Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

224 S notes to pages 29-36
20. The debate about sequestering carbon is likely to continue indefi nitely. The
defi nitive study carried out by an MIT research team in 2007 is on the surface
positive about the prospects, but hedges its bets in the fi ne print. The
issue is whether carbon sequestration is feasible and can compete fairly with
effi ciency improvements and renewable energy.
21. The civil liberty implications of nuclear power have been mostly ignored
in the current debate, but the analysis by Ayres (1975) is still cogent, amplifi
ed by the threat of terrorism. See also Lovins (forthcoming, 2009), a full
analytical equivalent of a wooden stake through the heart of the ghoul.
Cooke (2009, p. 407) describes the nuclear industry as a “huge, secretive,
self-rationalizing system . . . backed by history, money, power, and a default
conviction in its own inevitability.” That outcome would have been no
surprise to Dwight Eisenhower.
22. The case for a steady-state economy has been made thoroughly by Herman
Daly, among others, and has been mostly dismissed by mainstream economists.
This is both an interesting chapter in the history of ideas and a fairly
ominous chapter in abnormal psychology. See Daly and Farley (2004) and
Daly (1996).
23. U. Thara Srinivasan et al. (2008).
24. Victor (2008, p. 183) wisely cautions that “a ‘no-growth’ policy can be disastrous
if implemented carelessly.” Most likely, he thinks, no-growth will be
driven from the grass roots (p. 222).
25. The CGIAR report is available at news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/
nature/6200114.
26. One of the most astute observers of American politics, Godfrey Hodgson,
puts it this way: “The crucial change was the discrediting of government.
This was possible because a substantial proportion of the American population,
perturbed by the prospect of racial upheaval, rejected the ideals or the
methods of the Great Society program. The methods may have been faulty,
but the ideals were not, and in rejecting the methods, American society
risked forgetting the ideals” (2004, p. 301).
27. Opinions about capitalism and its relation to the human prospect range
widely. At one end of the spectrum, Klein (2007) paints a dismal picture
of Milton Friedman and market fundamentalists and the mischief they’ve
loosed on the world. Saul (2005) is slightly more encouraging, but not
much. Esty and Winston (2006) and Hawken, Lovins, and Lovins (1998) are
much more upbeat about possibilities for a green capitalism but dismissive
of politics.
28. See Speth (2008), pp. 165–195. The recent writing on corporations and
the environment has ranged from the breathy optimism about “triple bottom
lines” to the “can’t get there from here” variety. Noteworthy reading
includes Bakkan (2004), Kelly (2001), Nace (2003), and Porritt (2006).