Why Mayer's not singing in the rain

Do you want the good news or the bad news? OK. Global warming is here. We know it is and all the recycling in the world won't slow it down much. We could cover the Sahara in solar panels and surround the British coast with wind turbines, but if we don't stop our insatiable demand for energy that won't slow it down either. We need to stop using so much energy. But you probably knew that too.

The good news, however, is that we can - according to Dr Mayer Hillman, architect turned environmental social scientist - do something about it.

But drastic times call for drastic measures - which means we need to invoke the spirit of the Blitz and start rationing the things we are running out of.

During the Second World War it was eggs and meat and nylons - so I've been told. For the war against climate change. it's energy.

According to Dr Hillman. it's not a question of chucking another Chardonnay bottle into the green crate and patting ourselves on the back as we drive back from the organic butchers. Unless we get a grip and start reducing the energy we use - by buying less, using less and, crucially, travelling less. We are going to hell in a handcart - or to the Sahara in a 4 x 4 if you prefer.

Last August the North Pole wasn't made of ice, it was floating around in the sea. and you only have to look out of the window at our rain-sodden streets to realise that the climate is misbehaving.

Rather than a doom merchant, Dr Hillman sees himself as the ultimate whistleblower: "Imagine a gaggle of children who, seeing that a shopkeeper had popped out, nipped into his sweet shop and stole a Mars bar. Before long they were joined by a hundred mates, each of whom did nothing more than nick a 2Sp chocolate bar. Suddenly a policeman shows up, and blows his whistle, reminding the children that stealing is wrong."

He is that policeman, he says, pointing out that tackling climate change is a moral imperative, not a luxury, and should not, therefore, be open to personal choice.

Dr Hillman has lived in and around West Hampstead all his 72 years. He became head of the Policy Studies Institute's environment programme and is now Senior Emeritus Fellow. He now lives in Nethrhall Gardens in a house noted, not only for being the first in Camden to be fitted with solar panels on the roof, but for a statue of a raging boar specifically designed to glare down at the school-run ratrunners whose exhausts caused the summer's unseasonable rain.

He is a warm, hospitable and gregarious man, with an endearing habit of growling and shaking his fists when frustration and fury get the better of him, a rare occurrence in an otherwise logical explanation of how we are actively destroying our planet.

There is no other way of putting it, he says. Until recently we had the slim, but comfoning excuse that we didn't realise the harm we were doing, but now the evidence is all around us, literally for the residents of Boscastle, there can be no excuse for sitting back and doing nothing.

Those who do, wilfully stick their heads in the sand (something which will become all the more hideously easy by the year 2100 when temperatures are likely to rise by between 1.2-5.8 C and by up to 10 C in North America) have only two possible ways of explaining their continued disdain for protecting the earth: "One is that they want to deprive those in the Third World from having the basic energy requirements to live, ie enough electricity to light and heat their homes, and cook their food or they really don't care about the world their children will inherit."

And by children, he doesn't mean "children" in the comfoning abstract sense of three or four generations away, he means literally, our children, the ones we drive to school, start pensions for and buy new raincoats for every six months.

Looking across at my daughters, aged 10 and eight, who were quietly clicking their way through a small cloud of CO2 emitted by their respective mobiles and Gameboys, I asked what the world would be like when they grew up if we continue to ignore climate change.

"Awful," he replies. And not just more congested, more expensive to drive into central London and, you know, a bit trickier to find a new version of the Maldives for their honeymoon. He means "awful" as in Darfur awful.

He quotes Sir David King, the chief government scientist, not a post you hold, he points out, if you deal in flaky science or don't know what you're talking about, who warned: "At the rate we are going, the only habitable area left will be the Antarctic."

By the 2080s, he says, the Foresight Flood and Coastal Defences Project predict that more than 3.5 million people in Britain will be at high risk of flooding in their homes. Two-thirds of the coastline of England and Wales will be subject to increased erosion and summer temperatures will hit 43 every decade. Grass lawns will no longer be viable in Saharalike southern England. The Scottish skiing industry will be wiped out and outbreaks of malaria will be as normal as the traditional winter flu scare.

So, is there any point in trying to stem the tide? Why bother getting in sandbags when the water is already creeping up the stairs?

This is the sort of attitude which drives Dr Hillman to distraction. As do people who describe him as advocating some kind of puritanical selfsacrifice.

If we we want to turn back the tide of global warming the only way to do it is to introduce rationing. And this time it's carbon rationing.

At the moment the average person in Britain produces about 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. So. if we want to do anything serious to mitigate the effects of global warming we need to reduce that to about one tonne a year.

Not overnight. but over a period of 14 years,. bit by bit, tonne by tonne, with cash incentives for the carbon thrifty, who can sell off their surplus carbon quota, and financial penalties for the carbon profligate. who will find that their summer holiday flights. Outdoor patio heaten and daily trips to the shops in the company gas-guzzler will no longer be financially as well as ecologically viable.

To carry on as we are, knowing the facts, is nothing but wicked, says Dr Hillman.

"If you don't live within what would be your ration and you want the planet we all share to survive, then there can only be two possible outcomes," he says.

"Either we prevent other people from having enough energy to provide their basic needs to heat and light their homes and cook their food, or it means that you don't really care about the future of the planet for your own children.

"We cannot rely on individual human nature to get us out of this. It has to be imposed by government," he said, using the analogy again from 1939.

"Once war was declared Neville Chamberlain did not say, 'Sorry, Hitler's let me down. I need a few volunteers to sign up to keep him at bay, and by the way, don't hog all the eggs, he introduced conscription and rationing.

"No-one complained and said food should be subject to market forces and if people can't afford food then it's their own stupid fault fur not having enough money - there were no riots in Trafalgar Square, it was recognised that rationing was the only way to do it."

And so it needs to be with energy. he says. It won't kill us, quite the reverse. It can be done - Hillman's own carbon production stands at around three tonnes a year. more than he would like. but it does not detract from the quality of his life. Quite the opposite, especially when one thinks of the alternatives. He and his wife, Heidi, now that their children have grown up, live in a relatively huge house, even though it is arguably the most well-insulated energy efficient in Camden. He has all mod cons. even though his TV is decidedly and defiantly last century, and there is even an old Citroen in the drive.

But, that is where the car remains, almost all the time. It is I5 years old, and clocks up about 600 miles a year.

And he never flies anywhere, especially to climate change conferences to places he would love to visit like Australia and New Zealand, but sends a video of his speech and saves II tonnes of CO2 instead.

*How We Can Save the Planet by Mayer Hillman with Tina Fawcett is published by Penguin, priced £7.99.*

HILLMAN'S PLAN

Carbon rationing would be mandatory, equal and be reduced year on year: until - have achieved the 50 to 60 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 needed to slow down gtobal warming.

An electronic card, like a credit card, would be loaded with a year's carbon credits and debited every time you bought energy or a travel service. Extras could be paid for and surpluses traded, with those who invested In renewable energy or simply used less, winning. and those who drove everywhere and jetted off on holidays having to pay more and losing out.