Interview 'We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention. By Patrick Barkham
We’re doomed,”
says Mayer Hillman with such
a beaming smile that it takes a moment for the words to sink in. “The outcome
is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so
dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There are no means of reversing the
process which is melting the polar ice caps. And very few appear to be prepared
to say so.”
Hillman, an
86-year-old social scientist and senior fellow emeritus of the Policy Studies
Institute, does say so. His bleak forecast of the consequence of runaway
climate change, he says without fanfare, is his “last will and testament”. His
last intervention in public life. “I’m not going to write anymore because
there’s nothing more that can be said,” he says when I first hear him speak to
a stunned audience at the University of East Anglia late last year.
From Malthus to the
Millennium Bug, apocalyptic thinking has a poor track record. But when it
issues from Hillman, it may be worth paying attention. Over nearly 60 years,
his research
has used factual data to challenge policymakers’ conventional wisdom. In
1972, he criticised out-of-town shopping centres more than 20 years before the
government changed planning rules to stop their spread. In 1980, he recommended
halting the closure of branch line railways – only now are some closed lines
reopening. In 1984, he proposed energy ratings for houses – finally adopted as
government policy in 2007. And, more than 40 years ago, he presciently
challenged society’s pursuit of economic growth.
When we meet at his
converted coach house in London, his classic Dawes racer still parked hopefully
in the hallway (a stroke and a triple heart bypass mean he is – currently –
forbidden from cycling), Hillman is anxious we are not side-tracked by his best-known
research, which challenged the supremacy of the car. “With doom ahead,
making a case for cycling as the primary mode of transport is almost
irrelevant,” he says. “We’ve got to stop burning fossil fuels. So many aspects
of life depend on fossil fuels, except for music and love and education and
happiness. These things, which hardly use fossil fuels, are what we must focus
on.”.. read more:
