A Renewable World: Energy, Ecology, Equality

Herbert Girardet and Miguel Mendonca from the World Future Council have jointly written ‘A Renewable World’, a book that proposes concrete solutions to the most pressing challenges of the day – climate change and sustainability.  Each of the ten chapters addresses a key issue (e.g. Energy Change, Climate Change; Carbon and the Biosphere; Renewable Energy; The Green Collar Economy; Renewing the City; From Global to Local, etc.) and offers positive proposals, by citing examples of policies or innovations hat have turned problems into solutions through practical, new approaches.

Herbert Girardet sums up the key points of the book as follows:

 

• Climate change prospects are terrifying but the situation is still not irreversible;
• The challenge is no longer just to reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions, but to reduce actual concentrations in the atmosphere;
• This means finding new ways absorbing (or sequestering) greenhouse gases, especially CO2;
  Geo-sequestration, or carbon capture and storage, is the solution favoured by politicians and engineers, but it can’t be made work on the scale that is needed;
• Bio-sequestration, or enhancing the capacity of the biosphere to absorb CO2, is a much better prospect;
• Mainstreaming Renewable Energy (RE) is of critical importance for a sustainable world;
• Technical breakthroughs have brought the cost of renewable energy down dramatically, but supporting policies, such as feed-in tariffs, are needed to accelerate the penetration of RE across the world;
• It is now evident that even large cities can be powered with 100% RE, but additional measures, such as major energy efficiency initiatives, are also needed to make our cities sustainable;
• RE and other environmental innovations are already major sources of new, green-collar jobs, and future prospects in this sector are very bright indeed;
• Localisation of food and energy supplies, and other ways to enhance local economies, are part of the sustainability trajectory outlined in the book;
• In the end it is our responsibility to future generations, and their prospects for a viable existence that must motivate our actions.

The book can be freely downloaded from the World Future Council’s website

Photo from Creative Commons: Flickr TMS Photos

Comments

[Claudia]

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