Climate Change and Renewable Energy: How to End the Climate Crisis

by Martin J. Bush

Overview

This book presents a comprehensive overview of the global climate change impacts caused by the continued use of fossil fuels, which results in enormous damage to the global environment, biodiversity, and human health. It argues that the key to a transition to a low carbon future is the rapid and large-scale deployment of renewable energy technologies in power generation, transport and industry, coupled with super energy-efficient building design and construction. However, the author also reveals how major oil companies and petrochemical conglomerates have systematically attempted to manufacture doubt and uncertainty about global warming and climate change, continue to block the commercialization of solar energy and wind power, and impede the electrification of the transport sector. Martin Bush’s solution is a theory-of-change approach to substantially reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050, which sets out realistic steps that people can take now to help make a difference.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030154233
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	10/08/2019
Edition description:	1st ed. 2020
Pages:	525
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Martin J. Bush has over thirty years of senior project management experience in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean in the fields of renewable energy, natural resources management, disaster preparedness, and climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Sounding the alarm


• Heat waves and droughts (local impacts & fatalities)
• Natural disasters: hurricanes, cyclones, droughts and floods
• A world on fire
• The big melt (glaciers, sea ice, & ice sheets)
• Oceans - acidification, deoxygenation, trash
• Coral reefs
• Air pollution
• Water pollution
• Pesticides
• Sickness and health
• Biodiversity – extinctions then and now
• Gloom but not doom


Chapter 2. The overheated Earth


• In the greenhouse (CO2, methane, NOx, other GHGs) keeling curve
hockey stick
• Carbon cycling (brief intro carbon cycle)
The sources and the sinks (why zero carbon is impossible)
• CO2 – friend or foe?
• Methane – the sly one
• Warming soil: the bacteria awaken (also smouldering peat)
• The rising oceans
• Species on the move: Biodiversity diversifies
• Man on the move : But where to? (Food insecurity, drought, water stress)
• The threat multiplies (security & terrorism)


Chapter 3 Carbon- the massive mess


• Coal mining – dust, disease, detonation and dirt
• Oil and pipelines: the muck, the mess and the damage ( + refining air pollution)
• Tar sands: the plot thickens
• Natural gas and methane
• Fracking and shaking
• Carbon on the move: oil trains & tankers. The accidents
• Who pays? Keeping the costs external. Outside the box?
• Business as usual: subsidies and profits


 
Chapter 4 Carbon – the end game


• UNFCCC, Kyoto, and COP 21, 22, 23 (Paris agreement , HFCs)
• The renewables revolution
• The nuclear option?• The great transition (EVs, smart stuff, electric public transport)
• Efficiency in action
• Powering down (EE & E/GDP)


Chapter 6 Big carbon fights back


• Undermining science and manipulating data
• The evisceration of the scientific method
• Clear as MUD: Manufacturing uncertainty and doubt
• Targeting the messenger (attacking scientists, FOIA weaponized, suing the ‘eco-terorists”)
• Alternative facts and fake news

Chapter 7 The urgency of action


• The existential threat—Small island developing States
• Adapting to the new normal (coastal, marine, ecosystems,forestry, water)
• Designing the future (what does a carbon-neutral world look like?)
• Mapping the road ahead – cities take the lead
• Controlling the land (indigenous rights)
• The art of interference – case studies from the front line




Chapter 8 Conclusion.