Download or read book Coping with the Climate Crisis written by Rabah Arezki and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-03 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reducing carbon emissions is the most complex political and economic problem humanity has ever confronted. Coping with the Climate Crisis brings together leading experts from academia and policy circles to explore issues related to the implementation of the COP21 Paris Agreement and the challenges of accelerating the transition toward sustainable development. The book synthesizes the key insights that emerge from the latest research in climate-change economics in an accessible and useful guide for policy makers and researchers. Contributors consider a wide range of issues, including the economic implications and realities of shifting away from fossil fuels, the role of financial markets in incentivizing development and construction of sustainable infrastructure, the challenges of evaluating the well-being of future generations, the risk associated with uncertainty surrounding the pace of climate change, and how to make climate agreements enforceable. They demonstrate the need for a carbon tax, considering the issues of efficiently pricing carbon as well as the role of supply-side policies on fossil fuels. Through a range of perspectives from academic economists and practitioners in the public and private sectors who work either at the country level or under the auspices of multilateral organizations, Coping with the Climate Crisis outlines what it will take to achieve a viable, global climate-stabilization path.

Download or read book America s Climate Choices written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-06-11 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is occurring. It is very likely caused by the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities, and poses significant risks for a range of human and natural systems. And these emissions continue to increase, which will result in further change and greater risks. America's Climate Choices makes the case that the environmental, economic, and humanitarian risks posed by climate change indicate a pressing need for substantial action now to limit the magnitude of climate change and to prepare for adapting to its impacts. Although there is some uncertainty about future risk, acting now will reduce the risks posed by climate change and the pressure to make larger, more rapid, and potentially more expensive reductions later. Most actions taken to reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts are common sense investments that will offer protection against natural climate variations and extreme events. In addition, crucial investment decisions made now about equipment and infrastructure can "lock in" commitments to greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come. Finally, while it may be possible to scale back or reverse many responses to climate change, it is difficult or impossible to "undo" climate change, once manifested. Current efforts of local, state, and private-sector actors are important, but not likely to yield progress comparable to what could be achieved with the addition of strong federal policies that establish coherent national goals and incentives, and that promote strong U.S. engagement in international-level response efforts. The inherent complexities and uncertainties of climate change are best met by applying an iterative risk management framework and making efforts to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions; prepare for adapting to impacts; invest in scientific research, technology development, and information systems; and facilitate engagement between scientific and technical experts and the many types of stakeholders making America's climate choices.

Download or read book Drawdown written by Paul Hawken and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: • New York Times bestseller • The 100 most substantive solutions to reverse global warming, based on meticulous research by leading scientists and policymakers around the world “At this point in time, the Drawdown book is exactly what is needed; a credible, conservative solution-by-solution narrative that we can do it. Reading it is an effective inoculation against the widespread perception of doom that humanity cannot and will not solve the climate crisis. Reported by-effects include increased determination and a sense of grounded hope.” —Per Espen Stoknes, Author, What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming “There’s been no real way for ordinary people to get an understanding of what they can do and what impact it can have. There remains no single, comprehensive, reliable compendium of carbon-reduction solutions across sectors. At least until now. . . . The public is hungry for this kind of practical wisdom.” —David Roberts, Vox “This is the ideal environmental sciences textbook—only it is too interesting and inspiring to be called a textbook.” —Peter Kareiva, Director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, UCLA In the face of widespread fear and apathy, an international coalition of researchers, professionals, and scientists have come together to offer a set of realistic and bold solutions to climate change. One hundred techniques and practices are described here—some are well known; some you may have never heard of. They range from clean energy to educating girls in lower-income countries to land use practices that pull carbon out of the air. The solutions exist, are economically viable, and communities throughout the world are currently enacting them with skill and determination. If deployed collectively on a global scale over the next thirty years, they represent a credible path forward, not just to slow the earth’s warming but to reach drawdown, that point in time when greenhouse gases in the atmosphere peak and begin to decline. These measures promise cascading benefits to human health, security, prosperity, and well-being—giving us every reason to see this planetary crisis as an opportunity to create a just and livable world.

Download or read book Speed Scale written by John Doerr and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If you care about climate change, John Doerr’s new book, Speed & Scale, offers concrete steps that we can all take to make a difference.” - Barack Obama With clear-eyed realism and an engineer’s precision, Doerr lays out the practical actions, global ambitions, and economic investments we need to avert climate catastrophe. Guided by real-world solutions, Speed & Scale features unprecedented, firsthand accounts from climate leaders such as Laurene Powell Jobs, Christiana Figueres, Al Gore, Mary Barra, John Kerry, and dozens of other intrepid policymakers, innovators, and scientists. In Speed & Scale, Doerr presents a compelling 10-step plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050–the global goal we need to reach to ensure a livable Earth for generations to come. From electrifying our energy grid to fixing our global food supply chain to capturing carbon from the air, Speed & Scale contains practical solutions for policymakers and entrepreneurs alike. As the world confronts an urgent climate crisis, Doerr reminds us that it is also the greatest economic opportunity of our lifetimes. Whether you’re a climate scientist or someone striving to make a difference in your local community, this book will help you to activate the sustainable solutions the world urgently needs. Praise for Speed & Scale: “Everybody should get Speed & Scale by John Doerr.” - Meryl Streep “A practical guide for participation in decarbonizing the global economy, a task as challenging as it is urgent.” - Christiana Figueres

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 Resolving the Climate Change Crisis written by Philip Lawn and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-02-29 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains why the climate change crisis is a symptom of a much larger underlying problem – namely, humankind’s predilection with continuous GDP-growth. Given this starting point, the world’s high-income nations must begin the transition to a qualitatively-improving steady-state economy and low-income nations must follow suit at some stage over the next 20-40 years. Unless they do, a well-designed emissions protocol will be as useless as the paper it is written on. Adopting an ecological economic approach, this book sets out why we must abandon the goal of continuous growth; how we can do so in a way that improves human well-being; what constitutes a safe atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases; and what type of emissions protocol and emissions-trading framework is likely to achieve a desirable climate change outcome. Failure of the world’s leaders to achieve these goals will not only put future human well-being at risk, it will threaten freedom in the liberal-democratic tradition and international peace.

Download or read book Climate Change written by The Royal Society and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2014-02-26 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate Change: Evidence and Causes is a jointly produced publication of The US National Academy of Sciences and The Royal Society. Written by a UK-US team of leading climate scientists and reviewed by climate scientists and others, the publication is intended as a brief, readable reference document for decision makers, policy makers, educators, and other individuals seeking authoritative information on the some of the questions that continue to be asked. Climate Change makes clear what is well-established and where understanding is still developing. It echoes and builds upon the long history of climate-related work from both national academies, as well as on the newest climate-change assessment from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It touches on current areas of active debate and ongoing research, such as the link between ocean heat content and the rate of warming.

Download or read book Our Choice written by Al Gore and published by Viking Juvenile. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the primary causes of the current climate crisis, and what young people can do to help solve it.

Download or read book The Implementation of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change written by Vesselin Popovski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-03 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In December 2015, 196 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Paris Agreement, seen as a decisive landmark for global action to stop human- induced climate change. The Paris Agreement will replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2020, and it creates legally binding obligations on the parties, based on their own bottom-up voluntary commitments to implement Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The codification of the climate change regime has advanced well, but the implementation of it remains uncertain. This book focuses on the implementation prospects of the Agreement, which is a challenge for all and will require a fully comprehensive burden- sharing framework. Parties need to meet their own NDCs, but also to finance and transfer technology to others who do not have enough. How equity- based and facilitative the process will be, is of crucial importance. The volume examines a broad range of issues including the lessons that can be learnt from the implementation of previous environmental legal regimes, climate policies at national and sub-national levels and whether the implementation mechanisms in the Paris Agreement are likely to be sufficient. Written by leading experts and practitioners, the book diagnoses the gaps and lays the ground for future exploration of implementation options. This collection will be of interest to policy-makers, academics, practitioners, students and researchers focusing on climate change governance.

Download or read book Shock Waves written by Stephane Hallegatte and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2015-11-23 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.

Download or read book The Climate Crisis written by Vishwas Satgar and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-02-01 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays that address the question: how can people and class agency change this destructive course of history? Capitalism’s addiction to fossil fuels is heating our planet at a pace and scale never before experienced. Extreme weather patterns, rising sea levels and accelerating feedback loops are a commonplace feature of our lives. The number of environmental refugees is increasing and several island states and low-lying countries are becoming vulnerable. Corporate-induced climate change has set us on an ecocidal path of species extinction. Governments and their international platforms such as the Paris Climate Agreement deliver too little, too late. Most states, including South Africa, continue on their carbon-intensive energy paths, with devastating results. Political leaders across the world are failing to provide systemic solutions to the climate crisis. This is the context in which we must ask ourselves: how can people and class agency change this destructive course of history? Volume three in the Democratic Marxism series, The Climate Crisis investigates eco-socialist alternatives that are emerging. It presents the thinking of leading climate justice activists, campaigners and social movements advancing systemic alternatives and developing bottom-up, just transitions to sustain life. Through a combination of theoretical and empirical work, the authors collectively examine the challenges and opportunities inherent in the current moment. This volume builds on the class-struggle focus of Volume 2 by placing ecological issues at the centre of democratic Marxism. Most importantly, it explores ways to renew historical socialism with democratic, eco-socialist alternatives to meet current challenges in South Africa and the world.

Download or read book Carbon Market The the Conference of the Parties for Combating Climate Change Cop 21 Solutions and Implementation written by Graciela Chichilnisky and published by World Scientific Publishing Company. This book was released on 2016 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Kyoto Protocol capped the emissions of the main emitters, the industrialized countries, one by one. It also created an innovative financial mechanism, the Carbon Market and its Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows developing nations to receive carbon credits when they reduce their emissions below their baselines. The carbon market, an economic system that created a price for carbon for the first time, is now used in four continents, is promoted by the World Bank, and is recommended even by leading oil and gas companies. However, one critical problem for the future of the Kyoto Protocol is the continuing impasse between the rich and the poor nations.Who should reduce emissions — the rich or the poor countries?This book is about the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), or COP21, held from 30 November to 11 December 2015 in Paris, which brought together around 40,000 participants in total — with delegates representing each country, observers, and civil society members. It is one of the largest climate conferences ever organized. Co-written by Graciela Chichilnisky, who proposed and designed the carbon credit emissions trading market, this book is a must read for academics and professionals studying, implementing and analyzing global climate change policies; interested advance undergraduates and postgraduates interested in the follow up of the Kyoto Protocol and UNFCCC 1992 founding.

Download or read book What If We Stopped Pretending written by Jonathan Franzen and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2021-01-21 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The climate change is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.

Download or read book Reaching Net Zero written by William D. Fletcher and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reaching Net Zero: What It Takes to Solve the Global Climate Crisis addresses the imminent need to fully understand the causes, effects, and evidence of global warming; due to the large amount of climate disinformation and complexity of much of the available valid science, this book addresses the science of global warming in a concise, readable manner while providing an in-depth reference for readers who want more details or to study the sources of information. This book also investigates potential practical next steps of interest to concerned scientists, engineers, and citizens, with an aim to further discuss and achieve the eventual Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 'Net Zero' goals. Solving the problem of reaching net zero requires educating others to support the changes that must occur and to provide the possible solutions required. This is a necessary read for academics in climate and environmental science, and specialists such as those in earth science or environmental studies, covering the science, technology, economics, politics, international, and other issues involved in doing something about global warming. It is also important for those interested in global warming and anyone involved in decision-making processes and legislation that deal with reduction in carbon footprints. - Provides in-depth discussion of understanding the problem of global warming, with clear explanations of the science behind global warming and climate change - Features case studies of successes and failures in reducing carbon footprints, with advised potential solutions for reaching net zero - Takes a realistic approach to the problems and solutions of global warming in light of all available evidence across multiple disciplines

Download or read book Game Theory and Climate Change written by Parkash Chander and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the growing consensus on the need for action to counteract climate change, complex economic and political forces have so far prevented international actors from making much headway toward resolving the problem. Most approaches to climate change are based in economics and environmental science; in this book, Parkash Chander argues that we can make further progress on the climate change impasse by considering a third approach—game theory. Chander shows that a game-theoretic approach, which offers insight into the nature of interactions between sovereign countries behaving strategically and the kinds of outcomes such interactions produce, can illuminate how best to achieve international agreements in support of climate-change mitigation strategies. Game Theory and Climate Change develops a conceptual framework with which to analyze climate change as a strategic or dynamic game, bringing together cooperative and noncooperative game theory and providing practical analyses of international negotiations. Chander offers economic and game-theoretic interpretations of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement and argues that the Paris Agreement may succeed where the Kyoto Protocol failed. Finally, Chander discusses the policy recommendations his framework generates, including a global agreement to support development of cleaner technologies on a global scale.

Download or read book Advancing the Science of Climate Change written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-01-10 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for-and in many cases is already affecting-a broad range of human and natural systems. The compelling case for these conclusions is provided in Advancing the Science of Climate Change, part of a congressionally requested suite of studies known as America's Climate Choices. While noting that there is always more to learn and that the scientific process is never closed, the book shows that hypotheses about climate change are supported by multiple lines of evidence and have stood firm in the face of serious debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations. As decision makers respond to these risks, the nation's scientific enterprise can contribute through research that improves understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change and also is useful to decision makers at the local, regional, national, and international levels. The book identifies decisions being made in 12 sectors, ranging from agriculture to transportation, to identify decisions being made in response to climate change. Advancing the Science of Climate Change calls for a single federal entity or program to coordinate a national, multidisciplinary research effort aimed at improving both understanding and responses to climate change. Seven cross-cutting research themes are identified to support this scientific enterprise. In addition, leaders of federal climate research should redouble efforts to deploy a comprehensive climate observing system, improve climate models and other analytical tools, invest in human capital, and improve linkages between research and decisions by forming partnerships with action-oriented programs.

Download or read book Losing Earth written by Nathaniel Rich and published by Picador. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By 1979, we knew all that we know now about the science of climate change - what was happening, why it was happening, and how to stop it. Over the next ten years, we had the very real opportunity to stop it. Obviously, we failed.Nathaniel Rich's groundbreaking account of that failure - and how tantalizingly close we came to signing binding treaties that would have saved us all before the fossil fuels industry and politicians committed to anti-scientific denialism - is already a journalistic blockbuster, a full issue of the New York Times Magazine that has earned favorable comparisons to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and John Hersey's Hiroshima. Rich has become an instant, in-demand expert and speaker. A major movie deal is already in place. It is the story, perhaps, that can shift the conversation.In the book Losing Earth, Rich is able to provide more of the context for what did - and didn't - happen in the 1980s and, more important, is able to carry the story fully into the present day and wrestle with what those past failures mean for us in 2019. It is not just an agonizing revelation of historical missed opportunities, but a clear-eyed and eloquent assessment of how we got to now, and what we can and must do before it's truly too late.