| View Larger Image | The Suicidal Planet: How to Prevent Global Climate Catastrophe (Thorndike Press Large Print Nonfiction Series) | Hardcoverby Mayer Hillman (Author), Tina Fawcett (Author), Sudhir Chella Rajan (Author)
| List Price: | $30.95 | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Hardcover | | Publisher: | Thorndike Press | | Page Count: | 413 Pages | | Publication Date: | July 18, 2007 | | Sales Rank: | 1,350,113st |
|
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
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 generations. In The Suicidal Planet, he proposes: - A ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions by the world's governments- Global carbon rationing to reduce our individal carbon outputs to a fair and ecologically safe level- Helpful guidelines for the home, travel, and leisure- And much, much more. Featuring the very latest information on global warming completely revised to include U.S. facts and figures, The Suicidal Planet takes us out of the problem and into the solution of our international crisis. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 6 reviews)
|
Has some very good points but proposes unrealistic solutions by Paula L. Craig (Falls Church, VA United States)  4 Stars
June 01, 2008
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 shellfish, which store carbon in their shells in the form of solid calcium carbonate. Does anyone out there know why this approach is so consistently ignored? Maybe there is some problem with it that I don't understand.
The authors and I part company when it comes to the Kyoto Protocol and carbon trading. The authors particularly like a system of personal carbon allowances and spend a lot of time analyzing this. I think the system they propose is fine, but I'm skeptical about its usefulness in the long term. My opinion of both Kyoto and personal carbon allowances is that such elaborate regulatory systems would be difficult to set up and nearly impossible to enforce fairly. I think it could all too easily become a swamp of corrupt dealing that would just not produce the needed reductions in carbon emissions. International tensions are already high; this situation is only going to worsen as fossil fuel supplies decrease. The world does not now and will never have the ability to establish such a regulatory scheme with the necessary teeth. We must find ways to accomplish this country-by-country. Fortunately, controlling fossil fuel use would have benefits in each country; international agreements are unnecessary. For example, importation of fossil fuels means that huge amounts of capital must leave the country. Spending this money at home on conservation, wind power, sidewalks, and the like has surprisingly large benefits, such as improving the social cohesion of a country and making its economy less vulnerable to external shocks.
The authors don't think that carbon taxation could be made high enough to make a difference to the climate. Is that a reason not to use it? After all, carbon taxes could be combined with carbon trading. The authors miss the fundamental point here that carbon taxation could work fine if it were presented as a tax shift rather than a tax increase. Shift taxes away from taxing income to taxing gasoline and other fossil fuels. Make the shift as close to dollar-for-dollar as can be managed. Why would people object to this? After all, if they really wanted to, they could take the savings from their income taxes and spend them on gasoline. Income taxes are essentially a tax on employment--but employment is something we want to have. Taxes are necessary for all governments to function; taxes work best when they are collected on activities we DON'T want.
The book's biggest omission is one that other reviewers have mentioned: it says too little on the subject of population. We have no hope at all of achieving a sustainable economy without a stable population. This is as true for the U.S. as for the world as a whole.
Overall, though, the book is well written and interesting.
| |
Totally Unrealistic Viewpoint by E. J. Soboczenski (Lewes, DE USA)  1 Stars
March 07, 2008
This is the worst book on global warming that I have ever read. The authors do not believe that there are any technical solutions to the global warming problem, which is itself, a technical problem. Technical problems are always best solved by technical means. They believe that those living in technically advanced nations must reduce their energy use by 80% in the next 22 years. No police force, however brutal, could possibly enforce such a policy in a democracy.
There are several possible technical solutions such as CO2 sequestration in the deep ocean, deep saline wells, or oil wells. There is the possibility of storing CO2 as carbonate in oceanic calcareous plankton. There is global cooling via contrails, absorption of CO2 via siliceous rocks, and other technical procedures. The authors are either ignorant of technical solutions or have arbitrarily chosen to ignore them. Their prescription for solution will create great unrest and the biggest economic depression the world has ever experienced. Any other book on the subject is better than this one.
| |
Political Scare Mongering by Roger Gay (Haninge, Sweden) 1 Stars
February 18, 2008
The Suicidal Planet is communist propaganda, brought to you with a heavy dose of scare mongering. The ultimate agenda is global Marxism via control of energy supplies. Why should anyone pay for this nonsense?
| |
Global Warming versus Resource Limits by Richard H. Burkhart (Seattle, WA USA) 4 Stars
December 07, 2007
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 overshoot and collapse". Already many resources are severely depleted, even renewable ones like forests and fisheries. Water wars are forecast and oil wars are already occurring.
World oil production is stagnating now and within a decade it will be in serious decline, past `peak oil', with the global economy not far behind. The authors make a big point in chapter 3 "Eyes Wide Shut" that most people are barely at the awareness stage, far short of action, in dealing with global warming. Yet the authors themselves show little awareness of the severity and consequences of these resource issues. They appear to be unaware, for example, that certain estimates of oil `reserves' are many times in excess of what experienced oil geologists consider to be economically recoverable, even with improved technology.
The imminent decline of oil will shift the economic focus to coal, which may hold out for a few more decades before it too goes into decline, despite current claims that coal `reserves' will last hundreds of years. This will become the major political/economic battle of the coming generation: Take global warming seriously or burn ever more coal in a futile effort to maintain our non-negotiable life styles.
Equity means nothing if human civilization collapses or extreme poverty for all, so the current notion of convergence must be replaced a technique that reduces both carbon emissions and population. Of necessity the carbon reduction part must focus on the first world, while the population reduction part must focus on the third world. However the goal is the same: average equal carbon emissions per capita between all regions of the world.
But to get there the incentives must change. A good way would be to set a per capita target for carbon emissions based on population. Let T = target for a safe level of global carbon emissions / target for a sustainable level of world population. Then T becomes the per capita target for each country or region, to be reached however they so choose.
When people think of radical population reduction, they often think of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But, given a little time, there is a perfectly benign way. To be sure it would require a major cultural shift in some regions, with an extensive media campaign and leadership from all major sectors, including religion. But it is possible. If all women, on the average, have only one child, and that child, on the average is born in the mother's mid thirties, then the population will be reduced by a factor of 4 in 80 to 100 years. Thus both family size and spacing are the key here. When there is a will there is a way.
The Suicidal Planet is an easy read for those seeking a quick overview of practical ways to slow down global warming. But it has a few limitations, so readers should take it as a provocative starting point for an even deeper dialogue.
| |
The Book on Climate Change by E. B. Benson (New England, USA)  5 Stars
July 19, 2007
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.
| |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| The Heat Is On: The Climate Crisis, The Cover-up, The Prescription
by Ross Gelbspan (Author)
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ross Gelbspan exposes the machinations of oil and coal companies and conservative politicians to undermine the public confidence in science and thereby defer action against global warming. This riveting expose is a spirited call to action against the corporate disinformation campaign that threatens us all.
| 
| Living With Purpose in a Worn-Out Body: Spiritual Encouragement for Older Adults
by Missy Buchanan (Author)
LIVING WITH PURPOSE IN A WORN-OUT BODY is an exploration of the inner life shared by many persons in nursing homes and retirement centers. With compassion and honesty, Buchanan gives voice to mingled feelings of loss, gratitude, resignation, courage, loneliness, and love. Buchanan lets readers know the difficult feelings of those living an assisted life: the ambivalence about being alive so long, the struggle against self-pity, the frustrations of limited strength and movement. She also mines...
| 
| My Tummy Talked in Church Today
by Christy Colby Heno (Author), James W. Moore (Foreword)
| 
| The Undertaker's Wife: Wisdom and Musings; Life in a Small Town Funeral Home
by Celia M. Hastings (Author), David Buttrick (Author), Helen DeVos (Author)
The fascinating life journey of the wife of an undertaker will help those who are running too fast to pause to consider their own life journey. Through these wonderful stories readers will find a new appreciation of life as a gift to be celebrated now, and death as something to view without fear. A helpful and engaging story written by a woman who lives and ministers from the small town funeral home she and her husband own. A celebration of life through the lens of a small town funeral home...
| 
| Bless This Food: Ancient and Contemporary Graces from Around the World
by Adrian Butash (Author)
|
|
|
