How to harness the great forces of capitalism to save the world from catastrophe.
The forecasts are grim and time is running out, but that’s not the end of the story. In this book, Fred Krupp, longtime president of Environmental Defense Fund, brings a stirring and hopeful call to arms: We can solve global warming. And in doing so we will build the new industries, jobs, and fortunes of the twenty-first century.
In these pages the reader will encounter the bold innovators and investors who are reinventing energy and the ways we use it. Among them: a frontier impresario who keeps his ice hotel frozen all summer long with the energy of hot springs; a utility engineer who feeds smokestack gases from coal-fired plants to voracious algae, then turns them into fuel; and a tribe of Native Americans, for two thousand years fishermen in the roughest Pacific waters, who are now harvesting the fierce power of the waves themselves.
These entrepreneurs are poised to remake the world’s biggest business and save the planet—if America’s political leaders give them a fair chance to compete.
Customer Reviews
An excellent Survey of the next Industrial Revolution:
Are you getting depressed about the gloom and doom news of climate catastrophe? Then read this book and you will awaken to the endless possibilities of the future that is being worked out silently by a huge number of entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers who are the pioneers of the next industrial revolution - the cleantech revolution.
This book surveys the main sources of alternative energies- solar, biofuel, wind, geothermal and oceanic. Then goes into considerable depth into describing various works going on into each area. For example, in solar energy alone, the book details over half a dozen approaches to make solar energy an efficient, cheap and viable solution. The authors describe the technology in simple terms, but with sufficient depth. At the same time, they mention the business viability and political issues. A very well rounded approach indeed!
One recurring theme throughout the book is the necessity of a carbon cap and trade program. Without a price on carbon emission, the playing field between the fossil fuels and renewable energy sources will remain uneven and the renewables will not have a chance to flourish. Free market is an wonderful instrument, but is completely dumb. Information has to be injected into the market system regarding the cost of everything.
Currently, the polluters dump the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere without a price tag. The result is sea level rise, destruction of natural habitats, melting glaciers, agricultural yield reduction, increase of diseases, environmental refugees and on and on. Doesn’t these all have a price tag? Once this price tag is attached with pollution, the underlying strength of innovation and free market will unleash and get a chance to save this civilization that faces the greatest challenge in many centuries - the global warming.
This book will be enjoyable by the environmentally conscious readers, the entrepreneurs, the science lovers and just about anyone who is interested in keeping abreast of this next frontier of technology. Do not miss it, we are at the door-step of a new era of the civilization, this does not happen with every generation, read the book and make other people read it!
Inspiring Concept, Mildly Inspiring Book:
This book is meant for people like me who have an interest in all things scientific, environmental, political, and financial; but unlike me, have not bothered to pursue the topic of global warming beyond all the doom and gloom rhetoric the main stream media portrays. If that is you, then this book just may be inspirational as most reviews suggest. However, I have found the book to be mere review for information I have read in more engaging forms (both from a technical perspective and from a human insterest perspective) from other sources such as magazines like popular mechanics and popular science, among others. As such, I found it a very slow read. I would give the book 3, maybe 4 stars if the information contained within was not a review for me. Don’t fool yourself either, there are a lot of technologies with great potential but many have significant barriers (not all having to do with the fiscal advantage of fossil fuels) or they would already be widely utilized. Nice reminder that we can change the world, but it’s not going to happen just by reading this book.
The Bright Future of Renewable Energy:
For anyone interested in where we go from here regarding global warming, Fred Krupp has my heartfelt support for the book Earth: The Sequel.
The book is well crafted and clearly written. After a a bit of the history of how we got into this mess, he gets right to the point.
His next 2 chapters (solar energy) are akin to the entrepenuerial spirit of the early computer and other 20th century technology days. I really connected with this, since I spent nearly 30 years on the vanguard on new technologies such as satellite, cable TV, laser optical, and more.
I recommend this highly as a handbook for learners, and career changers, interested in renewable energy. Earth: The Sequel is a highly enjoyable read, plus it is well-written from a caring expert who has made industry and government pay attention to this urgent concern.
Earth: The Sequel: The Race:
I don’t know what it is about book sub-titles these days but they all have them, and this one generously has *two*, “The Sequel” and the common “The Race To..” (at least it’s not “..That Changed the World”). I very often avoid books with these sub-titles because I know exactly what to expect: a long magazine article that would have been better in a magazine and not as a book. However in this case I took the chance because one of the co-authors is Fred Krupp, President of the influential Environmental Defense Fund, and the publisher is W.W. Norton. Even though it is indeed written like a magazine article (very skillfully I assume mostly by Miriam Horn) with lots of human interest stories and non-fiction narrative techniques, the content is well worth it.
Essentially it is a survey of the current technologies, companies and people involved with alternative energy in the United States. Even though I follow this stuff in the news and blogs there was tons of new stuff here I never knew about. Some of the people involved are really fascinating. Some of the companies are much further along than I realized. Others are probably not the solutions I thought they may be. My copy is marked up with people and companies to watch.
If the book has a re-curring message it is this: free markets work, but only if there is a cap and trade system to adjust the cost of fossil fuels upward, so that alternative technologies have a chance to develop and compete. If there is no cost to pollute, than obviously clean technologies are at a disadvantage. This has to change, and soon.
Great book for those concerned about our future:
This book is a bit more on the technical side for the average reader, but it goes int some details about the very positive things that are being done by US businesses and entrepreneurs to combat rising carbon emissions and global warming.
