Detailed home guide to helping the planet
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Despite the strong evidence for global warming, neither industries nor governments are changing their assumption that the world has an inexhaustible supply of inexpensive fossil fuel. Instead, individuals will make the difference, because consumer desires fuel the business cycle. In chapters that cover daily activities such as home heating, cooking, travel and use of appliances, Chris Goodall explains how you can reduce your carbon emissions from an average of 12.5 tons per year to three. Though the book sometimes bogs down in an overabundance of information, charts and formulas, we recommend it to individuals and organizations who want to learn how they can make an immediate difference.
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analysis and practical solutions
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Chris Goodall looks at how we generate carbon in our day to day live and provides in this book a clear analysis of what is happening in terms of carbon produced and where from. Unfortunately he then gets lost in trying to explain the most cost effective ways to reduce our carbon footprint.
Many of his "cheapest ways to cut carbon emissions" involve spending money (eg newer household equipment) which for many people is just not practical. There is a lot of wishful thinking such as using public transport (itself a shrinking resource) or just not going on a journey? For me and many other people it seems that he just wants us to completely change our way of life.
It seems that his 'Achilles heel' is his political affiliation which forces him to make outrageous proposals that are unlikely to convince anyone.
A good book for the analysis but unrealistic in most of its solutions.
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Practical, actionable information
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Since watching Al Gore's `An Inconvenient Truth' I have read several current books concerned with global warming. Of particular interest was how individual efforts can help remedy, what the science makes abundantly clear, is a manmade problem.
Goodall's `How to Live a Low-carbon Life' is the only book I have come across which rigorously quantifies how lifestyles affect emissions. It provides grounded research and useful actionable information that can help redress the balance. All but those who cling to conspiracy theories, pseuo-science and outdated denial dogma will find this a readable and useful book.
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bunkum!
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well, just to debunk any oil drinking, coal chomping or multinational loving accusations, i do not work for, support, or particularly like the usual suspects of the climate change doom brigade, don't you know. Anyway, the book, which is bunkum in a bunkum 'debate' gets two stars, rather than none, because if you follow the nutty directions contained within then you will indeed reduce your carbon footprint (although your foot is of course made up partly of carbon, as is the rest of you - shock horror, throw yourself into the nearest recycling bin at once!), thus making the book accurate in it's narrower objective of reducing said carbon footprint.
What makes me role my eyes in disbelief isd the market for such books and the moronic, almost unquestioned acceptance of this theory as fact. All it is is a theory, taken up by a political lobbying faction formed around former environmentalists and socialists in the late eighties and nineties, and blindly burying the real issues of regional pollution ruining the microclimate, natural habitats and ecosystems, and the general effect on human and animal health of industry, consumerism and demographic changes over the last century. We cannot attribute frankly hysterical 'climate change' to humans, it just don't make sense m'lord, and there are far more pressing things at hand, remember rising asma rates in cities? chemicals in consumer goods not degrading? etc etc. we can better our environment and microclimate immensely, but this global climate change nonsense is dangerous and hugely flawed. Get a grip people, don't just follow this nonsense, read up on it all, and maybe you'll see that this Co2 stuff doesn't stand up, or maybe not, but do read.
Climate change is...(almost certainly, let's remain scientific, not emotional - 'climate change terrorists', what a load of rot!)...not caused by humans, there's just no evidence for it - ice core records and proper science, proven theories and studies are highly sceptical or outright hostile to such a claim. So, in conclusion, i didn't much like this book or the wider implictaions and causes of it's existence.
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The best start to a low carbon lifestyle
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In the How to Live a low-carbon life, Chris Goodall looks at how we generate carbon in our day to day live and what is the most cost effective way to reduce our footprint.
Therein lies the key difference between this book and the many published before arguing why we should reduce our carbon foot print, or advocating one solution over an other for ideological rather than economic reasons. Chris Goodall has a no nonsense financial analysis to his approach, what is the cheapest way to cut carbon emissions, what is practical and what is just wishful thinking?
It will be sometime before such a clear no nonsense book needs to be re-written- although hopefully Government grants for installing energy saving and generating improvements, the price of selling energy back to the local grid, and the cost of running `green' transport will mean that the figures need to be updated.
If you only buy one book on this subject you could do worse than buying this one
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