He's right, we need to decide

In the Guardian today George Monbiot starts a fundamental argument about climate change that we need to debate widely. It is a debate that is needed to formulate the very future of our world.

His article rambles a bit but the key points I see are:

1 We need to state our belief systems (who we are, who we want to be, how to evolve to get there...)

2 It is not enough to just discuss the technology changes needed (PPM CO2, Cost/MWhr, relative plus and minuses of oil/gas/wind/tide/solar...) and the struggle to map a road forward.

For example, some want us to 'abandon nuclear power', too dangerous they say. But to replace it with what? Nuclear provides steady day and night clean power when consumed as electricity. Any replacement would just increase our generation of GHGs, either through the use of fossil fuels or the generation of GHGs during the manufacture of the very things needed to make our electricity. It would also need a vast change to our infrastructure - the way in which we distribute our power.

For example, 'cut our energy use', by better insulation of our houses, better fuel consumption of our cars and trucks, proper accounting of the energy costs of manufacturing, distribution and consumption. But if we just manage to set and meet a target by say 2030, but we let our economy be based on every increasing growth, then we will face the same problems in 2050, 2070, etc. So we have to look at having a steady state economy and find a way to have human levelling and progress within that. A huge idealistic task.

And there is also the conflict of interests. Decarbonising needs an increase in infrastructure (power lines, car charging points...) put in place by government and big corporations, but people want to defend the landscape and they resist state interference and big business. These are fundamental things at odds with each other. That is why we have to define what we want to be.

We cannot keep on following the path of a global race to the bottom, the destruction of pensions, welfare, public services, stable employment which is now rampant. Giving less security, more fear, and pushing us to selfishly grasp everything we can.

We need to take a long hard look at energy, how we make it, how we use it, both for consumption and during manufacture and delivery of goods and services. We have to realise that energy is FINITE, not infinite, and chose not to wreck the planet in our quest to get just more and more believing that this is needed for human progress.

Ask yourself, is it?