Solving climate change, right after we solve human nature...

A lot of very earnest people have been taking advantage of the silly season this year, filling up a field next to Heathrow, and those gaps in the news schedules usually occupied by missing-cat stories. Dozens of organisations who make up the Camp for Climate Action, ranging from the fanatics to the fuddy-duddies, are united by the battle against aircraft. It’s no surprise to find there a type of earnest youth who’s always been able to find something evil to make a stand against, and some cretinously simple-minded way of ‘solving’ it.

What is surprising is that they’ve been joined by the kind of establishment figures they’d normally hope to hurl abuse at. The Church of England now believes that flying is a sin, which presumably makes it the one sin that they still believe in. Even the National Trust has come in to bat for the sons-of-Swampy. Everyone is now keen to be seen denying themselves the fruits of civilisation, and Ryanair too.

Environmentalism is the last moral code that Western civilisation truly believes in, and questioning the morally certain is always tough. The respect that environmentalists are given is rather like that given to a preacher in a God-fearing society - we might not agree with him, but we can at least be sure that his heart is righteous. It has become difficult to ask questions, even ones that cut to the core of what the green movement aims to do.

No one, to my knowledge, has pointed out that if the usual cause and remedy for climate change are correct, it will not just require us to trim our energy use. If global warming is indeed caused by the release of the carbon dioxide that was trapped, millions of years ago, as fossil fuels, it would seem to follow that it is not enough simply to burn coal, oil and gas at a much slower rate. It should not matter how long the release takes - the previously trapped gas ends up in the atmosphere permanently. Burning all the fossil fuels we have, regardless of whether we do so in a big splurge or in a long dribble, will have the same effect on the planet.

Ultimately, then, the solution to global warming is for the world to agree to leave vast reserves of fossil fuels buried underground, permanently. If the climate-change thesis is correct, and if we don’t leave this fuel unused, we’re in trouble.

But the problem here is obvious. This vast feat of self-denial will require a saintliness that man has never yet achieved. It requires everyone, everywhere, to forget about the kind of lifestyle that burning fossil fuels allows. Under the soil lies the greatest source of free power that mankind has ever found. It’s so vital to the way we live that even a wind turbine, that icon of environmentalism, requires great dollops of fossil fuels to build. If we had to build the whole thing - from extracting and refining the aluminium to hauling the finished turbine across country to its site - without the use of coal, oil, and gas, we might not think the power it generates worthwhile.

With our reserves locked in the ground, with the wellheads blocked and the mines blown up, mankind faces the kind of temptation that it’s never been able to resist. Denied the use of coal, oil or gas, mankind is reduced to using manpower, animal power, and whatever renewable sources it’s worth building, given the valuable energy that goes into building them, and the power they generate. It’ll be a tough lifestyle, made all the more painful by the knowledge that if we just opened up one of those mine shafts, there’d be all that power right on tap…

Still, everyone must resist, or the deal crumbles. Every people, every government, in every corner of the world, must resist the temptation to start using again, or no one else will. And if persuading peoples to renounce fossil fuels is tough, just try asking states to chuck away their own defences - ‘for the sake of the planet’.

For more than a century, a nation’s military power has ridden on the back of its industrial power. It is not so much its stomach that a modern army marches on, but its fuel tanks. Building and maintaining mechanized armies - to say nothing of air forces and navies - takes huge amounts of energy, most of which can only come from fossil fuels. Coal, oil and gas are the spinach on which nations grow strong. But if the deal’s going to work, states must abandon the instincts that they’ve shown since the dawn of time. They must all slash their militaries, relying only on carbon-free technologies to power their defences, and trust that every other country will keep the bargain.

Which country would be willing to scrap every warship that wasn’t solar-powered? Every tank that didn’t run on biodiesel, and that couldn’t be maintained by a wainwright’s shop? Every fighter aircraft that isn’t powered by rubber bands? Would all countries agree to disarm itself of every military invention of the last century-and-a-half, and go back to defending themselves with horse-drawn cannon, foot-soldiers and square-rigged men o’ war? And would they trust that no country would hang onto a few jet fighters and a guided-missile destroyer or two, and suddenly be able to rout any of its neighbours?

It is impossible to imagine. Anyone who thinks that the nations and peoples of the world would come together and agree in confidence to put the world’s great energy supplies beyond use is delusional. Two little stories from recent weeks illustrate just how crazy the idea is.

Not long before the Camp for Climate Action ambled into the fields of Heathrow, a Russian submarine planted a flag on the seabed at the North Pole, igniting a frantic rush to lay claim to the Arctic, the source of untapped riches of oil and gas. The rush isn’t to see who can best secure the oil against the ravages of mankind, but a race to get the stuff out and shipped off to their refineries.

It was not just Russia that wants that oil. Those well-known anti-ecological bastards, the Danes, started jumping up and down demanding a chunk. As did the renowned planet-destroying psychopaths, the Canadians. These are nations who profess to be at the heart of efforts to stem climate change. Given the opportunity, they chase oil as thirstily as anyone. And this really should have told the green movement what it’s up against.

Last week, protesters in Burma went onto the streets to denounce a 100% rise in the price of fuel. That’s a mere 100% rise, not, as we seem to need, a complete ban on burning the stuff. Protesters far more courageous, and certainly more desperate than the crusties at Heathrow, were willing to face the murderous security forces of one of the world’s worst tyrannies in an attempt to get fuel at a reasonable cost. That is how much people want to burn fossil fuels. That is the attitude of 99% of the planet. That is what the Monbiotites are facing.

Short of a worldwide green totalitarianism, there is precisely zero chance of humanity leaving the rest of the oil where it is. And even then, it’s pretty doubtful. We're all willing to make sacrifices that give us a righteous glow, so long as they don’t intrude too much on our basic lifestyle. Rich, urban liberals might be willing to have an electric car as part of their fleet, just to use for popping down to the supermarket. Suggest that they do what the planet apparantly needs from us all, to refuse any form of transport that isn’t powered by, built, or maintained with the aid of fossil fuels, and you’ll find few takers.

The green movement believes that it is possible for mankind to renounce the world’s best source of energy, and that out of the six million of us, not one will cheat, not one government will turn a blind eye, not one oil-rich area will secede, and stick two fingers to the ban. It believes that humans are capable of making unimaginable sacrifices in their standards of living, for the good of the planet, and that our species laughs in the face of temptation. It believes that human nature is intrinsically good and rational, and able to free itself from its greedy passions. It is wrong, in the most spectacular and ignorant fashion imaginable.

So long as we can dig up energy out of the ground, someone will use it. We will do so until we find something better, something that moves us around, keeps us warm, and helps us make all those goodies that we want. All the slideshows in the world won’t change that crucial basic fact.

This is the problem that the green movement is refusing to face. There is no way that humans will renounce the stuff that makes their lives easier and more comfortable, nor their governments what makes them more powerful. Our two chances are 1) to hope that the greens are wrong, or at least exaggerating, or 2) to discover a new source of energy that is at least as powerful and convenient as fossil fuels, that would let us abandon the oil fields without temptation.

Who knows if we’ll succeed? But whatever happens, the green movement will be an irrelevance. It will be inventors, not art-school greens on a moralistic ego trip, who find the next great source of power, if there is one. Trying to stop climate change by recycling, or banning standby buttons, is like a fat man trying to lose weight by cutting his toenails. It’s all or nothing. And since ‘all’ is impossible, that makes our current preoccupations with ‘green living’ look rather fatuous.