The End of the Long Summer

"The End of the Long Summer is a superb book that puts both climate change and other environmental issues into a long-term perspective. A lot of it is about scientists and the way they have conceptualised the relationship between humans and nature. This book forces us to rethink the idea that we can control nature. That idea is central both to the mainstream economic models that we were just talking about, which really see humans as able to control not just the economy but their larger environment, as well as the whole ideology of consumption in the way that it fails to take into account unintended consequences. Dumanoski finds that scientists are changing their metaphors. The metaphor of control might be the pilot steering the plane and that is the one she uses. The new metaphor is the idea of nature potentially as an angry powerful beast that humans are taunting. And the idea that we have unleashed forces that we cannot control is gaining currency among scientists and it leads us to have a much less arrogant and more humble relationship to nature. So, for example, it leads us away from thinking that we can solve the climate crisis by geoengineering the planet. And it leads us to the idea of needing to radically downsize our impact on the planet. If you take the UK, the issue is that the government has failed to do its part. It passed a climate legislation bill for carbon reduction and then it proceeded to take a stand on economics which was completely incompatible with meeting those targets. It took the view that “we can’t stop growing and that is our priority”. I think expecting individuals to take huge steps such as no longer driving in places where there isn’t a lot of public transport is unrealistic. So this is a situation where the government is patently failing to follow its own rhetoric, be that the Labour government or a Conservative/Liberal one. And it is asking too much to expect the public to do it on its own. That is not the way social change happens. You really need the leading institutions – governments, NGOs, corporations and so forth – to be sincere in their commitments and I think that individual households will come along. In fact we can say that households have done a lot, given how little government has been willing to actually put itself on the line. It is difficult and that is why I think you need a lot more of a citizens’ movement to press those institutions."