Energise! Power to the People

"I know I'll be alright when the climate changes. They'll build flood defenses and so on in my part of the world, but what about people in Bangladesh? There's no 'we' when we talk about what 'we' can do to save ourselves from the effects of climate change."

That was one of the points made by a member of the audience when Joe Kaplinksi, co-author of Energise! A Future for Energy Innovation (with Professor James Woudhuysen), presented the April Brighton Salon at Bellerbys College.

Adaptation, mitigation and transformation are three strategies for dealing with climate change (regardless of one's views on humanity's contribution to global warming) that Joe and James identify in their book. Joe told us that he had wanted to to try and find a different approach to the question of climate change; one that did not subscribe to the moralistic and shrill doom-mongering of the eco-warriors and at the same time did not line up with the flat denial that there are problems at all of the climate sceptics.

"We realised that we had to look much more carefully at energy and its uses and production. The politicisation of climate change is a serious issue because it stands in the way of solving problems and stifles debate," said Joe.

Joe says that those who adapt to climate change and those who seek to simply mitigate it both tend to try to do less, to use less power and resources. Joe and his co-author make the argument for transforming the way we do things by working toward a new kind of power grid across the world. Every kind of fossil, sustainable, natural and nuclear methods of producing energy people can use will have a part to play until there is enough power available to stop having to worry about how much we use.

As energy production is currently the biggest single contributor to the greenhouse gases that raise the level of CO2 n the atmosphere, so one would assume that deep green activists and commentators would try to find alternative power sources, said Joe. But the approach, which is influential upon many more in the mainstream, is to try to limit all kinds of human activity, as they all require power.

I don't think the man in the audience I quoted at the beginning will have been won over by Joe's argument, but I for one admire the approach that Energise! takes to many questions.

"The time for debate is over!" say some deep greens, but I don't think has even been a proper debate on how growth and development can be used to actually clean up the planet rather than assume it will just mess it up.

I recommend Energise! (available on special offer at Amazon) because it's an unusual book, full of facts, figures, asides into different technologies and very readable. Also, Energise! doesn't duck the political and moral questions the way so many books on energy, climate and development do; either taking to the unreachable moral high ground or hiding behind catastrophe. It recommends policies regardless of how unpopular they might be with those engaged in the current debates on climate change.