The Great Disruption - a book review

Mike Childs

02 December 2011

A friend and strategy guru Chris Rose recently recommended I read Paul Gilding's book The Great Disruption. The premise of the book is that we will sort out the climate crisis, because when our backs are against the wall, humankind can do amazing things. In doing so we'll emerge with a better society.

 Many people would be surprised to hear this from a long-standing environmentalist, but Paul's book isn't simply a statement of optimism.

He suggests that the economic growth model will simply run out of steam as the environmental and social side-effects become too severe. He points to the obvious impacts of climate change but also the corrosive impacts of growing inequalities captured brilliantly in the book The Spirit Level.

Paul then borrows heavily from Winston Churchill's approach before and during the Second World War to suggest how fast transformation can be - and will be - with strong leadership and public support. He suggests that we will wage a 'one degree war' that:

• eliminates carbon pollution within 20 years,
• sets in train a hundred-year project taking carbon out of the atmosphere,
• utilises low risk geo-engineering options to slow temperature increases, and
• has a strong focus on adaptation to reduce food shortages, migration and military conflict.

He suggests that people will shift to simpler, happier lives as they give up on the 'work harder-shop more' merry-go-round.

Finally he makes it clear that these changes won't just happen, but instead they will only emerge if there is a strong groundswell demanding - and crucially demonstrating - change.

There is much to commend Paul's book, not least the powerful and infectious optimism.

I am also an optimist, and firmly believe that humans are smart enough to get out of the giant hole we have dug ourselves into.

But nagging away at me is the influence of the naysayers - the Tea Party in the United States, the climate sceptic 'think-tanks', the fossil-fuel lobby and the economists who suggest it would be cheaper and easier to geoengineer the planet than cut carbon pollution. In my view Paul doesn't adequately consider these countervailing forces in his analysis.

Humans can be incredibly smart but we can also be incredibly stupid. Let's hope that Paul Guilding is right - that when our backs are against the wall, we will choose to be smart rather than stupid.