DC Public Library System

The burning question, we can't burn half the world's oil, coal, and gas. So how do we quit?, Mike Berners-Lee, Duncan Clark

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

The burning question

bibliography

841794051

Mike Berners-Lee, Duncan Clark

we can't burn half the world's oil, coal, and gas. So how do we quit?

The Burning Question reveals climate change to be the most fascinating scientific, political and social puzzle in history. It shows that carbon emissions are still accelerating upwards, following an exponential curve that goes back centuries. One reason is that saving energy is like squeezing a balloon: reductions in one place lead to increases elsewhere. Another reason is that clean energy sources don't in themselves slow the rate of fossil fuel extraction. Tackling global warming will mean persuading the world to abandon oil, coal and gas reserves worth many trillions of dollars - at least until we have the means to put carbon back in the ground. The burning question is whether that can be done. What mix of politics, psychology, economics and technology might be required? Are the energy companies massively overvalued, and how will carbon-cuts affect the global economy? Will we wake up to the threat in time? And who can do what to make it all happen?--COVER

Pt. 1. A problem of abundance : How fossil fuel use and emissions have been rising exponentially for hundreds of years. Why a safe future is incompatible with burning the world's remaining oil, coal and gas reserves. And how the political process is failing -- Pt. 2. Squeezing a balloon : How efforts to reduce fossil fuel use often get cancelled out at the global system level. Why we therefore need to deal with the oil, coal and gas head on. Pt. 3. What's stopping us? -- The social, economic and political barriers to cutting fossil fuel use, from the financial value of the reserves and infrastructure to the psychology that stops us engaging with climate change -- Pt. 4. Not just fossil fuels : The other ways we're warming the planet, such as soot from cooking fires and methane from livestock. How efforts to reduce these other drivers of climate change will be crucial to what happens in the new few decades -- Pt. 5. What now? : Six key steps that will help tackle climate change