Leaving our carbon in the ground make sense, good sense

George Monbiot talks sense, good sense.

Unlike many of those who contest his views, Monbiot, as he has illustrated through an upfront declaration of his income, is not influenced the immensely wealthy and equally powerful fossil fuel lobby,

George Monbiot.

In his latest piece, “Frozen Assets”, Monbiot argues that the only way of knowing whether or not governments are serious about climate change is their position on leaving most of their fossil fuel reserves in the ground.

“We have already discovered far more carbon than we can afford to burn, if we are not to commit the world to very dangerous levels of heating. Only if most of it – four-fifths according to a detailed estimate – is left where it sits is there a good chance of preventing more than two degrees of global warming,” he says.

“It doesn’t matter,” he argues, “how many wind turbines you build, or energy-saving lightbulbs you install, or more economical cars you manufacture: unless most of our fossil fuel reserves are declared off-limits they will, sooner or later, be extracted and burnt.

“The question of whether it is sooner or whether it is later makes little difference: we have already identified more underground carbon than we can afford to burn between now and the year 3000,” he writes.