more toxic as a greenhouse gas than carbon, then the large scale escape of methane into the atmosphere could lead to global warming running out of control. According to Lynas, given such a scenario it would no longer be possible to take the foot off the global warming accelerator by cutting carbon emissions. The accelerator by then would have been jammed!

How to proceed?

There are references throughout the first six chapters to the politics and political impact of environmental change but such references are not central. It is only in the seventh and final chapter that Lynas really focuses on the question of a political response to global warming. He takes a very similar stance to that of George Monbiot in Heat. Global warming is happening and will continue to do so. But there has to be a substantial cut in carbon emissions to ensure the average global temperature does not increase by more than two degrees. If it exceeds this mark then we are potentially talking worst case scenarios like methane erupting out of the oceans. The point is that most computer models predict a global temperature rise of three degrees if carbon emissions continue as they are. Lynas is proposing a global target of 60% cut in carbon emissions by 2030 and a 90% cut by 2050. A 90% cut in carbon emissions on a socially equitable basis implies a massive upheaval and reorganisation of human society and especially in the imperialist countries. Global capital though will resist any large scale cut in carbon emissions on any basis, socially equitable or otherwise. There are any number of capitalist enterprises - airlines, car manufacturers, oil companies and so on who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Lynas is fully aware of this and also recognises that there could well be regional conflicts and wars (like China invading Siberia or the US invading Canada!) as global warming is likely to encourage large scale population transfer away from the equator. In terms of the political response that he himself articulates Lynas quite correctly argues in favour of some form of individual carbon rationing rather than taxation of fuel as the way forward to cut carbon emissions. But beyond this his articulation of what he thinks ought to be a political response to global warming is open ended. Perhaps Lynas himself is uncertain of how next to proceed.

Despite the highly journalistic style of the book Lynas does though base his analysis on established scientific data and information taken form reputable scientists and scientific publications. As such he is able to present what might otherwise be very dry scientific information in a way that can easily be understood by the lay reader. This is the major strength of the book. No doubt though it will be left to others who can articulate a more developed political response to global warming in future books and articles.

Patrick Scott

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