This is a review of The Social Cost of Electricity: Scenarios and Policy Imperatives (Edward Elgar, 2010), which summarizes the results of a European Commission funded research project. The contributions in this volume stands out for their ambitious effort to model and quantify the external costs of electric power generation, as well as their initial assessment of various policy instruments designed to address climate change and promote renewable energy. While a broad range of social cost issues presented by electricity production are incorporated into the project’s modeling, it does not study or attempt to quantify conservation and demand response approaches. Much more complete data will likely be necessary to for policymakers to seriously the assess which instruments are most effective at advancing energy policy goals. Without doubt, however, the data and careful analysis presented in this volume will challenge future decisionmakers to look beyond the private or market cost of energy in their policy decisions.
World on the Edge - Lester Brown (2011)
In this urgent time, World on the Edge calls out the pivotal environmental issues and how to solve them now. We are in a race between political and natural tipping points. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to save the Greenland ice sheet and avoid catastrophic sea level rise? Can we raise water productivity fast enough to halt the depletion of aquifers and avoid water-driven food shortages? Can we cope with peak water and peak oil at the same time? These are some of the issues Lester R. Brown skillfully distills in World on the Edge. Bringing decades of research and analysis into play, he provides the responses needed to reclaim our future.
A Blueprint for Survival by Melford Pearson
At what point does an oppressed citizenry declare "enough is enough" and call for an end to an intolerable day-to-day existence? A Blueprint for Survival is an action-inspiring book. There is a lot of enthusiasm to protest the problems of the society but very little fervour for restructuring our flawed economic and political systems...it is this that the book sets out to address.
Hot, Flat & Crowded By Thomas L Friedman
Friedman explains a new era—the Energy-Climate era—through an illuminating account of recent events. He shows how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet (which brought 3 billion new consumers onto the world stage) have combined to bring climate and energy issues to Main Street, but not very far. Friedman sets out the clean-technology breakthroughs we, and the world, will need.
A Vision for 2010 - Planning for Extraordinary Change By John L. Peterson
n this timely and insightful treatise, Petersen explains how the world and its leaders must prepare for an onslaught of potential crises, such as rapid climate change, a tipping point in the global financial system, a pandemic, or a new level of sophistication among terrorists. At the same time, Petersen highlights the unbelievable breakthroughs in knowledge, mindsets, and scientific capabilities that demonstrate our extraordinary capacity not just to persevere, but to evolve. Provocative yet hopeful, A Vision for 2012 outlines an effective approach to the immense challenges - and opportunities - that lie ahead.”
In this age of instant communication and biotechnology, on this ever-smaller planet, what kinds of problems have we created for ourselves? How do we tackle them in a world where the accustomed methods used by nation-states may be reaching their natural limits? In High Noon, J. F. Rischard challenges us to take a new approach to the twenty most important and urgent global problems of the twenty-first century. Rischard finds their common thread: we don't have an effective way of dealing with the problems that our increasingly crowded, interconnected world creates. Our difficulties belong to the future, but our means of solving them belong to the past.
Person/Planet By Thomas Roszak
Roszak brings together the insights of deep ecology and humanistic psychology. The result is a powerful reassertion of Personalism, the philosophy that has most stubbornly resisted the dehumanising forces of industrial society. As bleak as the environmental fate of the Earth may seem, "Person/Planet" offers a daringly original and hopeful hypothesis: that the Earth herself is already working in the depths of the human psyche to heal our troubled urban-industrial culture.
Peak Water was written by Alexander Bell to alert the world to a crisis: we are using more water than is available in the places where we live. For some, in the wet regions, peak water will never occur, but for the people of the USA, Africa, Southern Europe, India, Middle East and China, it is already here. We can either stop soaking it up or face up to the greatest threat to our way of life we have ever known.
Monbiot demonstrates a necessary 90% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 - without bringing civilisation to an end. Combining his unique knowledge of campaigning and environmental science, he shows how we can transform our houses, our power and our transport systems. But he also shows that this can happen only with a massive programme of action which no government has yet been prepared to take. His exciting, disturbing ideas expose the cowardice of our politicians. By showing that we can save the biosphere without losing our comfort and security, Monbiot sweeps away their perpetual excuse for doing nothing: that it would be too painful and expensive to sustain life on earth.