Ending the Fossil Fuel Era
Ending the Fossil Fuel Era

Author: Thomas Princen

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2015-05-15

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 0262028808

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A provocative call for delegitimizing fossil fuels rather than accommodating them, accompanied by case studies from Ecuador to Appalachia and from Germany to Norway.Not so long ago, people North and South had little reason to believe that wealth from oil, gas, and coal brought anything but great prosperity. But the presumption of net benefits from fossil fuels is eroding as widening circles of people rich and poor experience the downside.A positive transition to a post-fossil fuel era cannot wait for global agreement, a swap-in of renewables, a miracle technology, a carbon market, or lifestyle change. This book shows that it is now possible to take the first step toward the post-fossil fuel era, by resisting the slow violence of extreme extraction and combustion, exiting the industry, and imagining a good life after fossil fuels. It shows how an environmental politics of transition might occur, arguing for going to the source rather than managing byproducts, for delegitimizing fossil fuels rather than accommodating them, for engaging a politics of deliberately choosing a post-fossil fuel world. Six case studies reveal how individuals, groups, communities, and an entire country have taken first steps out of the fossil fuel era, with experiments that range from leaving oil under the Amazon to ending mountaintop removal in Appalachia.

Ending the Fossil Fuel Era
Ending the Fossil Fuel Era

Author: Thomas Princen

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2015-05-15

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 0262527332

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A provocative call for delegitimizing fossil fuels rather than accommodating them, accompanied by case studies from Ecuador to Appalachia and from Germany to Norway. Not so long ago, people North and South had little reason to believe that wealth from oil, gas, and coal brought anything but great prosperity. But the presumption of net benefits from fossil fuels is eroding as widening circles of people rich and poor experience the downside. A positive transition to a post-fossil fuel era cannot wait for global agreement, a swap-in of renewables, a miracle technology, a carbon market, or lifestyle change. This book shows that it is now possible to take the first step toward the post-fossil fuel era, by resisting the slow violence of extreme extraction and combustion, exiting the industry, and imagining a good life after fossil fuels. It shows how an environmental politics of transition might occur, arguing for going to the source rather than managing byproducts, for delegitimizing fossil fuels rather than accommodating them, for engaging a politics of deliberately choosing a post-fossil fuel world. Six case studies reveal how individuals, groups, communities, and an entire country have taken first steps out of the fossil fuel era, with experiments that range from leaving oil under the Amazon to ending mountaintop removal in Appalachia.

Reinventing Fire
Reinventing Fire

Author: Amory Lovins

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing

Published: 2011-10-15

Total Pages: 4

ISBN-13: 1603583726

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Imagine fuel without fear. No climate change. No oil spills, no dead coalminers, no dirty air, no devastated lands, no lost wildlife. No energy poverty. No oil-fed wars, tyrannies, or terrorists. No leaking nuclear wastes or spreading nuclear weapons. Nothing to run out. Nothing to cut off. Nothing to worry about. Just energy abundance, benign and affordable, for all, forever. That richer, fairer, cooler, safer world is possible, practical, even profitable-because saving and replacing fossil fuels now works better and costs no more than buying and burning them. Reinventing Fire shows how business-motivated by profit, supported by civil society, sped by smart policy-can get the US completely off oil and coal by 2050, and later beyond natural gas as well. Authored by a world leader on energy and innovation, the book maps a robust path for integrating real, here-and-now, comprehensive energy solutions in four industries-transportation, buildings, electricity, and manufacturing-melding radically efficient energy use with reliable, secure, renewable energy supplies.Popular in tone and rooted in applied hope, Reinventing Fire shows how smart businesses are creating a potent, global, market-driven, and explosively growing movement to defossilize fuels. It points readers to trillions in savings over the next 40 years, and trillions more in new business opportunities.Whether you care most about national security, or jobs and competitive advantage, or climate and environment, this major contribution by world leaders in energy innovation offers startling innovations will support your values, inspire your support, and transform your sense of possibility.Pragmatic citizens today are more interested in outcomes than motives. Reinventing Fire answers this trans-ideological call. Whether you care most about national security, or jobs and competitive advantage, or climate and environment, its startling innovations will support your values, inspire your support, and transform your sense of possibility.

Burning Up
Burning Up

Author: Simon Pirani

Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780745335612

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A history of the excesses of capitalism's rampant fossil fuel consumption since 1950.

Warming to Ecocide
Warming to Ecocide

Author: Alan J. Sangster

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2011-09-09

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0857299263

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Despite scientific evidence that business-as-usual is unsustainable, there is a huge and widespread inertia to ‘greening’ the planet. Warming to Ecocide considers climate change from a thermodynamic perspective and asks whether market-driven organisations have carried us to the point of no return through the flawed economics of endless growth. Warming to Ecocide begins by exploring the thermodynamic origins of climate change. It demonstrates that equilibrium thermodynamics can provide full explanations for the basic processes of life such as photosynthesis and metabolism, and that non-equilibrium thermodynamics is close to providing an explanation for how life started. Armed with a solid appreciation of the power of thermodynamics, the second half of Warming to Ecocide discusses whether multinational corporations have convinced the public that climate change is insignificant and thereby neutered any all attempts by governments to espouse environmentally-friendly policies. It then goes on to offer strategies whereby mankind may avoid propelling the global average temperature above the pre-industrial level by more than 2°C, which scientists view as a threshold presaging catastrophic run-away processes.

Energy Humanities
Energy Humanities

Author: Imre Szeman

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2017-04-22

Total Pages: 606

ISBN-13: 1421421895

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"... these fields of scholarship are ones that demonstrate how the scale and complexity of the issues being explored demand insights and approaches that transcend old school disciplinary boundaries. This book offers a selection of the most influential work in energy humanities that has appeared over the past decade. Selections range from anthropology and geography to philosophy, history, and cultural studies to recent energy-focused interventions in art and literature..."--Provided by publisher.

Life after Fossil Fuels
Life after Fossil Fuels

Author: Alice J. Friedemann

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-03-29

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 3030703355

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This book is a reality check of where energy will come from in the future. Today, our economy is utterly dependent on fossil fuels. They are essential to transportation, manufacturing, farming, electricity, and to make fertilizers, cement, steel, roads, cars, and half a million other products. One day, sooner or later, fossil fuels will no longer be abundant and affordable. Inevitably, one day, global oil production will decline. That time may be nearer than we realize. Some experts predict oil shortages as soon as 2022 to 2030. What then are our options for replacing the fossil fuels that turn the great wheel of civilization? Surveying the arsenal of alternatives – wind, solar, hydrogen, geothermal, nuclear, batteries, catenary systems, fusion, methane hydrates, power2gas, wave, tidal power and biomass – this book examines whether they can replace or supplement fossil fuels. The book also looks at substitute energy sources from the standpoint of the energy users. Manufacturing, which uses half of fossil fuels, often requires very high heat, which in many cases electricity can't provide. Industry uses fossil fuels as a feedstock for countless products, and must find substitutes. And, as detailed in the author's previous book, "When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation," ships, locomotives, and heavy-duty trucks are fueled by diesel. What can replace diesel? Taking off the rose-colored glasses, author Alice Friedemann analyzes our options. What alternatives should we deploy right now? Which technologies merit further research and development? Which are mere wishful thinking that, upon careful scrutiny, dematerialize before our eyes? Fossil fuels have allowed billions of us to live like kings. Fueled by oil, coal, and natural gas, we changed the equation constraining the carrying capacity of our planet. As fossil fuels peak and then decline, will we fall back to Earth? Are there viable alternatives?

Shift Age
Shift Age

Author: David Houle

Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.

Published: 2011-12

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1402273924

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According to the author, the Shift Age is humanity's new era -- a time of transformation and change that offers both great risk and opportunity.

The Hydrogen Economy
The Hydrogen Economy

Author: Jeremy Rifkin

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2003-08-25

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1440625115

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The road to global security," writes Jeremy Rifkin, "lies in lessening our dependence on Middle East oil and making sure that all people on Earth have access to the energy they need to sustain life. Weaning the world off oil and turning it toward hydrogen is a promissory note for a safer world." Rifkin's international bestseller The Hydrogen Economy presents the clearest, most comprehensive case for moving ourselves away from the destructive and waning years of the oil era toward a new kind of energy regime. Hydrogen-one of the most abundant substances in the universe-holds the key, Rifkin argues, to a cleaner, safer, and more sustainable world.