The Story Of Upfront Carbon

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.

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.

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.

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.

The first book to offer a proven, fast, inexpensive, and practical way to cut greenhouse gas emissions and prevent catastrophic climate change. 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.

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.

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.

What do bubbles in a soft drink, a bullet-proof vest, a plastic chair, and our DNA have in common? Carbon. It is, and forever has been, the ubiquitous architect of life and civilization, forming the chemical backbone of every living creature. And yet, when we hear the word today, it is more often than not in a crisis situation: carbon dioxide emissions are destroying the ozone layer and warming the planet; the volatile Middle East explodes atop its stores of hydrocarbons; carbohydrates threaten obesity and diabetics. Carbon, thus, sustains us and threatens us in equal measure, Eric Roston illuminates this essential element in all its forms, cleverly recreating the intricate carbon cycle on the page by tracing its journey from the Big Bang to Earth and its extraordinary infiltration of this planet and, in time, influence on humankind and civilization. Evoking its ubiquity-more than 99% of all 31 million known substances contain carbon-Roston chronicles the ways we have used it, often to surprising, and sometimes to catastrophic, effect: having sped up the carbon cycle in the last two centuries, we are now attempting to wrestle Earth's geochemical cycle back from the brink. Blending the latest science with original reporting, Roston makes us aware, as never before, of the seminal impact carbon has, and has had, on our lives.

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.

For at least a decade the science of climate change has warned us of the dire need for action – particularly by corporations who are the main engines of economic production and consumption. Yet managerial and corporate understanding of climate change and related energy issues remains fragmented and present actions lack the urgency this critical problem deserves. There is a whole new economy – the low-carbon economy – looming on the horizon. But our consumption and production patterns remain in a carbon-locked position. What we are risking is a global carbon crisis and a case of history repeating. Humankind's failure to adequately recognise the onset of and address the effects of the global financial crisis mirrors our similar failures with the carbon crisis. There are many parallels: both are and were predictable and both will have direct implications on humanity on a sweeping, indiscriminate and severe scale. The difference is that we cannot reverse the effects of climate change and fossil fuel scarcity as easily as we can repair the global financial system. It is of paramount importance that we wake up to the risks and begin tackling the issues early enough. To successfully address the risks, business needs to be aware of the consequences that a changing climate and finite carbon resources will have on their business performance. The element carbon – both as a resource and as an emission – is both an economic threat as well as an opportunity for companies. It is a threat for carbon-intense production systems that will need to be changed to avoid further harmful climatic change, and take into account the limited availability of carbon-based fuels. At the same time, new opportunities will emerge for companies who can creatively design and produce goods and services that fit the new emerging carbon-constrained business environment. Many sectors of the economy – for example, renewable energy, energy and resources conservation, waste reduction and management, carbon finance markets – will expand rapidly, as other carbon- and resource-intensive sectors decline. The Global Carbon Crisis succinctly translates important insights from the natural sciences, economics and equity discussions, for the business reader. It reviews important aspects of these discussions and clarifies misunderstandings with respect to climate change and fossil fuel availability and their implications for business. The book provides simple, direct, pragmatic and effective solutions that policy-makers and corporate managers can implement. The aim is to provoke action – thoughtful action – towards developing a low-carbon future for companies on three levels. At the macro level, the authors discuss the importance of tough industrial policies for climate change and propose the idea of an international carbon-equal fund. At the meso level, they elaborate on the role of inter-firm collaborations for establishing low-carbon industries and production systems. At the micro level, they illustrate the virtue of proactive carbon strategies and suggest a corporate carbon management framework. Getting the message of the carbon crisis across to a business audience has proved challenging. This book successfully makes the case that they are intricately connected to one another and practising managers and business students will benefit from viewing the carbon crisis in parallel to the financial meltdown. The book will be essential reading for all businesses grappling with carbon-related issues and for many in academia, including those in management, strategy, finance, corporate social responsibility and sustainable development, globalisation and innovation studies.