20060928_GM

Source: YouTube

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbYsZFEYclM

Date: 28/09/2006

Event: George Monbiot on "love miles" and a "tiny minority which has the capacity to destroy the planet"

Credit: PenguinDigital

People:

• George Monbiot: Environmental and political writer and activist

George Monbiot: The one big problem, and the one absolutely intractable issue - as far as technological measures are concerned - is aviation. There is simply no technological substitutes for flying. There is no fuel which doesn't have a greater impact than current aircraft fuel, kerosene, has at the moment, which in any foreseable future - 30, 40, 50 years - could be deployed. And there is no new engine on the horizon, either, which is far more efficient than the jet engines we have at the moment.

It looks bleak, when it comes to alternatives to flying. I looked into the possibility of ultra-high speed trains - TGVs or Maglevs - and found that their carbon emissions are right up there with those of aeroplanes. That was one of many big surprises in researching this book. Another big surprise was when I looked at the possibility of using high speed cruise ships to move people around, and I found that their carbon emissions are far higher than those of aeroplanes - the QE2 has about six times the emissions, per person, of a plane making the same journey. All sorts of things came up in this research, which I hadn't anticipated, and indeed I found that hardly anyone else had anticipated either.

The only - the only course of action, as far as flying is concerned, is greatly to reduce the number of flights we take. And we're talking about a reduction in the region of 90%. And this is very tough. This is very hard for people to contemplate, not least those people who have "love miles". And "love miles" is a phrase I came up with, writing this book, which describes the distance between you and the people you love. If you have family in Australia, if you have a friend's wedding to go to in New York, you have love miles with those people. And you feel a moral obligation to redeem those love miles. [Laughter.] And - you're all laughing because I'm sure you've all got them, and you understand what I'm talking about.

And here we see two valid moral codes in irreconcilable antagonism. It is wrong not to go to your best friend's wedding in Capetown. It is also wrong to go there. And in climate change, we see the requirement for a whole new moral code. Things which seemed entirely innocent - turning on the lights, turning on the kettle, watching telly - all those things now don't look so innocent, all those things involve you in moral choices and moral decisions which weren't there before. Climate change requires a reorientation of our moral compass.

Be that as it may, we just can't keep on flying as we're doing. And, far from not keeping on flying, the government intends, as I've suggested, for a massive expansion in the amount of flying we do. And this is in complete contradiction to all its other policies. And somehow, that's something that we've got to swallow. Everything else is quite easy, everything else is quite easy to swallow. But that aviation thing is very, very difficult. And I put it to you that the reason it seems so hard is that it affects you. Counter to that, I'd say that it only affects people like you. The great majority of the world's people never fly, and they never will fly. This is a privilege enjoyed by a very tiny minority, and it's a tiny minority which has the capacity to destroy the planet. The reason that these measures seem harsh is that tiny minority includes you and it includes me.