Book Description

George Monbiot’s Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning marks an important moment in our civilization’s thinking about global warming. The question is no longer whether climate change is actually happening. The question is what to do about it. Monbiot offers an ambitious and far-reaching program to cut our carbon dioxide emissions to the point where the environmental scales start tipping away from catastrophe. (But not before he devotes a chapter to unmasking the vested interests that have spent fortunes funding the specious science of the climate change deniers.) It now seems certain that we need a 90% cut in our emissions by 2030 to prevent runaway climate change from taking place. For the first time, this book explains how the cut could be achieved without bringing industrial civilisation to an end. Combining his unique knowledge of political campaigning and environmental science, Monbiot analyses the potential of energy efficiency, renewable resources, carbon burial, nuclear power and new transport and building systems to discover what works, what doesn't, what costs the least and what needs to be done to make change happen. He is not afraid to attack anyone—friend or foe—whose claims are false or whose figures have been fudged. His original, sometimes shocking programme shows that we can reconcile our demands for comfort and security with the survival of the biosphere. Rigorous, passionate and totally surprising, this book could change the world. It is possible to slow the momentum of this global crisis—if we act decisively. In this riveting, fiery book, the No Logo of the environmental movement, George Monbiot shows us how.