Listen to Solana Larsen interview Jeremy Leggett (4.00mins)
High bandwidth: 128kbps / Low bandwidth: 64kbpsListen to Solana Larsen interview George Marshall (4.29mins)
High bandwidth: 128kbps / Low bandwidth: 64kbpsListen to Solana Larsen interview Mark Lynas (4.20mins)
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The end of the world is nigh. Or is that a bit alarmist?
To convey the threat of climate change without sounding so dramatic readers will choose to ignore you is a hard task for concerned writers. The problem is of such magnitude it's tough to give people a sense of what they can do to make a difference.
It's serious. But there's hope.
In the next decade, oil will become so scarce that new energy regimes will have to replace the old. Will humans seize the opportunity to develop renewable energy sources like wind, recycled waste and sunlight, or simply pounce on dirty mountains of coal without regard for the environment or the future?
Selected books from authors at the Ankelohe Conversations:
Jeremy Rifkin, The Hydrogen Economy (Tracher / Polity, 2002) US, UK
Vijay Vaitheeswaran, Power to the People (Farrar, 2004) US, UK
Mike Tidwell, Bayou Farewell (Vintage, 2004) US, UK
Colin J Campbell, Oil Crisis (Multi-Science, 2005) US, UK
David Goodstein, Out of Gas (WW Norton, 2005) US, UK
Mark Lynas, High Tide: news from a warming world (Picador / Harper-Collins, 2004) US, UK
This weekend around thirty distinguished writers, activists, and geologists from Britain, the United States, and Germany convened outside Hamburg on the invitation of Lutz Kleveman, the Dräger Foundation and openDemocracy, to exchange information about peak oil and climate change, and to discuss how to keep it all firmly in the public eye. This was the first Ankelohe Conversations (AnkCon) meeting.
The brilliant books about these subjects are important but are only sold in small numbers. Even the most committed freelance journalists complain it's hard to sell climate change to mainstream media editors. Still, the issue is hardly being ignored. AnkCon writer Mark Hertsgaard wrote the cover story for Vanity Fair's special green issue this month, and Silvana Paternostro pointed out that Elle magazine has gone green too.
What's worrying is the disproportionate amount of coverage that is granted to skeptics of climate change in the name of "balance", coupled with the general public's complacency. On his laptop, Mark Lynas showed us a new television ad campaign by the right-wing think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute called "CO2: We call it life". No, it's not a joke. But it's a good example of how corporate and ideological interests are interfering with the safety of the planet.
The biggest oil and energy companies are pouring billions of dollars into research and development of renewable energy sources. It's commendable, but one should not be naïve about motivations for choosing one technology over another. Geopolitics and profit may be just as decisive as efficiency. Unless we wish to recreate the global regimes of injustice described in Thomas Seifert's Black Book of Oil (Schwarzbuch Ol) we need deep structural changes. These are not decisions that can be left to markets or scientists alone.
Writers like Mike Tidwell in the United States and George Marshall in the United Kingdom have devoted their lives to covering the issue, and engaging others in activism. In his forthcoming book The Psychology of Denial, Marshall suggests that failure to act with urgency on climate change amounts to "irrational behaviour".
Activists often claim their chosen issue is the most important. But it's hard to think of anything else that affects all humans on earth to such a degree. The writers at AnkCon agreed on the urgency of communicating climate change to readers personally and emotively. And several called on activists to continue feeding them stories and inspiration.
I highlighted the role for alternative media. Editors in the commercial media may find it hard to place "another" story on climate change, especially if it provokes advertisers to pull ads but it's no excuse not to get the information out there. Publications like openDemocracy exist to host precisely these conversations, and the network of readers we attract are the type that will take the information and run with it. That's you.
Jeremy Rifkin hits the right formula for igniting the imagination about the future of energy. Part wishful thinking, part prediction, his book The Hydrogen Economy (Tarcher, 2003) envisions a world where we will take the best distributive practices of peer-to-peer and the internet and apply it to energy. Every human will produce enough power to feed an energy surplus into a decentralised grid.
Scientists may interrogate the technical practicality of such an idea but it's still the kind of visionary thinking that frees us from the constraints of the here and now, and helps us think as political agents about how we should organise society. It's inevitable that we will have to make decisions about energy and climate change in the near future. It's not inevitable that we will make the right choices.
Jeremy Leggett
Jeremy Leggett
Former chief scientist of Greenpeace, CEO and chairman of Solarcentury, and author of The Carbon War: Global warming and the end of the oil era (Routledge, 2001)
"I think writers can make a big difference if they can get things into the mainstream. I don't think we should delude ourselves; the books we write are measured in thousands whereas some of the most skilful proponents of the black arts of propaganda and misinformation, like Michael Crichton with his novel State of Fear are able to sell books in hundreds of thousands and have films made which are watched by millions."
Listen to Solana Larsen interview Jeremy Leggett (4.00mins)
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George Marshall
George Marshall
Climate Outreach and Information Network (UK), author of The Psychology of Denial
"Most individuals say they are very concerned about climate change, but show no change in their behaviour I think we have to make climate change more "personal". Throwing information at people does not produce change Our messages need to respond to the emotional triggers. The sense of loss that people will feel. A simple example is snow. It's much better to talk about snow than technical terms. There will be no more snow in Britain. No more snowballs."
Listen to Solana Larsen interview George Marshall (4.29mins)
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Mark Lynas
Author of High Tide: News from a warming world and the forthcoming Six Degrees.
"When you have Vanity Fair doing a special cover issue on climate change, then you can no longer say climate change is being ignored by the mainstream press. It's being much more extensively covered. I think things are moving in the right direction, and the sceptics are an anachronism. But they are an anachronism with a lot of money funded by powerful interests."
Listen to Solana Larsen interview Mark Lynas (4.20mins)
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