The Global Warming Combat Manual describes the practical measures that readers can take to reduce their carbon footprints and shows how to link personal choices with international campaigns to combat global warming.
The Global Warming Combat Manual describes the practical measures that readers can take in their daily lives to reduce their carbon footprints, while showing how to link one's personal choices with the big-picture science and the big-scale campaigns to combat global warming on the political, legal, economic, and technological fronts. The emphasis throughout is on practical tips for ways in which people can help combat global warming in their everyday roles as citizens, consumers, homeowners, employees, commuters, tourists, sportsmen, business owners, or farmers. Johansen—assisted by climatologist James Hansen's foreword and appendix—gives general readers the tools they need to calculate and put into action the most rational and ethical green choices.
Dovetailing the personal with the technological and public-policy dimensions, this book lays out the whole battery of existing, emerging, and speculative solutions for global warming. These range from the humdrum and easy (keeping your tires properly inflated), through the necessary and hard (retooling the ways you transport, house, and feed yourself for maximum energy efficiency and minimum carbon footprint). They also encompass the possible (switching over a large fraction of our carbon-based energy sector to alternative sectors based on biofuel, wind, solar, and geothermal power), the visionary (creating a bacterium that will consume CO2), and the improbable (deploying giant reflecting mirrors in space), as well as the weird and dangerous (pumping sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere).
Foreword By James E. Hansen
Preface
Introduction
1. Our Cars Are Killing Us: Options in Personal Transport
2. Avoiding Our Suicide Pact with Aviation
3. Greening Shelter and Food
4. Biofuels: Where the Money Is
5. The Power Forecast is Windy
6. Harvesting the Sun
7. Old Wine in New Bottles: Nuclear Power and Changes in Land Use
8. The Political Economy of Global Warming
9. Technofixes
Selected Bibliography
Reviews
"Packed with recent examples of ways that individuals and corporations are working to reduce their carbon footprints, this book provides a helpful overview of current strategies for addressing global warming...this book may be a good starting point for students investigating practical solutions...good coverage of strategies used in other countries...Recommended. General readers and lower-division undergraduates."—Choice
Endorsements
"This book is a must read for citizens and policymakers looking for practical advice on how to take action on global warming. The Global Warming Combat Manual is a highly readable account of clean technologies, energy policies, and effective consumer decisions that will benefit the environment and improve our overall quality of life. The solutions offered can be integrated into our everyday lives and promise a better future for all humanity."—Robert Harriss, Houston Advanced Research Center
"When people consider global warming, they think big: icebergs melting, seas rising, islands disappearing. But climate pollution comes down to individuals. In Seattle, we recognize the importance of acting locally. And I've encouraged hundreds of mayors around the country to do the same. We understand that cities are essential to averting climate catastrophe and creating a cleaner, more prosperous future. The Global Warming Combat Manual answers the question: What can I do to make a difference?"—Gregory J. Nickels, Mayor of Seattle, Founder, U.S. Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement
