Download or read book The Story of Upfront Carbon written by Lloyd Alter and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2024-05-21 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When you look at the world through the lens of upfront carbon, everything changes Think that buying an electric car or switching to a heat pump is going to save the planet? Think again. We must cut carbon emissions to mitigate climate change. But emissions are not produced just by driving your car or heating your home. “Upfront carbon” refers to all emissions involved in making your car, your home, or any other item. As we seek to incorporate more renewables and less fossil fuels into our energy supply, upfront carbon becomes increasingly dominant compared to operating emissions, yet they are often ignored. This is why the pursuit of sufficiency, or making and buying just what we need, has become a powerful strategy for tackling climate change. By focusing on consumption rather than production, The Story of Upfront Carbon: Demystifies the complex web of cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessments, demonstrating that the accepted concept of “embodied carbon” is just one part of the carbon accounting equation Establishes the compelling rationale for carbon minimalism, arguing that only through frugality, simplicity, and materiality can we address global inequality and avoid climate catastrophe Shows how big-picture thinking and a broad, systemic approach to determining a product’s ecological footprint is indispensable to help guide the transition to degrowth and a zero-carbon society. Packed with concrete strategies for minimizing the upfront carbon produced by transportation, agriculture, consumer goods, the built environment, and more, this highly readable and accessible guide is required reading for a world on the brink.
Download or read book Living the 1 5 Degree Lifestyle written by Lloyd Alter and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stop thinking about efficiency and start thinking about sufficiency Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle reveals the carbon cost of everything we do, identifying where we can make big reductions, while not sweating the small stuff. The international scientific consensus is that we have less than a decade to drastically slash our collective carbon emissions to keep global heating to 1.5 degrees and avert catastrophe. This means that many of us have to cut our individual carbon footprints by over 80% to 2.5 tonnes per person per year by 2030. But where to start? Drawing on Lloyd Alter's journey to track his daily carbon emissions and live the 1.5 degree lifestyle, coverage includes: What it looks like to live a rich and truly green life From take-out food, to bikes and cars, to your internet usage – finding the big wins, ignoring the trivial, and spotting marketing ploys The invisible embodied carbon baked into everything we own and why electric cars aren't the answer How to start thinking about sufficiency rather than efficiency The roles of individuals versus governments and corporations. Grounded in meticulous research and yet accessible to all, Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle is a journey toward a life of quality over quantity, and sufficiency over efficiency, as we race to save our only home from catastrophic heating.
Download or read book Making Climate Policy Work written by Danny Cullenward and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, the world’s governments have struggled to move from talk to action on climate. Many now hope that growing public concern will lead to greater policy ambition, but the most widely promoted strategy to address the climate crisis – the use of market-based programs – hasn’t been working and isn’t ready to scale. Danny Cullenward and David Victor show how the politics of creating and maintaining market-based policies render them ineffective nearly everywhere they have been applied. Reforms can help around the margins, but markets’ problems are structural and won’t disappear with increasing demand for climate solutions. Facing that reality requires relying more heavily on smart regulation and industrial policy – government-led strategies – to catalyze the transformation that markets promise, but rarely deliver.
Download or read book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster written by Bill Gates and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NATIONAL BESTSELLER In this urgent, singularly authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical--and accessible--plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid an irreversible climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help and guidance of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science and finance, he has focused on exactly what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide toward certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only gathers together all the information we need to fully grasp how important it is that we work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases but also details exactly what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. He describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions; where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively; where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions--suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but by following the guidelines he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.
Download or read book CLIMATE CHANGE and the Road to NET ZERO written by Mathew Hampshire-Waugh and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-03 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CLIMATE CHANGE and the road to NET-ZERO is a story of how humanity has broken free from the shackles of poverty, suffering, and war and for the first time in human history grown both population and prosperity. It's also a story of how a single species has reconfigured the natural world, repurposed the Earth's resources, and begun to re-engineer the climate. The book uses these conflicting narratives to explore the science, economics, technology, and politics of climate change. NET-ZERO blows away the entrenched idea that solving global warming requires a trade-off between the economy and environment, present and future generations, or rich and poor, and reveals why a twenty-year transition to a zero carbon system is a win-win solution for all on planet Earth. From the Author "I wrote Climate Change and the road to Net-Zero to provide a generalist reader with a clear, comprehensive, and objective take on the issues surrounding climate change and air pollution. The book walks the reader through a history of energy, innovation, and the rise of human civilisation; how scientists have come to understand our past climate and can now forecast future change; the problems economists encounter as they attempt to piece together the potential monetary and social damages from climate inaction; and a technology agnostic assessment of potential climate change solutions (from climate-engineering to mitigation) including their costs, risks, and limitations. The book demonstrates why sustainable technologies such as wind, solar, and batteries get cheaper with scale of production, not time, and why a rapid transition to a fully-fledged net-zero system will end up significantly cheaper than remaining bound to fossil fuels, whilst also avoiding the worst impacts of climate change, and preventing nearly eight million premature deaths each year from air pollution. I hope Climate Change and the road to Net-Zero delivers an understanding of humanity's relationship with Earth that is as intriguing as Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin's The Human Planet, or Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens. I very much hope too that the book conveys the passion and call to action of David Wallace-Well's The Uninhabitable Earth, coupled with the sober economic analysis of The Climate Casino by William Nordhaus or Capital in the 21st century by Thomas Piketty, and that it provides the technical rigour of Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air by David MacKay, the rationality of Hans Rosling's Factfulness, and the eternal hope of The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac. I believe net-zero will be cheaper, cleaner, safer, more reliable, more sustainable, and will create more employment than if we remain bound to fossil fuels. After reading the book, I hope you will agree." Mathew Hampshire-Waugh, Author.
Download or read book A Bright Future written by Joshua S. Goldstein and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiration for Nuclear Now, the new Oliver Stone film, co-written by Joshua Goldstein As climate change quickly approaches a series of turning points that guarantee disastrous outcomes, a solution is hiding in plain sight. Several countries have already replaced fossil fuels with low-carbon energy sources, and done so rapidly, in one to two decades. By following their methods, we could decarbonize the global economy by midcentury, replacing fossil fuels even while world energy use continues to rise. But so far we have lacked the courage to really try. In this clear-sighted and compelling book, Joshua Goldstein and Staffan Qvist explain how clean energy quickly replaced fossil fuels in such places as Sweden, France, South Korea, and Ontario. Their people enjoyed prosperity and growing energy use in harmony with the natural environment. They didn't do this through personal sacrifice, nor through 100 percent renewables, but by using them in combination with an energy source the Swedes call käkraft, hundreds of times safer and cleaner than coal. Clearly written and beautifully illustrated, yet footnoted with extensive technical references, Goldstein and Qvist's book will provide a new touchstone in discussions of climate change. It could spark a shift in world energy policy that, in the words of Steven Pinker's foreword, literally saves the world.
Download or read book Sacred Acts written by Mallory McDuff and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories from across North America of contemporary church leaders, parishioners and religious activists who are working to define a new environmental movement, where honoring the Creator means protecting the planet. Sacred Acts documents the diverse actions taken by churches to address climate change through stewardship, advocacy, spirituality and justice. Contributions from leading Christian voices such as Norman Wirzba and the Reverend Canon Sally Bingham detail the concrete work of faith communities such as: Englewood Christian Church in Indianapolis, IN, where parishioners have enhanced food security by sharing canning and food preservation skills in the church kitchen Georgia's Interfaith Power & Light, which has used federal stimulus funds to weatherize congregations, reduce utility bills and cut carbon emissions Earth Ministry, where people of faith spearheaded the movement to pass state legislation to make Washington State a coal-free state. Sacred Acts shows that churches can play a critical role in confronting climate change - perhaps the greatest moral imperative of our time. This timely collection will inspire individuals and congregations to act in good faith to help protect Earth's climate.
Download or read book The Biochar Solution written by Albert K. Bates and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the dirt below our feet can save us from extinction. Conventional agriculture destroys our soils, pollutes our water and is a major contributor to climate change. What if our agricultural practices could stabilize, or even reverse these trends? The Biochar Solution explores the dual function of biochar as a carbon-negative energy source and a potent soil-builder. Created by burning biomass in the absence of oxygen, this material has the unique ability to hold carbon back from the atmosphere while simultaneously enhancing soil fertility. Author Albert Bates traces the evolution of this extraordinary substance from the ancient black soils of the Amazon to its reappearance as a modern carbon sequestration strategy. Combining practical techniques for the production and use of biochar with an overview of the development and future of carbon farming, The Biochar Solution describes how a new agricultural revolution can reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to below zero while increasing world food reserves and creating energy from biomass wastes. Biochar and carbon farming can: Reduce fossil fuels inputs into our food system Bring new life to desert landscapes Filter and purify drinking water Help build carbon-negative homes, communities and nations. Biochar is not without dangers if unregulated, and it is not a panacea, but if it fulfills its promise of taking us back from the brink of irreversible climate change, it may well be the most important discovery in human history.
Download or read book The Ministry for the Future written by Kim Stanley Robinson and published by Orbit. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 579 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR “The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem "If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox) The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis. "One hopes that this book is read widely—that Robinson’s audience, already large, grows by an order of magnitude. Because the point of his books is to fire the imagination."―New York Review of Books "If there’s any book that hit me hard this year, it was Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, a sweeping epic about climate change and humanity’s efforts to try and turn the tide before it’s too late." ―Polygon (Best of the Year) "Masterly." —New Yorker "[The Ministry for the Future] struck like a mallet hitting a gong, reverberating through the year ... it’s terrifying, unrelenting, but ultimately hopeful. Robinson is the SF writer of my lifetime, and this stands as some of his best work. It’s my book of the year." —Locus "Science-fiction visionary Kim Stanley Robinson makes the case for quantitative easing our way out of planetary doom." ―Bloomberg Green
Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure written by Paolo Gardoni and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 1134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To best serve current and future generations, infrastructure needs to be resilient to the changing world while using limited resources in a sustainable manner. Research on and funding towards sustainability and resilience are growing rapidly, and significant research is being carried out at a number of institutions and centers worldwide. This handbook brings together current research on sustainable and resilient infrastructure and, in particular, stresses the fundamental nexus between sustainability and resilience. It aims to coalesce work from a large and diverse group of contributors across a wide range of disciplines including engineering, technology and informatics, urban planning, public policy, economics, and finance. Not only does it present a theoretical formulation of sustainability and resilience but it also demonstrates how these ideals can be realized in practice. This work will provide a reference text to students and scholars of a number of disciplines.
Download or read book Electrify written by Saul Griffith and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An optimistic--but realistic and feasible--action plan for fighting climate change while creating new jobs and a healthier environment: electrify everything. Climate change is a planetary emergency. We have to do something now—but what? Saul Griffith has a plan. In Electrify, Griffith lays out a detailed blueprint—optimistic but feasible—for fighting climate change while creating millions of new jobs and a healthier environment. Griffith’s plan can be summed up simply: electrify everything. He explains exactly what it would take to transform our infrastructure, update our grid, and adapt our households to make this possible. Billionaires may contemplate escaping our worn-out planet on a private rocket ship to Mars, but the rest of us, Griffith says, will stay and fight for the future. Griffith, an engineer and inventor, calls for grid neutrality, ensuring that households, businesses, and utilities operate as equals; we will have to rewrite regulations that were created for a fossil-fueled world, mobilize industry as we did in World War II, and offer low-interest “climate loans.” Griffith’s plan doesn’t rely on big, not-yet-invented innovations, but on thousands of little inventions and cost reductions. We can still have our cars and our houses—but the cars will be electric and solar panels will cover our roofs. For a world trying to bounce back from a pandemic and economic crisis, there is no other project that would create as many jobs—up to twenty-five million, according to one economic analysis. Is this politically possible? We can change politics along with everything else.
Download or read book Climate Rationality written by Jason S. Johnston and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-19 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most environmental statutes passed since 1970 have endorsed a pragmatic or 'precautionary' principle under which the existence of a significant risk is enough to trigger regulation. At the same time, targets of such regulation have often argued on grounds of inefficiency that the associated costs outweigh any potential benefits. In this work, Jason Johnston unpacks and critiques the legal, economic, and scientific basis for precautionary climate policies pursued in the United States and in doing so sheds light on why the global warming policy debate has become increasingly bitter and disconnected from both climate science and economics. Johnston analyzes the most influential international climate science assessment organizations, the US electric power industry, and land management and renewable energy policies. Bridging sound economics and climate science, this pathbreaking book shows how the United States can efficiently adapt to a changing climate while radically reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Download or read book The End of Ice written by Dahr Jamail and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2020 PEN / E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Acclaimed on its hardcover publication, a global journey that reminds us "of how magical the planet we're about to lose really is" (Bill McKibben) With a new epilogue by the author After nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisis—from Alaska to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforest—in order to discover the consequences to nature and to humans of the loss of ice. In The End of Ice, we follow Jamail as he scales Denali, the highest peak in North America, dives in the warm crystal waters of the Pacific only to find ghostly coral reefs, and explores the tundra of St. Paul Island where he meets the last subsistence seal hunters of the Bering Sea and witnesses its melting glaciers. Accompanied by climate scientists and people whose families have fished, farmed, and lived in the areas he visits for centuries, Jamail begins to accept the fact that Earth, most likely, is in a hospice situation. Ironically, this allows him to renew his passion for the planet's wild places, cherishing Earth in a way he has never been able to before. Like no other book, The End of Ice offers a firsthand chronicle—including photographs throughout of Jamail on his journey across the world—of the catastrophic reality of our situation and the incalculable necessity of relishing this vulnerable, fragile planet while we still can.
Download or read book Living the 1 5 Degree Lifestyle written by Lloyd Alter and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stop thinking about efficiency and start thinking about sufficiency Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle reveals the carbon cost of everything we do, identifying where we can make big reductions, while not sweating the small stuff. The international scientific consensus is that we have less than a decade to drastically slash our collective carbon emissions to keep global heating to 1.5 degrees and avert catastrophe. This means that many of us have to cut our individual carbon footprints by over 80% to 2.5 tonnes per person per year by 2030. But where to start? Drawing on Lloyd Alter's journey to track his daily carbon emissions and live the 1.5 degree lifestyle, coverage includes: What it looks like to live a rich and truly green life From take-out food, to bikes and cars, to your internet usage – finding the big wins, ignoring the trivial, and spotting marketing ploys The invisible embodied carbon baked into everything we own and why electric cars aren't the answer How to start thinking about sufficiency rather than efficiency The roles of individuals versus governments and corporations. Grounded in meticulous research and yet accessible to all, Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle is a journey toward a life of quality over quantity, and sufficiency over efficiency, as we race to save our only home from catastrophic heating.
Download or read book Embodied Carbon in Buildings written by Francesco Pomponi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-01-28 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a single-source reference for whole life embodied impacts of buildings. The comprehensive and persuasive text, written by over 50 invited experts from across the world, offers an indispensable resource both to newcomers and to established practitioners in the field. Ultimately it provides a persuasive argument as to why embodied impacts are an essential aspect of sustainable built environments. The book is divided into four sections: measurement, including a strong emphasis on uncertainty analysis, as well as offering practical case studies of individual buildings and a comparison of materials; management, focusing in particular on the perspective of designers and contractors; mitigation, which identifies some specific design strategies as well as challenges; and finally global approaches, six chapters which describe in authoritative detail the ways in which the different regions of the world are tackling the issue.
Download or read book Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation written by Ottmar Edenhofer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-21 with total page 1088 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report (IPCC-SRREN) assesses the potential role of renewable energy in the mitigation of climate change. It covers the six most important renewable energy sources - bioenergy, solar, geothermal, hydropower, ocean and wind energy - as well as their integration into present and future energy systems. It considers the environmental and social consequences associated with the deployment of these technologies, and presents strategies to overcome technical as well as non-technical obstacles to their application and diffusion. SRREN brings a broad spectrum of technology-specific experts together with scientists studying energy systems as a whole. Prepared following strict IPCC procedures, it presents an impartial assessment of the current state of knowledge: it is policy relevant but not policy prescriptive. SRREN is an invaluable assessment of the potential role of renewable energy for the mitigation of climate change for policymakers, the private sector, and academic researchers.
Download or read book The Floating Pool Lady written by Ann L. Buttenwieser and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-15 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why on earth would anyone want to float a pool up the Atlantic coastline to bring it to rest at a pier on the New York City waterfront? In The Floating Pool Lady, Ann L. Buttenwieser recounts her triumphant adventure that started in the bayous of Louisiana and ended with a self-sustaining, floating swimming pool moored in New York Harbor. When Buttenwieser decided something needed to be done to help revitalize the New York City waterfront, she reached into the city's nineteenth-century past for inspiration. Buttenwieser wanted New Yorkers to reestablish their connection to their riverine surroundings and she was energized by the prospect of city youth returning to the Hudson and East Rivers. What she didn't suspect was that outfitting and donating a swimming facility for free enjoyment by the public would turn into an almost-Sisyphean task. As she describes in The Floating Pool Lady, Buttenwieser battled for years with politicians and struggled with bureaucrats as she brought her "crazy" scheme to fruition. From dusty archives in the historic Battery Maritime Building to high-stakes community board meetings to tense negotiations in the Louisiana shipyard, Buttenwieser retells the improbable process that led to a pool named The Floating Pool Lady tying up to a pier at Barretto Point Park in the Bronx, ready for summer swimmers. Throughout The Floating Pool Lady, Buttenwieser raises consciousness about persistent environmental issues and the challenges of developing a constituency for projects to make cities livable in the twenty-first century. Her story and that of her floating pool function as both warning and inspiration to those who dare to dream of realizing innovative public projects in the modern urban landscape.
