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Shows readers how we can all help solve the climate crisis by focusing on a few key, achievable actions.
List of contents
1. The role of myths in our climate-energy challenge; 2. The art of deluding ourselves and others; 3. Climate scientists are conspirators; 4. All countries will agree on climate fairness; 5. This fossil fuel project is essential; 6. We must price carbon emissions; 7. Peak oil will get us first anyway; 8. We must change our behavior; 9. We can be carbon neutral; 10. Energy efficiency is profitable; 11. Renewables have won; 12. We must abolish capitalism; 13. The simple path to success with our climate-energy challenge; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
A professor of sustainable energy at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Jaccard has a Ph.D. in economics from Université de Grenoble. He has helped many governments with climate-energy policy, including serving on the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In the 1990s, he chaired British Columbia's utilities commission and in the 2000s he helped design its famous carbon tax, clean electricity standard and other climate-energy policies. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada in recognition of his research, and a frequent media presence in Canada and the US. His book, Sustainable Fossil Fuels (Cambridge, 2005), won the Donner Prize. His efforts on the climate challenge range from testifying before the US Congress and the European Commission to being arrested for blocking a coal train, as he explains in this book.
Summary
Concerned citizens can drive the energy transition needed to prevent climate change by their personal choices and their identification and support of climate-sincere politicians. Jaccard explains the simplicity and modest cost of decarbonizing electricity and transportation in developed countries and spreading that critical change worldwide.
Additional text
'This is a most useful primer on climate change and its consequences for the slow-learners amongst us … the particular virtue of the present book - that which makes it so valuable - is that it is not just one more off-putting advocacy-driven screed. This is no lawyer's brief, devoted to clever arguments drawing solely on the evidence on one side. Rather, it is the dispassionate work of a scientist.' G. T. Dempsey, Geography Realm
