‘The Clean Industrial Revolution’ by Ben McNeil is an interesting book and McNeil’s writing is quite readable.

McNeil’s main point is that economic growth is not mutually exclusive of low carbon output. Indeed for McNeil moving away from carbon, coal and oil is the only way to grow Australia’s economy.

McNeil writes that ‘the climate change debate is often viewed in a polarised fashion: environment versus industry, developed versus developing countries, coal versus renewable energy, poor versus the rich. But a cleaner environment and a stable climate is in everyone’s interest, not one side or the other’s.’

For McNeil the conflict should not be pro-environmentalists against anti-environmentalists because ‘there is no downside’. Instead McNeil sees the only conflict as being over the solutions, because different ‘industries, individuals and countries give global warming differing priorities’.

Throughout the book and especially in the second half McNeil provides many examples of companies, individuals and countries that have adapted and profited from a low-carbon environment. These make interesting reading and it is clear that McNeil is passionate and well-read about climate change and the surrounding topics.

However, assuming McNeil’s argument to be true, it would have been interesting if he had expanded on why he thinks more companies, individuals and countries have not pursued the opportunities that he thinks climate change presents.

Regardless of your opinion as to the climate change debate McNeil’s book deserves to be read and it is an important contribution to the debate. It’ll be interesting to see which politicians pick up on it.

The book is available at:
http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=94&book=9781741757224

A post by John Quiggin about the book is available at:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2009/06/12/the-clean-industria...