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The Story of Upfront Carbon

The Story of Upfront Carbon PDF Author: Lloyd Alter
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 1550927841
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
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.

The Story of Upfront Carbon

The Story of Upfront Carbon PDF Author: Lloyd Alter
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 1550927841
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
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.

Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle

Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle PDF Author: Lloyd Alter
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 1771423536
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 122

Book Description
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.

Making Climate Policy Work

Making Climate Policy Work PDF Author: Danny Cullenward
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509544941
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Book Description
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.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster PDF Author: Bill Gates
Publisher: Knopf Canada
ISBN: 0735280452
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
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.

A Bright Future

A Bright Future PDF Author: Joshua S. Goldstein
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541724097
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 199

Book Description
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.

CLIMATE CHANGE and the Road to NET-ZERO

CLIMATE CHANGE and the Road to NET-ZERO PDF Author: Mathew Hampshire-Waugh
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781527287969
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Book Description
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.

The Black Skyscraper

The Black Skyscraper PDF Author: Adrienne Brown
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421423839
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Book Description
A highly interdisciplinary work, The Black Skyscraper reclaims the influence of race on modern architectural design as well as the less-well-understood effects these designs had on the experience and perception of race.

Electrify

Electrify PDF Author: Saul Griffith
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262046237
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Book Description
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.

Routledge Handbook of Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure

Routledge Handbook of Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure PDF Author: Paolo Gardoni
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135139276X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1134

Book Description
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.

The Biochar Solution

The Biochar Solution PDF Author: Albert K. Bates
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 1550924591
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
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.