The Suicidal Planet: How to Prevent Global Climate Catastrophe

by Mayer Hillman

Book Overview

An outstanding overview on global warming--and what we can do about it--from a distinguished world-class authority ? Climate change is the single biggest problem that humankind has ever had to face, as we continue with lifestyles that are way beyond the planet's limits. Mayer Hillman explains the real issues: what role technology can play, how you and your community can make changes, and what governments must do now to protect our planet for future...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312353553
• ISBN13: 9780312353551
• Release Date: April 2007
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Has some very good points but proposes unrealistic solutions

I am a biochemist with a long-standing interest in economics and the environment. I definitely agree with the authors that climate change is a serious problem that is too often ignored. I wish I could agree more with their proposed solutions. The authors' emphasis on replacing transportation by automobile with bicycling and walking is excellent. I especially liked the discussion of how more use of cars leads to congestion, which leads to new roads, new parking facilities, and changing patterns of development to serve car owners. This in turn leads to more use of cars. I agree that this self-perpetuating loop is an often-overlooked part of the American love affair with the automobile. I would have liked to see more on the role of parking regulations in this. Most localities in the U.S. have parking regulations that require businesses and residences to provide large numbers of parking spaces. The effect of this is to favor cars over other types of transportation, like walking, that don't require all that vehicle storage space. For more on this, see Donald Shoup's book The High Cost of Free Parking. Eliminating such perverse regulations would be relatively easy to do and would go a long way toward cutting down on car usage. The authors are very concerned about the effects of fossil fuel use on the climate. I am concerned about climate change. I think we need to be careful, though, about global warming predictions. The climate is a complex system for which solid prediction is very difficult. We need to be prepared for climate shifts in any direction, not just warming. The authors believe shortages of fossil fuels are minor compared to the problems caused by climate change. I disagree. In my opinion, the effects of Hubbert's oil peak are very likely to lead to soaring energy prices in the next couple of decades. Coal is not in much better shape. Frankly, basing our society so extensively on highly polluting fuels which are already in short supply and rapidly becoming even less available is ridiculous, climate change or not. The sooner we learn to get along without fossil fuels the better. The authors state that "Economic growth clearly cannot continue to be pursued as if there were no ceiling on the use of resources or on the capacity of the planet to cope with the consequences of ignoring them." This is great! The authors don't mention this, but some economic theorists are now taking this into account. For example, Herman Daly has developed the concept of the Steady State Economy, which focuses on constant levels of resource inputs and outputs, rather than traditional economic growth. Keep in mind that once basic needs are satisfied, traditional economic growth has been shown to have remarkably little relationship to quality of life. For more on this, see Robert Lane's book The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies. In the section on carbon capture and storage, the authors said nothing about carbon capture using

Global Warming versus Resource Limits

This book not only really lays it on the line (we must act in powerful ways very soon to slow down global warming), it also suggests some powerful techniques to get there. Equity and markets are often see at odds, but the proposed `tradable personal carbon allowances' actually creates markets to force equitable long term reductions in carbon emissions. This would supplement `cap and trade' systems for industries at national or regional levels, while a similar 'contraction and convergence' scheme would operate between countries at the global level. At the personal level, everyone would get a fixed carbon allowance for a fixed time period. If they used less then their allowance during that period, they could automatically sell the unused part on a computerized market to someone who needed more. Both seller and buyer would have strong incentives to reduce their carbon emissions, as the seller would profit by doing so, while the buyer would suffer less of a penalty. Moreover the sellers would tend to be poorer, and the buyers richer, hence the majority of citizens would become powerfully invested in the campaign to slow, and eventually reverse, global warming. Carbon taxes, by contrast, often face strong popular resistance due to their perceived inequity. But the authors should consider that an equitable carbon tax would be a sales tax on the transactions of the computerized market. The revenues could then be used help needy individuals and small businesses to reduce their carbon emissions. In addition, small businesses could be included in the computerized market based on the number of full time employees or something similar. These concepts have been developed in Europe, especially Britain, where two of the authors work as researchers. Europe has moved ahead of the US on environmental issues over the last couple of decades, also on some social justice and equity issues. However the authors go to far in regard to equity with the contraction and convergence scheme. Contraction means an international treaty that sets a binding schedule for the global reduction in carbon emissions to a `safe' level over the next few decades. Fantastic if you can get agreement and can come up with a reliable enforcement mechanism. Convergence means that at the end of the contraction, the citizens of each country or negotiating regions will have the same average per capita carbon emissions as every other country. This would be a powerful way to enlist the enthusiasm of the poorer countries, as they would actually be allowed to increase their per capita carbon emissions until they matched the reduction in carbon emission of the rich countries. The problem with this convergence scheme is that it ignores the population explosion. Many scholars of global resources consider the current world population to be far in excess of a sustainable population, that an orderly to reduction to one or two billion will be necessary, or we will experience severe "ecological over

The Book on Climate Change

This is the book to read on climate change and what can be done about it. The authors write concisely and persuasively, using well documented facts and theories. The writing is informative and can be easily understood. The book is divided into three parts. The first part describes the problem. Many of us know and understand the problem, but the book goes beyond simply explaining the problem to discuss the potential growth in energy use and the public's current response. The second part discusses current strategies to ameliorate climate change and explains why those strategies (including technological innovation and carbon sequestration) are inadequate to solve the problem. The third part recommends a two-step solution. The first step is contraction and convergence, in which countries move toward a common per capita emission of green house gases. The second step is personal carbon allowances. The authors make a good case that contraction and convergence can break the international stalemate on Kyoto, and that contraction and convergence, and personal carbon allowances, amnount to the fair and equitable way to save the planet. There is also a section on how we could live within the carbon allowance. The authors' conclusion is that we will get climate by negligence or climate by choice -- and climate by negligence is unaccepable.

Belongs along side An Inconvenient Truth

This work belong next to Al Gore's An Inconvient Truth as a difinitive work on Global Warming. In fact it is the most pragmatic work on Climate Change that I've come across. Divided into three sections: The Problem,Current Strategies and The Solution,one gets a good overview of the problem and current stratgies which lead into a logical plausible blueprint for what to do.And what we can do is doable according to the authors. I came away convinced we can solve the problems associated with global warming, except for reducing air travel which seems like it might be one of our biigest obstacles.Aside from air travel limitations, we could end up with more community and a more egalitarian world.