Author: No Author
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 9390327016
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 366
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Book Description
REIMAGINING A CLEANER, GREENER, CARBON-FREE WORLD! The current global energy use, with its overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels, has taken global warming to dangerous levels. Climate change is already hitting us hard, through adverse effects on global food availability, biodiversity, rising sea levels and extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and floods. In the last decade, a major transformation-the transition to clean, affordable and sustainable energy from the sun and the wind-is beginning to address these challenges. Fossil Free provides a concise introduction to the challenges, realities and complexities of the global and local energy industry, as well as the trends and forces driving the energy transition. It explains how improved electricity infrastructure, decentralized smart grids, electric vehicles, energy storage and market design are already providing clear pathways for the transition towards green, efficient, affordable and secure renewable energy across the energy-use chain: extraction, conversion, transmission, distribution and end use. For over a decade, Sumant Sinha has had a ringside view of the energy scenario. Having founded and helmed India's leading clean energy company, his understanding of the global energy landscape and climate change brings a unique, holistic perspective on energy. With Fossil Free, Sinha shares his vision for energy which is not only clean, but also practical and affordable.
Author: Melissa K. Scanlan
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300253990
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
A blueprint for creating sustainable businesses, emphasizing the power and potential of cooperative models "[An] important take on achieving a cleaner and safer world. . . . [Scanlan] envisions a future where green policies go hand-in-hand with worker empowerment, and provides a detailed blueprint for how to get there. . . . Her book offers essential hope that we can yet save ourselves . . . from ourselves."--Bill Lueders, The Progressive, "Favorite Books of 2021" Drawing on both her extensive experience founding and directing social enterprises and her interviews with sustainability leaders, Melissa Scanlan provides a legal blueprint for creating alternate corporate business models that mitigate climate change, pay living wages, and act as responsible community members, including Certified B Corps and benefit corporations. With an emphasis on cooperatives, this book reveals the power and potential of cooperating as a unifying concept around which to design social enterprise achieving triple bottom-line results: for society, the environment, and finance.
Author: Holly Jean Buck
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1839762349
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
Ending the fossil fuel industry is the only credible path for climate policy Around the world, countries and companies are setting net-zero carbon emissions targets. But what will it mean if those targets are achieved? One possibility is that fossil fuel companies will continue to produce billions of tons of atmospheric CO2 while relying on a symbiotic industry to scrub the air clean. Focusing on emissions draws our attention away from the real problem: the point of production. The fossil fuel industry must come to an end but will not depart willingly; governments must intervene. By embracing a politics of rural-urban coalitions and platform governance, climate advocates can build the political power needed to nationalize the fossil fuel industry and use its resources to draw carbon out of the atmosphere.
Author: Andreas Malm
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784781312
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 694
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Book Description
The more we know about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we burn. How did we end up in this mess? In this masterful new history, Andreas Malm claims it all began in Britain with the rise of steam power. But why did manufacturers turn from traditional sources of power, notably water mills, to an engine fired by coal? Contrary to established views, steam offered neither cheaper nor more abundant energy-but rather superior control of subordinate labour. Animated by fossil fuels, capital could concentrate production at the most profitable sites and during the most convenient hours, as it continues to do today. Sweeping from nineteenth-century Manchester to the emissions explosion in China, from the original triumph of coal to the stalled shift to renewables, this study hones in on the burning heart of capital and demonstrates, in unprecedented depth, that turning down the heat will mean a radical overthrow of the current economic order.
Author: Alice J. Friedemann
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030703355
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 205
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Book Description
This book is a reality check of where energy will come from in the future. Today, our economy is utterly dependent on fossil fuels. They are essential to transportation, manufacturing, farming, electricity, and to make fertilizers, cement, steel, roads, cars, and half a million other products. One day, sooner or later, fossil fuels will no longer be abundant and affordable. Inevitably, one day, global oil production will decline. That time may be nearer than we realize. Some experts predict oil shortages as soon as 2022 to 2030. What then are our options for replacing the fossil fuels that turn the great wheel of civilization? Surveying the arsenal of alternatives – wind, solar, hydrogen, geothermal, nuclear, batteries, catenary systems, fusion, methane hydrates, power2gas, wave, tidal power and biomass – this book examines whether they can replace or supplement fossil fuels. The book also looks at substitute energy sources from the standpoint of the energy users. Manufacturing, which uses half of fossil fuels, often requires very high heat, which in many cases electricity can't provide. Industry uses fossil fuels as a feedstock for countless products, and must find substitutes. And, as detailed in the author's previous book, "When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation," ships, locomotives, and heavy-duty trucks are fueled by diesel. What can replace diesel? Taking off the rose-colored glasses, author Alice Friedemann analyzes our options. What alternatives should we deploy right now? Which technologies merit further research and development? Which are mere wishful thinking that, upon careful scrutiny, dematerialize before our eyes? Fossil fuels have allowed billions of us to live like kings. Fueled by oil, coal, and natural gas, we changed the equation constraining the carrying capacity of our planet. As fossil fuels peak and then decline, will we fall back to Earth? Are there viable alternatives?
Author: Mark Jaccard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139449052
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 408
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Book Description
More and more people believe we must quickly wean ourselves from fossil fuels - oil, natural gas and coal - to save the planet from environmental catastrophe, wars and economic collapse. In this 2006 book, Professor Jaccard argues that this view is misguided. We have the technological capability to use fossil fuels without emitting climate-threatening greenhouse gases or other pollutants. The transition from conventional oil and gas to their unconventional sources including coal for producing electricity, hydrogen and cleaner-burning fuels will decrease energy dependence on politically unstable regions. In addition, our vast fossil fuel resources will be the cheapest source of clean energy for the next century and perhaps longer, which is critical for the economic and social development of the world's poorer countries. By buying time for increasing energy efficiency, developing renewable energy technologies and making nuclear power more attractive, fossil fuels will play a key role in humanity's quest for a sustainable energy system.
Author: Alex Epstein
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1591847443
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Could everything we know about fossil fuels be wrong? For decades, environmentalists have told us that using fossil fuels is a self-destructive addiction that will destroy our planet. Yet at the same time, by every measure of human well-being, from life expectancy to clean water to climate safety, life has been getting better and better. How can this be? The explanation, energy expert Alex Epstein argues in The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, is that we usually hear only one side of the story. We’re taught to think only of the negatives of fossil fuels, their risks and side effects, but not their positives—their unique ability to provide cheap, reliable energy for a world of seven billion people. And the moral significance of cheap, reliable energy, Epstein argues, is woefully underrated. Energy is our ability to improve every single aspect of life, whether economic or environmental. If we look at the big picture of fossil fuels compared with the alternatives, the overall impact of using fossil fuels is to make the world a far better place. We are morally obligated to use more fossil fuels for the sake of our economy and our environment. Drawing on original insights and cutting-edge research, Epstein argues that most of what we hear about fossil fuels is a myth. For instance . . . Myth: Fossil fuels are dirty. Truth: The environmental benefits of using fossil fuels far outweigh the risks. Fossil fuels don’t take a naturally clean environment and make it dirty; they take a naturally dirty environment and make it clean. They don’t take a naturally safe climate and make it dangerous; they take a naturally dangerous climate and make it ever safer. Myth: Fossil fuels are unsustainable, so we should strive to use “renewable” solar and wind. Truth: The sun and wind are intermittent, unreliable fuels that always need backup from a reliable source of energy—usually fossil fuels. There are huge amounts of fossil fuels left, and we have plenty of time to find something cheaper. Myth: Fossil fuels are hurting the developing world. Truth: Fossil fuels are the key to improving the quality of life for billions of people in the developing world. If we withhold them, access to clean water plummets, critical medical machines like incubators become impossible to operate, and life expectancy drops significantly. Calls to “get off fossil fuels” are calls to degrade the lives of innocent people who merely want the same opportunities we enjoy in the West. Taking everything into account, including the facts about climate change, Epstein argues that “fossil fuels are easy to misunderstand and demonize, but they are absolutely good to use. And they absolutely need to be championed. . . . Mankind’s use of fossil fuels is supremely virtuous—because human life is the standard of value and because using fossil fuels transforms our environment to make it wonderful for human life.”
Author: Joseph M. Shuster
Publisher: Bookhouse Fulfillment
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412
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Book Description
Beyond Fossil Fools illustrates, explains, and quantifies the only practical solution to the energy problems of the United States and the world. The solution is a combination of "alternative energy" sources, reduced energy use, hybrid and all electirc cars and trucks, improved batteries, biofuels, nuclear power, political awareness, and political willingness to change.
Author: Patricia Vickers Rich
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
ISBN: 0486838552
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 763
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Book Description
Expanded edition of definitive guide for professionals and amateurs presents valuable information about finding, preserving, and studying fossils. Over 1,500 drawings and photographs. "Readable . . . and remarkably comprehensive." — Chicago Sunday Tribune.
Author: Karl Coplan
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231549164
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
Any realistic response to climate change will require reducing carbon emissions to a sustainable level. Yet even people who already recognize that the climate is the most urgent issue facing the planet struggle to understand their individual responsibilities. Is it even possible to live with a sustainable carbon footprint in modern American society—much less to live well? What are the options for those who would like to make climate awareness part of their daily lives but don’t want to go off the grid or become a hermit? In Live Sustainably Now, Karl Coplan shares his personal journey of attempting to cut back on carbon without giving up the amenities of a suburban middle-class lifestyle. Coplan chronicles the joys and challenges of a year on a carbon budget—kayaking to work, hunting down electric-car charging stations, eating a Mediterranean-style diet, and enjoying plenty of travel on weekends and vacations while avoiding long-distance flights. He explains how to set a personal carbon cap and measure your actual footprint, with his own results detailed in monthly diary entries. Presenting the pros and cons of different energy, transportation, and lifestyle options, Live Sustainably Now shows that there does not have to be a trade-off between the ethical obligation to maintain a sustainable carbon footprint and the belief that life should be fulfilling and fun. This powerful and persuasive book provides an individual-level blueprint for a carbon-sustainable tweak to the American dream.
