George Monbiot talks about oil-dependent countries focusing all their powers on “growth at all costs” while the world slides into recession, over at the Guardian.

“If the world is sliding into recession, it’s partly because governments believed that they could choose between economy and ecology. The price of oil is so high and it hurts so much because there has been no serious effort to reduce our dependency. Yesterday in the Guardian, Rajendra Pachauri suggested that an impending recession could force us to confront the flaws in the global economy. Sadly it seems so far to have had the opposite effect: a recent Ipsos Mori poll suggests that people are losing interest in climate change. Opportunities for energy populism abound: it cannot be long before one of the major parties abandons the pale green consensus and starts invoking an oil cornucopia it cannot possibly deliver.”

Monbiot also explains why he no longer believes in contraction and convergence. Instead he puts his hopes on a global limit for carbon pollution that Oliver Tickell proposes in his book Kyoto2.

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