Dear George I am disappointed that you have not engaged with my arguments in any detail, falling back on the well-worn "even a slight chance" defence. Obviously I cannot oblige you to take these arguments seriously. I considered I was fighting for a "slight chance" during the whole of the period when I was a Green Party activist, from 1986 to 2006ish, because even that far back the general trajectory of developments seemed clear. Nevertheless there seemed to be a window of possibility and so I did my best, while trying not to mislead people or create illusions. In doing so I raided the resources of my family and poured them down the drain of environmental activism, which with the benefit of hindsight I very much regret. It is of course not possible to predict with mathematical certainty how things will develop and on what timescales - we don't have the right kind of science for that, and political science is not a science at all. But I am now wholly convinced (read my lips, wholly convinced) that the window for green politics is sealed firmly shut. I retain an activist mentality (although at 67 I no longer have an activist's energies), and so I am happy to adopt your question "What do we do now?" You say we should throw everything we have at the "slight chance" that remains, which you now admit is a slight chance *not of prevention but of slowing things up a bit*. My objections are two-fold: 1. Honesty. A realistic slogan for the ongoing campaign you now propose would be "There's still a 0.1% chance that we could delay disaster slightly." But that is not exactly a clarion call, so you and your co-campaigners will inevitably decide to present a more upbeat picture. 2. Opportunity cost. Instead of throwing all our energies into a 0.1% chance of slowing down doom, we should be doing something else with those energies, as I set out and you ignored in my previous message: "This species does not have long to go, and its members deserve to know the truth about what we have done to ourselves, so that we can at least compose ourselves and take action to minimise future distress and suffering." So what I am proposing is: widespread understanding of the planetary situation, rather than subjection to propaganda; with at the core of that understanding an attempt to develop some self-knowledge (we are after all the world's only endangering species); and a search for compassionate attitudes and arrangements that can be put in place to meet what is to come. I feel this is a responsible political position. Best wishes, Dave Bradney   From: "George Monbiot" <george@monbiot.info To: <davebradney@headweb.co.uk Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2012 10:21 AM Subject: RE: Message from website: What do we do now? Hi Dave,  Thanks for writing. If, as you propose, we give up, we make your prophecies self-fulfilling. If there's even a slight chance, should we not fight for it with everything we've got? With best wishes, George To: george@monbiot.infoSent: 03 July 2012 16:53 Subject: Message from website: What do we do now? From: Dave Bradney davebradney@headweb.co.uk 3.7.12 Dear George Monbiot In your Guardian column on 26 June you aver: "That we have missed the chance of preventing two degrees of global warming now seems obvious: that most of the other planetary boundaries will be crossed, equally so." I agree, and have been making a reasoned case for this for several years, with zero profile of course, since nothing disconcerts journalists more than an unfamiliar idea. One might have expected you to continue by setting out the likely consequences of missing the two-degree threshold, and of crossing the other boundaries, but no, you actually continue to pile reason on top of reason for more environmental activism, even though you (now) say you can see that the results will at best be evanescent. In saying this you put yourself in the position of a doctor who refuses to tell a patient that they have a fatal disease. This species does not have long to go, and its members deserve to know the truth about what we have done to ourselves, so that we can at least compose ourselves and take action to minimise future distress and suffering. In a letter that I sent to the Guardian in response to your column (unpublished!) I offered the following responses to your "three reasons" for continued environmental activism: "1. We can attempt to "draw out the losses over as long a period as possible", in the interests of our children and grandchildren. I would suggest to George that rather than continue to pour his life energies down the drain of failed environmental activism he should devote those energies directly to his children, leaving them strengthened and  better grounded to prepare their children for what is to come. 2. We can "preserve what we can in the hope that conditions might change", based on the possibility that our political system might break down before it has wrecked everything. George, do you seriously believe that humanity and other exotic-sounding species that it might be nice for our children to see will survive a mass species extinction event such as the one that eliminated 90% of species 251 million years ago? We are set unstoppably on a path to create two such events simultaneously - one through massive climate change and one through the denial of living space to other species as our population expands. And the harder it gets for our political system to survive, the more damage it will create in the attempt. 3. We can create "refuges for the natural world" within our own country, irrespective of what happens elsewhere on the planet. This sounds uncannily like Stalin's policy of "socialism in one country", which we are now in a position to say, without fear of sensible contradiction, did not work out too well. However, it should still be possible to earn a crust promoting the ecological richness of the extensive coastal sites where nuclear power plants are located, and by assisting oil companies with their little "green schemes" designed to provide PR cover for what they really do." I would be interested to read a response from you. Dave Bradney Tai Hirion Joppa Llanrhystud Ceredigion SY23 5EJ Dave Bradney's letter to 'The Guardian Letters Page' FOR PUBLICATION PLEASE [Probably because it doesn't support George Monbiot's commentary or his career path, they didn't publish it . . . ] . . . Along the killing curve George Monbiot continues to chug along behind the curve of the realisation that we are not going to be able to "save the planet" (Now we know, Governments have given up on the planet, 26 June). What we have been struggling to avert or to overcome is, and has been for some while, irredeemable and unstoppable. The worst, or most of the worst, is going to happen whether we like it or not. But George still sees three reasons why environmental activism should continue - which coincidentally will provide a continuing audience for his particular brand of advocacy. 1. We can attempt to "draw out the losses over as long a period as possible", in the interests of our children and grandchildren. I would suggest to George that rather than continue to pour his life energies down the drain of failed environmental activism he should devote those energies directly to his children. leaving them strengthened and better grounded to prepare their children for what is to come. We can "preserve what we can in the hope that conditions might change", based on the possibility that our political system might break down before it has wrecked everything. George, do you seriously believe that humanity and other exotic-sounding species that it might be nice for our children to see will survive a mass species extinction event such as the one that eliminated 90% of species 251 million years ago? We are set unstoppably on a path to create two such events simultaneously - one through massive climate change and one through the denial of living space to other species as our population expands. And the harder it gets for our political system to survive, the more damage it will create in the attempt. We can create "refuges for the natural world" within our own country, irrespective of what happens elsewhere on the planet. This sounds uncannily like Stalin's policy of "socialism in one country", which we are now in a position to say, without fear of sensible contradiction, did not work out too well. However, it should still be possible to earn a crust promoting the ecological richness of the extensive coastal sites where nuclear power plants are located, and by assisting oil companies with their little "green schemes" designed to provide PR cover for what they really do. When I was a Green Party activist I was fond of arguing that Green politics was the only type of politics based on truth. However, I fear that truth has been a casualty of the Green movement's massive vested interest in being seen to provide "solutions" and "reassurance" and "alternatives". Reputations, self-images, incomes, careers and the continuation of institutions are all at stake. What interests me now is this - how should our behaviour change if and when we do accept that some survival threshold has definitively been crossed? Is it acceptable to just go on mouthing the same nannying platitudes about recycling and wind turbines, as the people we are addressing trudge on down their ecological dead-end? Or shall we all take the chance to finally learn something about ourselves, before we are swept away by nature's wrath? Dave Bradney Tai Hirion Joppa Llanrhystud Ceredigion SY23 5EJ Fred Pearce had more measured take on Rio To which 'endoftheline' gave this yet more measured response Yes we have to do something and 'Green Economics for Sustainable Development' is reported here as the replacement for the legislation that we can't agree anyway. Like the new rubric of 'green growth' and the even more suggestive 'inclusive green growth', these process terms are not unlike the earlier but transient theology of 'low carbon growth' and 'low carbon markets'. But all these terms suggest qualitative change rather than any quantitative discipline. They arise understandably as a result of the increasingly obvious but also increasingly difficult need to pursue future prosperity while yet resolving this with and within the global environmental limits [eg CO2] that we are exceeding as a result of this 'growth' process per se. Of course we need process. Any principles without this process are useless. At the same time process without principles is dangerous. However its more than that. Inclusive green growth merely suggests ethical values and market valuations. What we need is an inclusive framework where we conduct quantitative valuation of resource-stocks and time values on their use as resource-flows and rational sharing arrangements into the future. This is a framework and 'ethics' and 'prices' are now sensibly a function of that. Moreover, we need accounts and accounting for this before the fact and not after. Given the straits we are now in, it hardly makes sense to measure too-late that we used too-much and try and justify that by calling it 'green growth' and 'green economics' and a 'low carbon market'. If this is to be 'a market', it must be a focused and framework-based market reconciled to the natural limits by which we are all governed, legislated or not. Impossible? Survival is impossible without it.

Back to John Ashton