carbon footprint

How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything

by Mike Berners-Lee  · 12 May 2010  · 264pp  · 71,821 words

by Jessica Sullivan Cover photograph by John Sherlock Distributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West Contents Introduction A quick guide to carbon and carbon footprints Under 10 grams A text message A cup of tap water A web search Walking through a door An email Drying your hands A plastic

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fill it. The article never happened, and it’s probably just as well. Since then I have looked long and hard into all kinds of carbon footprints and carried out numerous studies, including one for a supermarket chain. This book is here to answer that journalist’s questions, and many more

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fine low-carbon food, though not totally free from sustainability issues to keep an eye on—see A banana. A quick guide to carbon and carbon footprints Carbon footprint is a lovely phrase that is horribly abused.1 I want to make my definition clear at the outset. Throughout this book, I’m using

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terms of the amount of carbon dioxide that would have the same impact.3 Beware carbon toe-prints The most common abuse of the phrase carbon footprint is to miss out some or even most of the emissions caused, whatever activity or item is being discussed. For example, many online carbon

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calculator websites will tell you that your carbon footprint is a certain size based purely on your home energy and personal travel habits, while ignoring all of the goods and services you purchase. Similarly

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, a magazine publisher might claim to have measured its carbon footprint but in doing so looked only at its office and cars while ignoring the much greater emissions caused by the printing house that produces the

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magazines themselves. These kinds of carbon footprints are actually more like carbon “toe-prints”—they don’t give the full picture. FIGURE 1.1: The footprint of a lifestyle is bigger

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its toe-print. Direct and indirect emissions Much of the confusion around footprints comes down to the distinction between “direct” and “indirect” emissions. The true carbon footprint of a plastic toy, for example, includes not only direct emissions resulting from the manufacturing process and the transportation of the toy to the store

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kilograms, and tonnes (metric tons). For this North American edition, I have continued to use grams, kilos and tons of CO2e as my units for carbon footprints, since that allows us to use a decimal scale that allows a straightforward comparison of impacts. However, I have added some conversions for clarity—in

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particular, I have given the pound equivalents for measurements in kilograms. So, for example, the carbon footprint of asparagus is described in kg CO2e per pound. I have not, however, offered any conversions to most of the measurements in grams. One gram

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. In the U.S., for example, the provision and disposal of household water accounts for less than third of a percent of the national carbon footprint.4 Climate change looks set to cause serious water stress in some places while other areas are going to have plenty. Interestingly, if our cup

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anyone wishing to chalk up their recommended five servings of fruit and vegetables per day. There are three main reasons that bananas have such low carbon footprints compared with the nourishment they provide: > They are grown in natural sunlight—no hot-housing required. > They keep well, so although they are often

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, you could feed yourself for just over 1 kg CO2e per day, or less than 500 kg CO2e per year. Seasonal vegetables have small carbon footprints because they avoid all of the main greenhouse gas sources for food: they are grown in natural conditions without artificial heat, they don’t go

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paper has to be manufactured. For these reasons, throwing your paper in the general waste more than doubles its footprint.13 FIGURE 4.3: The carbon footprint of a weekend newspaper. Sending paper to landfills causes methane emissions and means that more carbon-intensive virgin paper has to be produced. Opting for

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middle, coming from a mixture of coal, gas (which is less polluting than coal but is still a fossil fuel), nuclear (which has a low carbon footprint but is contentious in other ways), and a smattering of renewables. The mix is significantly cleaner in Canada but varies hugely between provinces.17 Most

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people who think about carbon footprints are used to the idea that each unit we consume causes a fixed quantity of CO2 emissions. However, the truth is somewhat more complex than

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wind turbines, etc.) ** e.g. the carbon cost or savings of each unit of electricity you choose to use or save TABLE 4.1: The carbon footprint of electricity consumption in different countries. The marginal demand column shows that, unless you live in Iceland, someone somewhere is likely to have to burn

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on budget flights Unless you are deliberately investing in something that reduces emissions elsewhere, it is just about impossible to spend money without increasing your carbon footprint. Everything causes ripples of economic activity and, with it, emissions. So with wealth comes carbon responsibility. I’m hardly the first person to have

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trucking it hundreds of miles to and from distribution centers) seems like a good idea. My instinct is that milk delivery services probably cut carbon footprints by keeping the weight of our shopping bags down and therefore making it that much easier to walk to the store for everything else. In

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on the location of the farm and the breed of cow. Nobody has yet properly worked out how all these variables interact. If the carbon footprint were the only consideration, the unpleasant truth is that the most efficient thing to do would probably be to keep cattle in small indoor spaces

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of demonstrating at every step of the journey from farm to shop that no contamination with conventional milk has taken place. FIGURE 4.7: The carbon footprint of locally sourced milk in a plastic bottle at the checkout of Booths Supermarkets. In this example, the milk comes from Bowland Fresh, a local

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But the bigger savings relate to drying. As the numbers above show, for a typical 40°C (104°F) wash nearly three-quarters of the carbon footprint comes from the drying rather than the washing. Tumble driers generally use electricity to generate heat. This is more than twice as carbon intensive as

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that they belch out methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than CO2. The result is that beef and lamb have around double the carbon footprint per kilogram of meat compared with that from pigs. Component Grams CO2e * * * Beef (108 g) 1,910 (4.2 lbs.) * * * Cheese (20 g) 250 * * *

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g) 50 * * * Salad (20 g) 10 * * * Condiments (20 g) 80 * * * Cooking and transport 200 (approx.) * * * total 2,500 (5.5 lbs.) * * * TABLE 5.1: The carbon footprint of a 4-ounce cheeseburger. A further consideration is that excessive demand for meat provides an incentive for deforestation because it raises the demand for

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“conversion factors”), which generally deal only with the stuff that comes out of the exhaust pipe. This is one part of the reason why the carbon footprint of driving is often so badly underestimated. The story for diesel is slightly different. Each quart has a slightly higher footprint (13 percent), but it

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plant in Sydney is typical of the global efficiency (it uses relatively efficient technology but powers it with electricity from coal), that leaves a global carbon footprint of about 300 million tons CO2e—or something like 0.6 percent of all global emissions. And that figure is likely to continue increasing rapidly

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about animal welfare as well as climate change, buying fewer eggs but making them organic might be a sensible compromise. FIGURE 5.6: How the carbon footprint of eggs (not including cooking) cracks up. 1 kg (2.2 lbs.) of tomatoes 0.4 kg CO2e organic loose tomatoes, traditional variety, grown

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worth of 10-ton living—assuming, of course, that they had all been typical shoes. As the numbers here show, shoes vary enormously in their carbon footprint (no pun intended). Just as important is their longevity. At the low end of the carbon scale are Crocs, the simple and surprisingly durable shoe

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a general sense of care with resources. In a pub, look for local cask beer. For any hotels, pubs, or restaurants seeking to understand their carbon footprint, a colleague and I have built and tested a carbon calculator especially for tourism businesses and have made it freely available online.7 A leg

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of protectionist instinct—just presenting the facts as I see them. I’d like to see China develop—but not at any cost. Carpet type Carbon footprint (kg CO2e per kilo) (kg CO2e per pound) * * * General 3.89 1.77 * * * Felt underlay 0.96 0.44 * * * Nylon 5.43 2.47 * * *

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PET (polyethylene terephthalate) 5.55 2.5 * * * Polypropylene 5.03 2.29 * * * Polyurethane 3.76 1.71 * * * Wool 5.48 2.49 * * * TABLE 6.1: Carbon footprints of carpet types.9 To give a sense of what the numbers mean in practice, typical weights are 1 to 1.5 kg per square

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). Despite all this, computing can be a fairly low-carbon way of spending time. To summarize, computing could be a few percent of your carbon footprint. The embodied footprint of a computer is significant and could easily be the dominant factor, so it probably doesn’t make sense to buy a

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percent reduction in global emissions—it’s dead easy and has no bad side effects. Nitrogen fertilizer is a significant contributor to the world’s carbon footprint. Its production is energy intensive because the chemical process involved requires both heat and pressure. Depending on the efficiency of the factory, making 1

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has to be assembled, and every stage in the process requires energy. The companies that make cars have offices and other infrastructure with their own carbon footprints, which we need to somehow allocate proportionately to the cars that are made. When you stop to think about it, the manufacture of a car

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calls. It goes on and on forever. Attempts to capture all these stages by adding them up individually (the so-called process-based approach to carbon footprinting) are doomed from the outset to result in an underestimate, because the task is just too big. Luckily there’s an alternative in the

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remaining quarter of the footprint: IT equipment (5 percent), building maintenance (5 percent), paper based stuff (1 percent), and so on. FIGURE 10.2: The carbon footprint of Lancaster University. IT in total accounted for about 12 percent, with nearly half of that being due to the electricity consumed by computers themselves

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for powering the machines they contain and for keeping them cool with air-conditioning), and as people consume ever more digital content, their already considerable carbon footprint is rising fast. According to IT advisory company Gartner, the world’s data centers currently account for one-quarter of the energy consumed around the

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fairly typical European country, let’s see how all those emissions break down (Figure 11.2). Domestic energy, which often dominates the media coverage of carbon footprints, makes up 22 percent of the total, consisting of household fuel at 13 percent and electricity at 9 percent. For most people the fuel is

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of millions of people live very low-carbon lives, whereas the emerging middle class, with Western lifestyles in a less energy-efficient economy, probably have carbon footprints to dwarf those of the Australians. A war 690 million tons CO2e a “limited” nuclear exchange of fifty 15-kiloton15 warheads 250 to 600 million

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the emissions of a war could ultimately have serious human impacts somewhere in the world. In what was perhaps the only academic estimate of the carbon footprint of an atomic war, it was concluded that even a “small nuclear exchange” of just fifty 15-kiloton warheads would cause 690 million tons

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building regulations Almost certainly very expensive (see A house). Where the numbers come from I hope I have already made the point clearly enough that carbon footprinting is a long way from being an exact process, whatever anyone ever tells you or whatever numbers you might see written on the side of

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sources I have used. Publicly available data sets drawn from process life-cycle analyses Process-based life-cycle analysis is the most common approach to carbon footprinting. It is often referred to as “bottom-up” because you start off down on your hands and knees, identifying one by one all the

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Institute (2009), State of the World 2009: Confronting Climate Change, 26th ed., Earthscan, London. Total consumption figure taken from 2008, total fertilizer figure from 2005. carbon footprint of rice production Low estimate High estimate * * * Global rice consumption (million tons) 432 432 * * * Fertilizer applied (million tons) 161 161 * * * Percentage of global calories

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the huge fuel burn of the jet engines. (So don’t take airports too seriously if they tell you how carefully they are managing the carbon footprint of the airport building.) I reach similar figures running the model produced by David Parkinson and assuming a full flight. Overall this suggests that the

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Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet. Earthscan, London. A recommended read. 15. Kilotons of TNT equivalent. 16. Duncan Clark in www.guardian.co.uk, “The carbon footprint of nuclear war” (2 January 2009), drawn from M.Z. Jacobson (2009), “Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security,” Energy Envir

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. See also North America carbon, black, 169–70, 222n20 carbon dioxide (CO2), 5–6, 196n2 carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), 6, 11 carbon efficiency, 165–66 carbon footprints, 5–15; assumptions about, 2–4; averages, per person, 11; calculation models, 124, 141–42, 189–95; defined, 5; “direct” vs. “consumption” footprints, 137–

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dishwashing, 38, 64–65, 207n27, 207n28 domestic energy, 163. See also specific uses doors, opening of, 19–20, 200–201n9 Dyson Airblade, 21–22 Earth, carbon footprint of, 170–73 Eco-Cement, 75, 76 Ecology Building Society, 128 Ecosheet, 82, 83 eggs, 98–99 electricity, from grid, 54–56, 56–60, 151

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K.’s national footprint, 163, 200n3, 200n4; usage estimates, 199–200n3 web searches, 17–19 wind turbines, 144–47, 188, 189 wine, 80–82 world, carbon footprint of, 170–73 And finally... this period: • It’s a particularly large period. I estimate that at 2 microns thick and 1 millimeter wide, it

Aerotropolis

by John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay  · 2 Jan 2009  · 603pp  · 182,781 words

environment,” the energy consumed to build and service sprawl. We emit more carbon living in McMansions. For another, air travel’s actual share of our carbon footprints is currently 3 percent and falling (at least in the United States), thanks to a bounty of incremental and potentially revolutionary advances meant to slow

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chief executive of Tesco, Britain’s largest retailer, delivered a speech about climate change. The grocery chain faced mounting pressure from customers to reduce its carbon footprint—and, by extension, their own. It was incumbent on him to say something. “I am not a scientist,” he began. “But I listen when the

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“food miles”—the distance a product travels from the farm or ocean to your home. Food miles have become a shorthand for measuring food’s carbon footprint. It’s logical to assume that food—or flowers—traveling thousands of miles might have a larger footprint than the same items grown or made

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we eat, and in our identities as consumers we are what we consume—and how visibly we consume it. As a result, food miles and carbon footprints have become wrapped up in a much larger critique of global food chains. Less-than-scientific correlations have been found between how far food has

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-coli, carrots, spinach, and strawberries all cover an average of eighteen hundred miles before we eat them. There’s no question they have a higher carbon footprint than produce at farmers’ markets. Industrial produce consumes anywhere from four to seventeen times more fuel and emits a corresponding amount of carbon. But distance

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they’re not a very good measure of the food’s environmental impact.” The best example of this disconnect is a recent study comparing the carbon footprints of Kenyan and Dutch roses. Adrian Williams, a scientist at England’s Cranfield University, sought to measure the effects of each step from field to

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buy, we demand to change the world one purchase at a time—or at the very least, do no harm. We want low- or no-carbon footprints to go with fair trade and free trade. We’d like to support local businesses and local farmers—and barring that, poor ones in Africa

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count” for each of its seventy thousand products, going far beyond food miles. It would be a “universally accepted and commonly understood measure of the carbon footprint of every product we sell—looking at its complete lifecycle from production, through distribution to consumption,” Leahy said in his speech. “It will enable us

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to label all our products so that customers can compare their carbon footprint as easily as they can currently compare their price or their nutritional profile.” This was easier said than done, requiring researchers to analyze every variable

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food. “We can expect that a food system that produces somewhat less food but of a higher quality will produce healthier populations,” with a smaller carbon footprint to boot. The prescription is more farms, better farms, and a diet more reliant on vegetables. America has all the land it needs to do

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Virgin Galactic and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the Chrysler Building, and Masdar, a “zerocarbon” solar-powered city in a country with the highest per capita carbon footprint on earth. Envisioned as a test bed for every type of renewable energy under the sun—picture solar cells powering personal monorails instead of cars

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the prospect of a hundred million tourists and traders transiting the Gulf on the New Silk Road. Anyone paying close attention to oil prices and carbon footprints might reasonably conclude that a Middle East remade in Dubai’s image is a looming catastrophe. There is a growing consensus among activists, energy analysts

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in 5 percent or less. The answer: 2 percent. How did they overshoot the real figure so badly? Because we tend to think of our carbon footprints as the outcome of personal choices and personal virtue—“What can I do to shrink mine?” we ask. The answers, inevitably, are drive a hybrid

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, not to mention the benefits of what we already have. We could go back to the Stone Age if we really wanted to reduce our carbon footprints to zero, but the cure would be worse than the disease. “People seem to be very Malthusian right now,” he added. “Thomas Malthus argued food

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components with carbon-fiber composites. Taking care to frame the savings in CO2 tonnage instead of dollars, he noted the tugs would reduce Virgin’s carbon footprint at each airport by 90 percent and save two tons of fuel on each of its dozen daily flights between the two cities. If the

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vowed to become carbon neutral. None currently holds a candle to Stockholm’s airport, whose terminals are heated by burning wood chips, shrinking its prior carbon footprint by 94 percent. The airport’s cab stands are manned by hybrids and its buses run on locally produced biodiesel. Even better are trains, which

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intercity commuters between Tokyo and Osaka or Paris and Lyon than the Delta Shuttle does between New York and Boston, and with a vastly lower carbon footprint. The Obama administration has made HSR in America a priority, assigning $8 billion in stimulus funds to exploring ten potential corridors in the Midwest and

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high-speed rail in America as there are for it—the vast distances, the cost overruns, the potential for unchecked sprawl around stations, and the carbon footprint of forging all that steel and pushing it with coal-fired electricity—the bigger issue is how planes and trains are entwined in their own

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staggering 75 percent of Earth’s energy. Buildings alone contribute 15 percent of all greenhouse gases, more than all forms of transportation combined. Flying’s carbon footprint is a pointless indicator if we don’t fix cities first. How do you build green ones from scratch at the mind-boggling pace of

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, New Songdo has done exactly that—their densities are almost identical. The results are eye-opening. If all goes according to plan, New Songdo’s carbon footprint will be a third of a city its size—a big step toward the reductions needed to halt global warming. There is, of course, the

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“Big Foot” (February 25, 2008) introduced me to Cranfield University’s Adrian Williams, who conducted the study demonstrating that Kenyan roses have less of a carbon footprint than Dutch ones. I also borrowed his quote by Iowa State University’s Rich Pirog, whose study on how far American produce typically travels by

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’s Agribusiness & Economics Research Unit in July 2006, written by director Caroline Saunders, Andrew Barber, and Greg Taylor. The breakdown of a Big Mac’s carbon footprint is courtesy of Jamais Cascio’s “The Cheeseburger Footprint” (http://openthefuture.com/cheeseburger _CF.html). Christoper L. Weber and H. Scott Matthews argued for substitution

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Inflation” (May 27, 2008). Rubin continues to comment on oil prices at www .jeffrubinssmallerworld.com/. The Travel Foundation–commissioned study asking Britons about aviation’s carbon footprint was published as “The Travel Foundation Consumer Research” and was prepared by Nunwood in 2007 at www.thetravelfoundation.org.uk/index.php?id=91. The

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Ryanair effect’s impact on Murcia, Spain, and its carbon footprint are from Elisabeth Rosenthal’s “Low-Cost Airfares, Big-Time Carbon Footprint” (The New York Times, May 30, 2008). The details of Carcassonne, France, are borrowed from Anthony Lane’s “High and

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), as is Michael O’Leary’s “bollocks” quote. Plane Stupid’s website is http://planestupid.com/. The carbon footprint of housing is taken from “The Green Housing Boom” (Fast Company, July/August 2008). The carbon footprint of cattle is from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s report “Livestock’s Long Shadow” (2006), available

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online at www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM. And the carbon footprint of driving is taken from the World Resources Institute’s “Navigating the Numbers: Greenhouse Gas Data and International Climate Policy” by Kevin A. Baumert, Tim

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air traffic control systems, 352–53 air transport: as central to globalization, 17; interruption of, 17–18 air travel: by business travelers, 6–7, 18; carbon footprint of, 15, 21–22, 330, 333–38; as central to globalization, 17–18, 165, 413; cost of delays in, 352; deregulation and, 94–95, 123

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Korea, 203–205; supply chains of, 199; U.S. market for, 186–87, 200, 201, 337 aviation and aerospace industry: in California, 26, 27–29; carbon footprint of, 430–31; during Cold War, 27,28; economic impact of, 28; first flight in, 349; Ford’s operations in, 179–80; military links to

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, 342 Casey, Liam, 360–69, 371–72; arrival in China of, 362; background of, 362–63; customers preferred by, 365–67 Castells, Manuel, 381 cattle: carbon footprint of, 232–33; for production of biofuels, 348 CCIM Institute, 107–108 Chandigarh, India, 353 Changsha, China, 408–10 Changsha Airport City, 408–409 Chanos

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: 20th century form of, 10, 354; 21st century form of, 10, 19–20; aerotropoli as sustainable, 350, 353–58; badly planned instant, 4, 261, 353; carbon footprint of, 353; centralized vs. sprawling, 20–21; as distribution hubs, 59–90; growth and evolution of, 10–11; as hubs of globlization, 175–76; Instant

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–46; Chinese companies in, 44; Dulles-driven growth of, 40–41; expanding beyond Pentagon ties, 41–42 Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, 43 fair trade, carbon footprint and, 231 Fallows, James, 204, 361 Fast Company, 24, 332 Faster (Gleick), 61 fate, Kasarda’s view of, 7 Federal Express: Asian hubs of, 171

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floral industry: Aalsmeer auctions and warehouses in, 211, 212–17; in Africa, 212, 216, 221, 222–24, 317, 319, 407; in Amsterdam, 24, 209–25; carbon footprint of, 231; in China, 407; exports to U.S., 215; globalization of, 426–27; important holidays in, 212; post-World War II exports of, 211

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, 219–20 Flother, Bill, 270 Flower Confidential (Stewart), 217 fluidity, of population, 12, 18 Fluor, 121–22, 124 food, carbon footprint of, 230 food chains, 225–41; greenhouse gases from, 336 food industry: carbon footprint within, 427;shipments and logistics of, 24, 427 food miles, 230–33, 427; environmental impact of, 232 food production

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, 383 Foster, Norman, 386–87 Foxconn, 362, 396–97, 432 Frankfurt, Germany, food shipments through, 227–28 Frankfurt Airport, expansion plans for, 17 free trade, carbon footprint and, 231 free will, see agency freight dogs, 421 frequent fliers, lifestyle of, 422 Friedman, Thomas, 32, 207, 281–82 Front Range, as megapolitan area

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–78, 380–81; political autonomy of, 377; smiley curve managed by, 374–75, 380 Hong Kong International Airport, 372 Hon Hai Precision Industry, 396 housing: carbon footprint of, 431; greenhouse gases from, 336, 337 housing bust, 394 Hsieh, Tony, 70–71, 74 Huang, Bunnie, 367 hub-and-spoke, 95 Hubbert, M. King

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; SAM traders on, 319–21 New Songdo City, 3–6, 10, 23, 353–58, 411; as aerotropolis template, 5, 354, 357; airport links to, 355;carbon footprint of, 357; design of, 355;as green city, 4, 356–57; master plan for, 354–57; popularity of, 357; as ’smart’ city, 357; as Western

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style city, 355 New Suburbanism, as illustrated by Reunion, 140–44 New Urbanism, Detroit as testcase for, 195–96 New York, N.Y.: carbon footprint of residents in, 356; cities in style of, 20–21 NextGen traffic control system, 352 Nigeria, 321 Nilekani, Nandan, 281–82, 283 NIMBY groups, 29

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telecommuting, 341 Tellinghuisen, Brian, 131–32, 147 Temasek Holdings, 253 Tempo Group, 205–206 Tennessee, business costs in, 193–94 Terminal, The, 97, 98 Tesco, carbon footprint reduction plans of, 228–30, 232, 241 textiles, 374–75, 391 Thai Airways, 252 Thailand, 245–75; airports in recovery of, 257, 261; economy of

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Thompson, Emma, 15 Thompson, James, 48 Tianjin, China, airport in, 406–408 Tin Goose, 179 Toffler, Alvin, 174, 175 Tokyo, Akihabara district in, 364 tomatoes, carbon footprint of, 231–32 Tomlin, Steve, 30 Topis, David, 107 Toral, Ruben, 265–66, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273–74, 277, 278 Toronto, Canada

The Story of Stuff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-And How We Can Make It Better

by Annie Leonard  · 22 Feb 2011  · 538pp  · 138,544 words

. That’s before it gets transported to and from the store and then gets washed and dried over its lifetime, which at least doubles its carbon footprint.31 When I visited the website of the clothing company Patagonia recently, it allowed me to calculate the footprints of several of their items, including

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. Then they ask you to share the check, even though you didn’t get to eat.”100 A first-ever analysis and comparison of the carbon footprints of different countries was created by researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the Center for International Climate and Environment Research-Oslo

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. Not surprisingly, it shows that the higher a country’s per-capita consumption expenditures are, the bigger its carbon footprint. The national average per-capita footprints varied from 1 ton of carbon dioxide equivalents per year in African countries such as Malawi and Mozambique to

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countries such as the United States and Luxembourg. The study also found that in poorer countries, food and services are a bigger contributor to the carbon footprint, while mobility—transportation—and the consumption of manufactured goods result in the greatest greenhouse gas emissions in rich countries.101 One of the key innovations

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of the study is that it assigns the global carbon footprint from imports to the country that imports the goods—not the country that manufactures the goods. This approach is really important because globalized production chains

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director of the World Food Programme (earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/349). 101. William Greider, “One World of Consumers,” in Consuming Desires, p. 27. 102. Carbon Footprint of Nations website, Norwegian University of Science and Technology: carbonfootprintofnations.com. 103. Elgin, The Voluntary Simplicity Discussion Course, p. 16. 104. Alan Durning, How Much

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you Ariane. HOW WE MADE THIS BOOK Our intent in creating this book was to use as few toxic materials as possible, to minimize the carbon footprint, and to avoid waste. To that end the manuscript was almost entirely designed and edited electronically. Review copies were offered to readers as downloadable e

Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth

by Juliet B. Schor  · 12 May 2010  · 309pp  · 78,361 words

. When it exceeds it, we’ve begun to eat into natural capital and are undermining the reproduction of future generations. FIGURE 2.10 Ecological Footprint, Carbon Footprint, and Biocapacity Source: Global Footprint Network (2009) By these calculations, the world first reached its limits in 1986. Since then resource use has increasingly outstripped

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study by the sociologist Anders Hayden. Britain has been described as “carbon crazy,” with significant government, business, NGO, and media attention paid to reducing the carbon footprint. Supermarket chains now label packages with carbon scores, and chains such as Marks and Spencer have signed on to carbon neutrality. In 2007 Parliament passed

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environment ministry has enacted programs on food waste and plastics use to encourage behavior change among citizens, and a variety of efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of businesses. In the academic literature, this approach is known as ecological modernization. It holds that the fundamentals of the market economy can remain intact

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for Economic Cooperation and Development (2008b), “Materials Mix by OECD Region,” p. 40. 46 wealthy countries have been off-loading: Hertwich and Peters (2009) calculate carbon footprints accounting for global trade patterns. That the United States outsourced 20 percent of emissions is from Ghertner and Fripp (2007). 48 a synthetic gas called

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sending toxic waste to Africa pointed out this perverse logic in the operation of the current market system. On the rich countries’ ecological footprints and carbon footprints being generated in poor nations, see Ghertner and Fripp (2007) and Hertwich and Peters (2009). 149 That’s where the economics of knowledge, or information

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, Edgar G. 2005. Consumption and the rebound effect. Journal of Industrial Ecology 9 (1-2): 85-98. Hertwich, Edgar G., and Glen P. Peters. 2009. Carbon footprint of nations: A global, trade-linked analysis. Environmental Science & Technology (June 15). Available from http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/es803496a (accessed July

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California Closets Canada: health care system in hours worked in materials use in sharing economy in canning and preserving capitalism carbon dioxide atmospheric concentration of carbon footprint carbon pricing cashmere cell phones environmental impact of storage and disposal of Census of Manufactures Center for Alternative Technologies Center for Economic and Policy Research

Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff

by Fred Pearce  · 30 Sep 2009  · 407pp  · 121,458 words

attics of grand houses, they are spread across the world, growing our food, making our machines and stitching our clothes. People talk a lot about carbon footprints. But our personal footprints are much bigger than that. And they are social as well as ecological. The trouble is that, in our charmed world

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I report about the environment and development round the world. And to do my job, I also travel a lot. This is bad for my carbon footprint, but I really don’t believe you can learn about and report on the world by sitting at home and logging on to a virtual

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of southern Spain uses less energy than heating a British greenhouse to grow those tomatoes. Likewise, imported New Zealand lamb has only a quarter the carbon footprint of British lamb, even after the meat has made its journey across the planet. What counts is the total carbon-intensity of agribusiness. A Swedish

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the average Briton. Or to choose the hardest case, let’s, for the sake of argument, say Jacob should be personally responsible for the entire carbon footprint of his business, right to the supermarket shelf in the UK. How do things look? Every kilogram of Jacob’s green beans flown to Britain

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consumes 1.9 litres of aviation fuel, which releases 4.25 kilograms of CO2. So the carbon footprint of Jacob’s typical annual production, taking off a bit for topping and tailing and wastage at the Kenyan end, is about 17 tonnes of

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the average annual emissions for a typical Briton. But Jacob’s farm supports a family of four. So divide by four and the per-capita carbon footprint of his business comes out at about half that of average per-capita emissions in Britain. Surely he has some rights here? Do you still

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out, ‘This one farm receives subsidies equivalent to the average income of 25,000 people in Mali.’ So far I haven’t mentioned cotton’s carbon footprint. This turns out to be large, but surprisingly, much of it arises not from making your T-shirt, or even transporting it round the world

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are level pegging as they leave the shop. But because you can wash viscose at lower temperatures and it drip-dries in a jiffy, the carbon footprint of the viscose blouse from day-to-day use can be as little as a tenth that of a cotton T-shirt. It might be

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, anxious to proclaim that he once worked for Greenpeace, and at pains to be candid. ‘Aluminium processing is responsible for half of Rio Tinto’s carbon footprint round the world,’ he began. ‘And it is mostly because of operations in this town.’ We set off to check out the footprint, beginning at

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show passing storms. One day . . . And while we wait for the cyclone, Gladstone has a daily impact on the whole planet through its great, galumphing carbon footprint. Aluminium smelting requires more energy than any other metal process. Worldwide, the industry accounts for about 2 per cent of electricity consumption. The Boyne smelter

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more carbon dioxide per passenger-kilometre than a typical averagely full short-haul flight. Here is another thought. I have happily been assuming that my carbon footprint for taking the overnight sleeper train to Edinburgh is less than if I flew. But sleeper cars have just sixteen berths. Typically, they carry fewer

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official secret, or maybe they are just ignored because they are excluded from the Kyoto Protocol. A lot of research has been done recently into carbon footprints. It is only part of our total footprint, of course. But the figures are interesting. The Carbon Trust, for instance, shows that half of all

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just over 2 tonnes each. Meanwhile, I filled in a footprint calculator put online by the WWF. That disclosed that in my personal life, my carbon footprint is below the UK average at nearly 8 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, including a contribution for the services government provides. But then I

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and how. Anyhow, it didn’t look so good. See Chapter 29 on carbon offsets for what happened when I tried to calculate my horrible carbon footprint for travelling to write this book. But really I knew the problems. I fly. A lot. And when I am at home, I live in

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as the ultimate, painless and guilt-free solution to global warming. I am tempted to think the same. I am feeling guilty about my large carbon footprint from travelling round the world for this book. I too dump and burn. Can I offset my travels with a clear conscience? I decided to

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, and finally hits the presses about 140 kilometres from London in the small town of Bungay, courtesy of the printing company Clays. What’s the carbon footprint? Some products now come with labels announcing the amount of carbon emitted during their production. Books have not got that far yet. Figures supplied by

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’t have a figure for the retail end of the business, but I guess it might be at least as much again, giving a total carbon footprint for producing the book in your hand of almost half a kilogram of CO2, slightly more than I expect it weighs. But I think my

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buildings in summer with cold water from the depths of Lake Ontario. My city, London, has its congestion charge to end gridlock and reduce its carbon footprint. New York plans to copy it. And the developing world isn’t far behind. The southern Brazilian city of Curitiba pioneered bus-only roads, and

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area where there are no technical fixes at hand is air travel, which is the biggest source of emissions from many people with the biggest carbon footprints, including me. We simply have to give up flying as much as possible. I don’t have a magic formula for saving the world. The

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light pollution so we can see the Milky Way again. I think we need to remember the personal, as well as spending our time calculating carbon footprints. My journey for this book was about people as well as my environmental footprint. I cherish meeting the AIDS grannies keeping their families going in

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sugar 83 biofuels 82, 355 burying CO2 with 357 and palm oil 77 threat of 341 bismuth 207 black tiger prawns see king prawns books carbon footprint 312–13 research for 313 Borneo, rainforest clearances 169, 172 Box, John 350 BP, targetneutral scheme 305 Brasilia 347 bread Lighthouse 42 processes 42 stoneground

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) 299–300 Caldwell, Jack 365 Cameron, David 45, 103, 359 Cameron, Ray 219–20 Cameroon cocoa 94–7 cotton 136 slash-and-burn agriculture 95 carbon footprint books 312–13 calculating 371 publishing 313 carbon offsets see also CO2 emissions aircraft emissions 303–4, 306–8 availability 304–5 British Airways 304

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–8 hydroponics 342 IBM 163, 165 ice ages, Homo sapiens’ survival 332–3 immigrant fruit pickers conditions 46–7 pay 47 imports air miles 101 carbon footprints 101–2 plant foods 100–2 incinerators electricity generation from 261 pollution from 260–1 India Bihar 289 cardamom 58 child labour 124 computer recycling

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91 plankton, carbon offsets 310 plant foods see also foods by name air-miles issues 111–12 ancient varieties 89–90 benefits of local 45 carbon footprint 101–2 energy intensive production 102–3 extinctions 84 genetic resources 89–92 mutations 85–6 seasonality 100, 105 UK imports 100–2, 111–12

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, 176 prawns see king prawns prostitution, Manila 153, 155 Prudhoe Bay 214–20 public services, environmental footprint 241–2 public transport, gas powered 345 publishing, carbon footprint 313 Qiaotou 179 rainforest clearances Borneo 172 consequences 77–8 illegal logging 170–1 Indonesia 172–3 logging concessions 173–4 for palm oil 76

Business Lessons From a Radical Industrialist

by Ray C. Anderson  · 28 Mar 2011  · 412pp  · 113,782 words

is going to be solved, one smart, self-interested decision at a time. But sometimes self-interest points us in the other direction. Controlling our carbon footprint, even when it seems to save money, is not always the best strategy. Remember what I said about the next order at Interface, that it

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carpet to potential customers fast gives them a competitive edge. Not next week. Not in a few days. Tomorrow. But speed (think air) and reducing carbon footprints are opposite goals. What did we do? We let our sales force keep checking off that “next-day delivery” box, but they had to make

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very big ocean. When they did an audit to see where they stood, they found that a full 40 percent of their company’s total carbon footprint came from ocean freight and distribution (like carpet tiles, water is heavy). Stung by public criticism over marketing such a clean and healthy product in

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footprint to one degree or another. But there are large benefits to Interface, even if the savings seem small. Why? When you examine the total carbon footprint of one square yard of our carpet, you quickly discover that Interface is directly responsible for only 10 to 20 percent of it; everyone else

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sustainability and widens our circle of influence, it shrinks our own environmental footprint. And by the way, if you don’t think that reducing your carbon footprint is terribly important now, you may want to reconsider when you start being taxed on its size. Is that coming? Yes, I believe it is

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refreshing and replacement we would prolong the life of 80 percent of the material, saving the embodied energy and the greenhouse gases, and reducing the carbon footprint. Recall that when we reduced the nylon content of our carpets by just 4 percent we saved enough energy, enough oil, enough greenhouse gas emissions

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surely be meaningful work, and it would cut our virgin raw material use, our transport costs, and the embodied energy in our products—our whole carbon footprint. This could be the perfect integration of environmental responsibility, financial success, and social equity. Win, win, and win. That’s the way the system should

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dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gas effect of ppm in atmosphere carbon dioxide credits carbon dioxide emissions legislation re top corporate emitters carbon emissions benefits (from RECs) carbon footprint taxing of zero, buying offsets to achieve carbon offsets doubts about carbon sinks carbon taxes Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE) carpet industry, environmental impact of

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change climate mitigation, presidential action for Clinton, Bill Clough, Wayne CO2 Calculator (UPS) coal Coca-Cola cod fisheries College of the Atlantic colleges and universities carbon footprint of change comes slowly in role in solving environmental problems sustainability courses in Columbia University commerce redesigning See also business commitment commuting, by car compact

What We Need to Do Now: A Green Deal to Ensure a Habitable Earth

by Chris Goodall  · 30 Jan 2020  · 154pp  · 48,340 words

UK has made decent progress in recent decades, cutting domestic emissions by 43 per cent since 1990, although a rising volume of imports with high carbon footprints are not included in this figure, nor international aviation and shipping. If all these factors are included, the figures may be closer to 10 per

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failure of legislation to date). 3 Electrify the transport system, starting with cars and then moving on to heavy vehicles. Because of the very high carbon footprint of making cars in the first place, prioritise public transport, car-sharing, walking and cycling in order to reduce vehicle ownership. Switch shipping to electricity

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is based around this light and potentially universally available gas. Another advantage is that the gas has a high energy content but a near-zero carbon footprint. When burnt in air or chemically reacted in a fuel cell, hydrogen absorbs oxygen and just becomes water again. Adele Lidderdale works at the local

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and spoke with passion about the value of the work: ‘It is transformative in so many ways. It transforms lives, it transforms neighbourhoods, it transforms carbon footprints,’ he said. ‘Homes that were producing six tonnes of CO2 each year are now down to a tenth of that amount. And people can afford

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electric cars good enough? SHARING AND GIVING UP CARS One 2015 study suggested that an EV with a good range would have a much higher carbon footprint in its manufacturing process than a petrol equivalent, proposing a figure of about 16 tonnes per car. That’s approximately 1 tonne for each year

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6 SUSTAINABLE FASHION Without big changes, clothing alone will stop us achieving net zero Fashion represents about 3–4 per cent of the UK’s carbon footprint, though it is not always accounted for in national estimates. Most of the emissions of greenhouse gases take place in the countries where raw materials

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are made or the clothing manufactured. Both cotton and polyester – the dominant materials – have substantial environmental problems. Polyester has a high carbon footprint, while the cultivation of cotton and its processing into fabrics causes major pollution and uses vast quantities of water. The fibres of both cotton and

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two years after purchase, even though it is usually still in good condition. So with no immediate solution to the problem of fashion’s high carbon footprint, the best policy is simple: we need to buy fewer garments and keep them for longer. THE LINEAR ECONOMY AT ITS WORST Nothing typifies the

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degradation of water supplies and the pollution caused by agricultural fertilisers. Clothing thus represents a significant environmental concern. It is the largest part of our carbon footprint after running the house, using a car, taking flights and eating food. The 18 kilos or so of clothes that the average Briton buys each

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. (We purchase large volumes of clothes partly because our retailers have been so successful at bringing down the cost in the shops.) Some of this carbon footprint comes from washing and drying clothes during use, but two thirds arises from the processes involved in making them. Across the world, the fashion industry

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cotton involves the discharge of hazardous chemicals into water courses. So cotton is generally bad news. But unfortunately polyester seem to have an even higher carbon footprint. One study suggested that a polyester shirt results in over 5 kilos of emissions compared to just over 2 kilos from a cotton equivalent. Consumers

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face a difficult decision: should we buy a partially recyclable polyester garment with a high carbon footprint or a cotton equivalent that has added to the world’s other major environmental challenges? And, for those of us in colder countries, is wool

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the longer term, washing machine manufacturers need to improve their filtering systems. FUTURE CLOTHING A small number of suppliers already use fabrics with a low carbon footprint – the most important being cellulose, which is derived from wood. Making a cellulose textile requires large amounts of energy but it is far less polluting

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distances, and then melted at temperatures in excess of 1,000 degrees celsius by burning coal. It is the coal which gives steel its high carbon footprint. As economies mature, they can make an increasing fraction of their steel from recycled metal. The old steel is collected, perhaps from a building that

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. DOES OUR OWN CONSUMING MATTER? Our own consuming habits are important. A new computer, for example, might make a measurable difference to a person’s carbon footprint for the year of purchase. Apple publishes detailed and well-researched data that shows that a new MacBook Air has a carbon cost of around

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made determined efforts to address the climate change impact of what they make. Most large global companies are now publishing properly researched estimates of the carbon footprint of their products. However the uncomfortable fact is that everything new has a carbon cost. The manufacture of almost any physical item involves some processing

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few comprehend the central importance of radical changes to farming. EAT LESS MEAT The biggest difference we can make as individuals – and, collectively, to the carbon footprint of food – is to eat less meat. One UK study suggests that simply cutting out meat can reduce the footprint of a typical person’s

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than a kilo. A British family of three, each eating the average amount of beef (about 18 kilos a year each) would see a higher carbon footprint from the meat than from driving a car, or from the electricity used in their house. There’s a second and related argument against beef

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excluding that produced from genuinely free-range animals, have a climate impact many times that of equivalent protein sources, such as beans or grain. As carbon footprint expert Mike Berners-Lee notes, part of the reason is that animals are inefficient in converting their food into meat. A cow uses 100 calories

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single most important action you can take next. One Oxford researcher says that a vegan eating low carbon foods might be able to cut the carbon footprint of their diet to 27 per cent of a meat eater. A fully vegan diet will typically result in emissions of around half to two

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OR LOCALLY Food miles matter. However, shipping a product by truck into the UK from Spain probably only adds a few per cent to its carbon footprint. In fact, many studies have shown that locally grown food can be associated with higher emissions if the crop needs to be kept warm in

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that characterises large industrial farms in southern Britain. One thing we can be sure about is that food products flown by plane have a high carbon footprint and need to be banished from the diet of those wanting to minimise their impact. A kilo of shrimp shipped by air has a

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carbon footprint at least forty times higher than if it came by ship. In fact, farmed crustaceans brought in by plane are almost as bad for emissions

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raw cost of the Impossible Foods ingredients is so much lower than real meat. As you might expect, the Impossible Food’s burger has a carbon footprint that is radically lower than meat. The company claims an 87 per cent saving, and similar improvements in water and land use. Yes, the company

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companies. But individuals can also take action, both to put pressure on our governments and companies to change their policies, and to reduce our own carbon footprints. If we want the world to change, we need to demonstrate in our own lives that such changes are possible. ‘Virtue signalling’ it may be

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itself, but one that turned aviation emissions into an international issue. Below, then, to conclude this book, are 20 suggestions for reducing an individual’s carbon footprint in the UK. If we could act upon all of them, we might be able to reduce our responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions by 80

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in the car’s manufacture. FOOD 12. Cut down on eating meat (or give it up entirely). Particularly beef and lamb, which have the highest carbon footprint. 13. Choose vegan alternatives to animal products, as much as possible. There is a growing range of alternatives, even for burgers. And they are healthier

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. 15. Buy less and avoid waste. This applies to food, goods, clothes and all other consumer goods. 16. Be fashion aware. Clothes have a high carbon footprint. Buy less, wear them more often, repair rather than throw away, shop second-hand and, when it’s appropriate, look into renting. 17. Keep phones

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Break Years (Cambridge UP, 2019). The best work on the food system and climate, including a substantial section on food. And anyone interested in the carbon footprints of modern lifestyles should also read Berners-Lee’s How Bad are Bananas (Profile Books, new edition in Spring 2020). CLOTHING AND STUFF The website

There Is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years

by Mike Berners-Lee  · 27 Feb 2019

biggest tech giants. SWC is a leader in the field of carbon metrics, targets and actions. About his first book – How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint Of Everything – Bill Bryson wrote ‘I can’t remember the last time I read a book that was more fascinating, useful and enjoyable all at

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, zinc or vitamin A? How much of our antibiotics are given to animals? How much deforestation do soya beans cause? What’s the carbon footprint of agriculture? What are the carbon footprints of different foods? Should I go veggie or vegan? What can shops do about meat and dairy habits? What can restaurants do

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100 grams of soya beans and 100 grams of beef, in terms of percentage of Recommended Dietary Allowance and Reference Nutrient Intakes. What’s the carbon footprint of agriculture? At 23% of the global total, food and land related emissions are far too important to ignore18. Most people who care deeply about

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23% comes from food and land. Agriculture’s single biggest source of CO2 is deforestation, most of which can be tracked to What are the carbon footprints of different foods? Deforestation (farm animals) 16% 23 Fossil fuel (ferlizer) 12% Fossil fuel (agriculture) 12% Deforestation (mber) 11% Landfill 9% Manure (NO2 and

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fields, and rotting food matter in poorly managed landfill sites. About two thirds of all nitrous oxide is also attributable to food. What are the carbon footprints of different foods? The following charts have been adapted from a huge metaanalysis of the environmental impacts of over 38,000 farms19. 24 1 FOOD

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The average person needs about 50 grams of protein a day for a healthy diet and the chart shows the carbon footprint of some of the different ways of getting it. Beef and lamb have the highest impact because they ruminate (burp up methane). Beef also often

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Retail Figure 1.6. The GHG footprint of common protein sources per 50 grams of protein, broken down by supply chain stage. What are the carbon footprints of different foods? 25 GHG emissions (kg CO2e) 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 Wheat

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a shorthand for greenhouse gases). I’ve written about food greenhouse emissions extensively before, not least in my first book, How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything, which I now unashamedly plug, along with a couple of academic papers on carbon and diet21. To summarise all of that, the top

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seen, some types are more impactful than others, but all have a bigger climate impact than their plant based alternatives. We see a hierarchy of carbon footprints with pulses, grains and soya beans as the clear low carbon winners, dairy and poultry products as runners up, and red meats in worst place

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to boost sales. Is local food best? Only sometimes. Transport is usually a small component of the carbon footprint of foods. Is local food best? 31 Travel is usually just a small part of the carbon footprint of food. In my latest study for Booths, the UK supermarket chain, transport was responsible for just

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6% of the carbon footprint of all goods at the check-out23. The big greenhouse gas deal is in the

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farming (see What’s the carbon footprint of agriculture? on page 22). Food transport only really becomes a big problem when things

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are a bunch of solutions that sound good but whose success is largely limited to not making things worse. Bread and fish typically have low carbon footprints compared to their calorific content, and this means there is a bit more benefit in feeding them to animals, or burning or anaerobically digesting them

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to be done and what can I do? Just the same as for climate change, at the individual level, the action is to cut our carbon footprint and do everything else in our power to create the cultural and political conditions under which the world can leave the fuel in the ground

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? A popular storyline in the ICT industry is that the efficiency gains that it makes possible throughout the world more than compensate for its own carbon footprint – and that therefore ICT brings about the low carbon world29. It is true that digital information storage is millions of times more efficient than paper

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until you need to. Then make it electric if you can and as economical as you can. Make it last. Roughly two thirds of the carbon footprint of driving an oilpowered car is down to the fuel and the rest comes from the emissions involved in manufacturing the car in the first

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get from A to B. Should I fly? Whether for business, love, fun or gap year it all depends… There is no denying the massive carbon footprint. For perspective, London to Hong Kong and back economy class is about a quarter of the average UK person’s annual carbon footprint16. That’s

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life, working for a boot company, air freight was the very expensive emergency option when stock management had gone astray.) However, whilst the energy and carbon footprints of shipping are good ‘bang for buck’, we’ve already seen that we need to cut out the fossil fuel altogether before long. And a

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effect on the planet, it is not so much the number of people as their total combined impact. Several hundred Malawians have the same total carbon footprint of just one European or North American. It is possible to draw many graphs showing rampant and accelerating growth, either properly exponential or at least

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CHANGE BASICS yet. Once fuel leaves the ground, it all gets burned to meet a consumer need. The carbon footprint of extracted fuel is just about equal to the carbon footprint of burned fuels and the carbon footprint of all consumer goods and services. It works like three carriages of a train coupled together. They push

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in which the carbon savings might get lost; you might drive further, you probably spend any money you save on other things that have a carbon footprint, the fuel stations adjust their prices slightly and sell more to others; car manufacturers adjust their marketing pitch to sell their higher carbon cars to

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to focus Alphabetical Quick Tour 227 on the wellbeing opportunities that arise from growing beyond the twentieth century rat race. How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything A quick plug for my first book, which is one place to turn if you want more info on

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carbon footprints. Since publication in 2010 some numbers have adjusted a bit, I’m much more supportive of subsidies for micro-renewables and I would take a

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gases’. Humanity causes roughly 50 billion tonnes CO2e per year. In kilograms that is 5 and then thirteen zeros. Each of the following has a carbon footprint of roughly 1 kg CO2e: just over 1 kWh of Chinese or Russian electricity, or burning 0.4 litres of petrol. The average UK person

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has a carbon footprint of around 15 tonnes CO2e per year – that’s if you count all the greenhouse gases that lie behind everything they do and buy in

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than wheat and the improved efficiency of fuel from electricity compared to fuel from wheat. 16 See my first book, How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything, which also compares and contrasts numerous other travel modes. 17 A cargo freight ship from Hong Kong to London, keeping the speed down

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) you drive a bit further, feeling less guilty and because it is cheaper, (2) you spend the money saved on something else that has a carbon footprint, (3) the oil supply chain adjusts its pricing and marketing, to increase sales to others and (4) the ease of extra mileage enables you to

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same effect as saving 2700 tonnes of carbon dioxide. 3 Much more on this, of course, in my first book, How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything. INDEX Locators in bold refer to tables; those in italic to figures acidification of the oceans 54–55, 232 Africa energy 60, 70

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organisations 158–59 values 159, 174 see also food retailers call centres, negative effect of performance metrics 125–26 calorific needs 12, 242–43 carbohydrates, carbon footprint 23–25, 25 carbon budgets 51–52, 88, 146, 169–70, 201–2, 204–5 carbon capture and storage (CCS) 91–92, 141, 211, 215

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carbon dioxide emissions, exponential growth 202–4, 203, 220; see also greenhouse gas emissions carbon footprints agriculture 22–25, 23, 29–30 carbohydrates 25 local food/food miles 30–32 population growth 149 protein 24 sea travel 114–16 vegetarianism/veganism

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203–4, 220 flexibility see open-mindedness flying see air travel food and agriculture 11, 50, 222–23 animal farming 16–21, 29 biofuels 44 carbon footprints 22–25, 23–25, 27 chicken farming 25–26 employment in agriculture 44–45, 222 feeding growing populations 46–47 fish 32–36 global surplus

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128 measurement 127 mitigation of food waste 42, 43, 43 risks of further growth 120 scientific facts 51–53 units 243 see also carbon dioxide; carbon footprints; methane; nitrogen dioxide greenwash 215, 226 growth 226; see also economic growth; energy use growth; exponential growth hair shirts 212, 224, 226–27 Handy, Charles

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, units of 242–43 prisons/prisoners 154–57, 157, 174, 234 problem-solving methods 5 profit-motive 159, 174 protein animal sources 17–18, 18 carbon footprints 23–25, 24 psychology 227–28 public service 174 questions and answers, reader contributions 194 reader contributions 9–10, 194 ready meals 238 rebalancing, evolutionary

The Burning Answer: The Solar Revolution: A Quest for Sustainable Power

by Keith Barnham  · 7 May 2015  · 433pp  · 124,454 words

when I researched solar cells. Both journeys were undertaken before I realised the importance of travelling by train and boat, whenever possible, to reduce my carbon footprint. I recall driving between particle physics meetings in Chicago and Washington, D.C. through some of the finest farm land in America, listening to local

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Chapter 10 describes, this has happened despite clear instances of environmental damage catalogued by American university researchers. They have also exposed the evidence that the carbon footprint of fracked methane gas is at least as high as coal burning, even if the leakage of the gas is at the lowest levels achieved

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renewable alternatives to fracking that will create new jobs and reduce dependence on both natural and fracked gas. The renewable alternatives have a much lower carbon footprint, are far less damaging environmentally, and in many cases are already cheaper. Despite the influence of the fossil-fuel industry in the body politic,

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renewable technologies work will be important in Part II when we will meet the amazing range of solar technologies that can help us reduce our carbon footprint. It will also help you appreciate how complementary the solar technologies are in supplying our electricity. We will also need some physics in Part

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and turn off but also in the colour and intensity of the light. All these features should increase demand, thus reducing the price and the carbon footprint of our homes. Lasers, quantum wells and high mobility electrons The domestic use of LEDs is an example of a semiconductor technology that has

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that you may not have been aware are powered by the sun. In addition, Chapter 9 will contain suggestions of ways you can lower your carbon footprint. You may have concerns about solar power. So I will first describe some examples of how well solar technologies are faring in countries that

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solar technologies that can help achieve all-solar electricity generation. This chapter will describe some of them briefly before we go on to compare their carbon footprints. In the next chapter we will see how householders and local community groups can make use of these technologies to generate their own electricity and

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in sustainability standards in recent years. It is, of course, not a problem for biogas produced from waste. The second major concern is about the carbon footprint of the entire biomass–biogas cycle. On the positive side, every carbon atom emitted into the atmosphere by burning biomass or biogas was pulled out

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greenhouse gases emitted during the harvesting, transportation, conversion to fuel and waste disposal of biomass or biogas fuel will give that fuel a carbon footprint. In some cases, the carbon footprint could end up as high as that of natural gas. Later in this chapter, we will find that there are a number of

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biogas and biomass approaches to electricity generation with good carbon footprints. We will also meet approaches to generating biogas from waste in the next chapter that actually obviate a particularly nasty greenhouse gas. As usual the

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In the next chapter, we will meet a number of new technologies that can replace domestic gas central heating, and hence dramatically reduce a home carbon footprint. The effectiveness of these new heating technologies is improved with good thermal insulation and double glazing. One clear example is the case of solar hot

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the solar cornucopia. I will also compare them with their main rivals for the attention of politicians: natural gas and nuclear power. When comparing the carbon footprints of electricity-generating technologies, we need to take into account carbon dioxide emitted in all stages: construction, operation, production of any fuel, dismantling and

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of electrical energy generated (50 gCO2/kWh). I agree. I believe it is crucial for our civilisation that all electricity generation, worldwide, should have a carbon footprint below this figure by 2030. In 2014 Daniel Nugent and Benjamin Sovacool published a paper in Energy Policy that reviewed critically all the published LCAs

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I am pleased to be able to report that all the renewable technologies came in below the CCC finishing line. In first place, with a carbon footprint one fifth of the CCC limit (10 gCO2/kWh) was the one-time winner of the race for the first public electricity supply: hydropower.

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the CCC line, as did the new thin-film, second generation technologies. I conclude from the Nugent-Sovacool study that all the solar technologies have carbon footprints below the CCC limit. The simplest way to introduce a moratorium on all electricity generation apart from the renewables, as advocated in the last chapter

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Ethan Warner and Garvin Heath found 274 papers containing nuclear LCAs. They filtered them down to 27 for further analysis. These yielded 99 estimates of carbon footprints which the authors describe as ‘independent’. I do not see how the 99 estimates can be independent if they come from only 27 papers. I

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value. Instead they reported that half the estimates were below 13 gCO2/kWh. Clearly many of the new LCAs since Sovacool’s study have smaller carbon footprints. I must mention one unpublished, comparative study by Naser Odeh and colleagues from Ricardo-AEA because it was compiled for the CCC. AEA Technology was

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from the Warner-Heath analysis but did not consider the reviews of Sovacool and Beerten et al. They focus on six other studies all with carbon footprints below 10 gCO2/kWh that do not appear to be included in the Warner-Heath study. Since their chosen six LCAs were not fully

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her thesis. I wonder what the CCC made of this analysis. I think it possible to explain why there is such a wide range of carbon footprints for nuclear. There are five important phases of the nuclear power life cycle. These are: reactor construction, running the reactor, preparing the fuel, decommissioning

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reviews refer to electricity generators which have already been built. If the UK is to undercut the CCC limit in 2030 it will be the carbon footprint of future nuclear reactors that will matter. The two prototypes for the European Power Reactor (EPR) are still being built and are well behind

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20 times as high for the ore with low uranium concentration as for ore with high concentration. To my mind, any estimate for the carbon footprint of nuclear power that doesn’t show a strong increase in carbon emissions with falling uranium concentration in the ore is suspect. The fact that

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. The solar technologies are all below the CCC limit and could supply all our electricity generation. Could they also replace natural gas, with its high carbon footprint, in heating our homes? NINE How Can We Reduce Our Carbon Emissions? Give us the tools and we will finish the job. Winston Churchill (

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the sky. Sadly this technology has been difficult to commercialise. So for flat dwellers and those with partially shaded roofs who wish to lower their carbon footprint here and now, the solar thermal systems we met in Chapter 8 are a better buy. They occupy much less roof area than PV,

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to choose. So no excuses – get switching! Cutting our use of natural gas We now have the tools to make major cuts in the carbon footprint of our electricity generation. So now let’s look at technologies that can dramatically reduce the amount of natural gas we burn. Remember that every

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all types of buildings in Scandinavia. As an alternative to natural gas for heating, it can reduce gas bills to zero, dramatically cut your carbon footprint and greatly reduce electricity bills for heating. One only needs to drill down around two metres below ground to find a region at a fairly

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already send waste for AD, well done and welcome to the revolution! I hope you can see there is a great opportunity to reduce your carbon footprint and earn some useful revenue. Please pass on the good news to other farmers. The rest of us – the city and town dwellers – while

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the river Avon to generate electric power. I hope you will act on some of the suggestions in his chapter. You can greatly reduce your carbon footprint, and that of your local community, with tools that are available here and now. These all relate to the carbon released in electric power

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government has refused to enshrine into law the recommendation of its own Climate Change Committee (CCC) that by 2030 electricity generation should have a low carbon footprint (less than 50 gCO2/kWh). We found in Chapter 8 that all the solar technologies are below that limit. As new electricity generators are expected

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been analysed.’ It adds that ‘the subsequent use of shale gas has not been addressed.’ The report does, however, discuss the important study of the carbon footprint of fracking by Robert Howarth and colleagues from the University of Cornell. These authors point out that there are significant leakages of methane to the

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conclusion is not mentioned in the joint report. Another environmental risk that the report did not refer to is that these methane leaks make the carbon footprint of electricity from shale gas even higher than natural gas electricity generation. Recall that in Chapter 8 we found that electricity generation from natural gas

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already had a carbon footprint nine times higher than the CCC limit. The report downplays the risks of radioactivity being released in fracking. There are reports in the scientific literature

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as a result of lobbying by the fossil fuel industry claiming that natural gas is cheaper than the renewables and shale gas has a lower carbon footprint than coal. We need to get over to our governments that both these claims are myths. The fossil fuel lobbies are powerful in most

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of biogas from waste rather than fuel from foreign fossil fuel companies. Not only are these indigenous sources more secure, they have a far smaller carbon footprint. Of course you will be aware that there is another major component of government fossil fuel subsidy: support for the exploration and exploitation of oil

…

, which it still is in many parts of the world. He did not foresee the major expansion in natural gas. This has a lower carbon footprint than coal but nowadays makes a major contribution to global warming. Mathisen even predicted that there would be a disastrous terrorist explosion ‘In the early

…

as Saint Augustine’s famous prayer about chastity: ‘Grant me an all-electric car, Lord, but not yet.’ I believe we could reduce our carbon footprint faster if higher priority was given to the all-electric car than the petrol/electric hybrid. Amory Lovins, the American environmental guru, was one of

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Economy’. As with hydrogen, the first issue to be addressed is whether methanol and ethanol can be produced in such a way that the overall carbon footprint is very much lower than petrol. This can be achieved if two conditions hold: first, all the carbon atoms in the alcohols must originate

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gas’, which they favour. It only rules out a dash for natural gas. There are plenty of sources of gas that generate electricity with a carbon footprint below 50 gCO2/kWh: anaerobic digestion of wastes and many biogas from biomass approaches. We should be campaigning for more effective government stimulation policies for

…

wafers for PV. This process uses a lot of electricity. So production from hydropower in Norway means that the final PV panels have even lower carbon footprints. The PV resource at high latitudes should not be ignored. The vertical walls of buildings are a potentially great PV resource in northern latitudes. One

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found, LEDs use less electricity than conventional lighting. I expect the Chinese have realised that the lights on their public buildings would have even smaller carbon footprints if they use similar reactors to cover the roofs and walls of these buildings with CPV cells to generate electricity for the lights. Take a

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technology to exploit the so called ‘unconventional’ fossil fuel sources: shale oil, tar sands and fracking. These technologies are damaging the environment and have high carbon footprints. If these new fossil fuel resources are burned they will greatly add to the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere; which brings us full circle back

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I would argue that the renewables have also demonstrated lower life cycle carbon emissions in operation. By contrast there is a wide range of nuclear carbon footprints in the life cycle assessments (LCAs) in the scientific literature. I look forward to seeing a peer-reviewed LCA for your proposed EPR based on

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1 as a greenhouse gas, 152–3 carbon dioxide emissions Climate Change Committee recommendations, 181, 212 International Energy Agency analysis, 353 lobbying for limits, 278 carbon footprints biomass–biogas cycle, 178–9 of natural gas electricity generation, 181–3 of nuclear electricity, 183–7 of solar fuels, 253 Carboniferous period, 16 carbon

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meaning of, 52–5 E=mc2, meaning of, 46–7 Maxwell’s, 28–9, 30–1, 327; application of, 38–40 wave equations, 34 ethanol carbon footprint, 253 safety of, 252–3 ‘Ethanol Economy’, 253 problems with, 269 ethanol fuel cells, 252–3 European Power Reactor (EPR), construction costs, 185, 304,

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, 267, 314 quantum bonding, 67–8 safety of, 249–50 hydrogen bomb, 86 hydrogen fuel cells, 248, 359 in electric cars, 248–50 hydropower, 125 carbon footprint, 182 construction costs, 185 energy storage, 156, 160 large-scale, 168–9 small-scale, 169 HydroVenturi technology, 177 ice caps, shrinkage, 152, 312, 313,

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(Narec), 219 National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), United States, 218, 266–7 natural gas, 194 reduction of domestic use, 195–6 natural gas electricity generation, carbon footprint, 183 natural gas subsidies, 308 Nelson, Jenny, 319, 335 neon, electron orbits, 64 neutrons, 25 discovery of, 73, 74–7 and isotopes, 81–2

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nuclear fuel reprocessing, 88, 90–1 nuclear fusion reactions, 12, 14 nuclear fusion research, 85–6, 271–2, 361 nuclear lobby, 226–8 nuclear power carbon footprint, 185–7 costs, 160, construction costs, 185; fuel cost, 186–7 dangers of, 306; see also nuclear waste problem; terrorism David Mathison’s predictions,

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Smith, George, 128 Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment report, 2013, 280 Solarbuzz, 344 solar cells (photovoltaic cells), 40, 122–4 amorphous silicon, 131 carbon footprint, 182 development of, 314 distributed generation, 127 hydropower analogy, 126 indirect band-gap problem, 129–30 indirect band-gap solutions, 131–5 military influences, 129

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–12 bombardment with neutrons, 78–80 depletion of reserves, 18 enrichment of, 82–3 military use, 92–3, 332 see also depleted uranium uranium extraction, carbon footprint, 186–7 vacuum diode, 43 valence bands, 101–2 valves, 43, 98, 99–100, 334 Venturi, Giovanni, 177 voltage, 27 war, role of fossil

Not the End of the World

by Hannah Ritchie  · 9 Jan 2024  · 335pp  · 101,992 words

have, and we’ve done so quickly. There is hope that soon there will be no trade-off between having plentiful energy and a low-carbon footprint: we will be able to live a prosperous life without changing the climate around us. (3) Deforestation Over the last 10,000 years we’ve

…

, historically, economic growth has been linked with more resource-intensive lifestyles. As we got richer, we used more energy from fossil fuels, had a higher carbon footprint, used more land and ate more meat. And it’s true that in a world without technological change, we’ll be stuck with fossil fuel

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American does in just a day and a half. If you don’t have access to fossil fuels, electricity, a car or industry, then your carbon footprint is going to be extremely low. As we get richer we gain access to these things, and our emissions increase. But that’s not the

…

space. We buy lots of stuff and don’t bother to repair it. We never ration food, and waste too much of it. Yet my carbon footprint is less than half that of my grandparents’ when they were my age. When my grandparents were in their twenties, the average person in the

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the last 15 years. Had they: a. Increased by more than 20% b. Increased by 10% c. Stayed the same d. Fallen by 20% My carbon footprint is half that of my grandparents Per capita CO2 emissions in the UK, measured as the average tonnes per person. Thousands of people answered. Two

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climate-friendly My brother – the least environmentally minded member of our family – was the first to buy an electric car. It wasn’t the low-carbon footprint that won him over, it was the beauty of driving one. That’s important: if we want to get everyone on board with shifting to

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and dairy, especially beef This one will make the biggest difference. It’s one of the most effective things you can do to cut your carbon footprint. When we look at the impact of different foods, a hierarchy emerges. At the very top of this list – way ahead of everything else – is

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, peas, beans, lentils, cereals, nuts – lie at the bottom of the list. They have a much lower carbon footprint than animal-based products. The takeaway from this is simple: if we want to reduce our carbon footprint, we should eat a more plant-based diet. This doesn’t mean we have to go vegan

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the world. But farming practices vary a lot. Beef from an efficient producer in New Zealand or the United States might not have the same carbon footprint as the producer in Brazil who had to cut down some of the Amazon rainforest. That’s an argument I hear a lot when I

…

say that eating less meat – especially beef – is the most effective way to cut your carbon footprint. People will argue that the beef they consume – from their local farm in the UK – has a much lower carbon footprint than the global average. It probably does emit less, but it’s still going to be

…

much higher than plant-based alternatives. When we look beyond the global average to the distribution of carbon footprints for each food – from the most sustainable producers to the least sustainable – the overall message doesn’t change. The worst plant-based foods still have

…

a lower carbon footprint than the best beef or lamb. Eating less beef and lamb is still the most effective way to cut your footprint, but these differences within

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’re growing foods that are better suited for other climates or conditions. The plastic packaging of our food also doesn’t matter much for our carbon footprint. I’ll explain all three of these misconceptions in Chapter 5. How do we reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food? Shown are estimates of emissions

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. They would end up in a rat race with their competitors to lower their prices. To lower their prices, they would need to cut their carbon footprint. A carbon price could be incredibly effective. The strongest climate deniers would still end up making more sustainable choices. They wouldn’t do it for

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. I’m happy to answer them, not least because I’ve geeked out on all the relevant numbers. The book How Bad are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything by Mike Berners-Lee was the bible I used to carry everywhere with me.51 I was desperate to understand and optimise every

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tiny detail of my carbon footprint. I wanted to know if I should use the hand dryer or a paper towel. (The answer is paper towel if you’re just using

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‘eco-friendly’ setting on the washing machine. When we ask people what they think are the most effective things they can do to reduce their carbon footprint, they often mention the stuff that has the smallest impact.52 Recycling, using more efficient light bulbs, not leaving their television on standby or hanging

…

no particular order, here is a list of common things that people think make a big difference, but usually have a small impact on their carbon footprint. Sure, continue doing them if you want to (I do some), but don’t stress and definitely don’t do them instead of the big

…

your dishes in the dishwasher, it doesn’t matter much Eating local food (see Chapter 5) Eating organic food (this can be worse for your carbon footprint – see Chapter 5) Leaving your television or computer on standby, it doesn’t matter much Leaving your phone charger plugged in, it doesn’t matter

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much Plastic or paper bag – your plastic bag actually has a lower carbon footprint, but it doesn’t matter muchvii What we think is effective in cutting our carbon footprint often isn’t Actions such as giving up a car, eating a more plant-based diet, reducing flights

…

or switching to an electric car are most effective in cutting our personal carbon footprint. But surveys across 21,000 adults in 30 countries showed that people think actions such as recycling and upgrading light bulbs were among the top

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one less child – has been excluded from the chart shown here. This is because the underlying data didn’t take account of changes in the carbon footprint of people over time. It’s fair to say that my child will not have the same footprint as me: in the coming decades as

…

they need to make an informed decision, then leave them to do so based on what they value. If they don’t care about the carbon footprint of their diet, that’s fine by me. What I find painful is when people really do care about eating sustainably, but they’re making

…

less meat, especially beef and lamb You’ve already seen this recommendation. Chapter 3 looked at some of the climate impacts of different foods. The carbon footprint of meat – especially beef and lamb – really stood out. But it’s not just about climate change. Because food plays such a big role across

…

and protein nutritional requirements. (3) Invest in meat substitutes: building burgers in the lab When I went vegetarian for the first time, my family’s carbon footprint got bigger. The reason wasn’t me but my brother: he started on a fitness kick at exactly the same time. He was in the

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-carbon beef is still five times bigger than the Beyond Meat or Impossible Burger, and 10 times bigger than Quorn. Most also have a lower carbon footprint than pork and chicken, although sometimes not by much. What’s different about these foods is that there’s lots of room to improve: a

…

big chunk of their carbon footprint comes from the electricity needed to produce them. As the world moves towards a low-carbon energy grid, the footprint of these foods will get

…

diet while reducing our environmental impacts at the same time. Every time you buy a new substitute product, you’re not just lowering your own carbon footprint, you’re helping to pull down the price for the rest of the world too. Most meat substitutes have a much lower

…

carbon footprint than meat Carbon footprints are shown per 100 grams of protein for each product. This is based on life-cycle analyses, which include emissions on the farm, land-use

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even tastier. (5) Substitute dairy with plant-based alternatives In the typical diet in the EU, dairy accounts for just over one-quarter of the carbon footprint, sometimes as much as one-third.31 Many of us are looking to plant-based alternatives. In the UK, surveys suggest one-quarter of adults

…

the environment, so I don’t eat chicken and pork. I eat lamb though, because it’s locally sourced and so it has a low-carbon footprint.’ I thought she must be joking. She wasn’t. I couldn’t believe it: how could a lecturer on environmental topics really believe this – that

…

meats have a low-carbon footprint simply because they’re locally sourced? If I was in that position today, I might push or protest a little. But back then I was

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veggie roast. But I did walk away from that dinner primed to answer the question once and for all: does eating locally really reduce your carbon footprint? Was it me or them that had it wrong? Over the next year I found scientific paper after scientific paper all pointing to the same

…

conclusion: what we eat matters much more for our carbon footprint than how far it has travelled to reach us. I published these findings – with all of the data – in an article, and somehow gained the

…

or see where their food is made. Those are totally valid reasons. What’s not a valid reason is eating locally to have a low-carbon footprint. This is especially true if you’re selectively choosing high-carbon foods over low-carbon ones, just because they’re closer to home. Yet eating

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with this). What you eat matters much more than where it has come from Transport and packaging emissions are usually a small part of the carbon footprint of our food. Eating a more plant-based diet is more climate-friendly than trying to eat more locally. Emissions are measured in kilograms of

…

farming practices, climates and conditions for planting crops and raising livestock. Even for a single type of food there can be large differences in its carbon footprint depending on how and where it’s grown. This means that eating locally can actually be worse for the environment, especially when we opt to

…

. Once again, what you choose to eat and making sure that it actually gets eaten matters much more than what it’s wrapped in. The carbon footprint of the plastic packaging is tiny compared to the footprint of the food wrapped inside it. Just 4% of food’s emissions come from packaging

…

allow it to revegetate and suck carbon out of the atmosphere. xiii You might notice that the total numbers here are slightly different to the carbon footprint of foods shown earlier in the book. This is because one is given as the mean, and the other the median. For some foods these

…

recycle’. Recycling is the universal brand of a conscientious environmentalist. As seen in Chapter 3, people often think it has a massive impact on their carbon footprint. In reality, it’s pretty tiny. Why is it not quite as impactful as we imagine? Well, recycling doesn’t magically happen on its own

…

big a deal. In fact, in many ways, a single-use plastic bag is better than some alternatives. At least when it comes to the carbon footprint, it’s much lower than the rest. You’d need to use a paper bag several times, and a cotton one tens to hundreds of

…

noticing any difference. Which fish should I eat? Fish can be a climate-friendly protein source. Many of our favourite seafood dishes have a lower carbon footprint than chicken – the most climate-friendly kind of meat. Let’s say I’m convinced that many fish are a climate-friendly protein source, and

…

can avoid the ones that have a high carbon footprint. No lobsters for me. But I don’t only care about the carbon footprint. I’m also concerned about the impact on biodiversity – how our food production affects other species. And, of course

…

won’t help our oceans. They’ll just make the water murky so we don’t see the damage. Things to stress less about The carbon footprint of fish: fish can be an environmentally friendly source of protein – if we pick the right stuff You don’t need to lose sleep over

…

the climate impact of most fish. Pick the right stuff, and we can eat fish and still have a pretty low-carbon footprint. Producing fish does emit greenhouse gases – though not directly, like with burping cows. When it comes to wild fish, we burn fuel in boats to

…

sardines. Many fish species can be a low-carbon source of protein Greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram. Chicken is the meat product with the lowest carbon footprint. Many fish species have an even lower footprint. Farmed fish, a solution that seems icky Just when the world’s wild fish stocks were hurtling

…

are the most efficient way to cook, local food is often no better than food shipped from continents away, organic food often has a higher carbon footprint, and packaging is a tiny fraction of a food’s environmental footprint while often lengthening its shelf life. But it still feels wrong. I know

…

where you can really make a difference and your impact could be thousands, or millions, of times greater than your individual efforts to reduce your carbon footprint. (3) Stick with others pulling in the same direction To make the solutions in this book a reality, we need to work with those who

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(2019). 47 P. S. Fennell, S. J. Davis & A. Mohammed, ‘Decarbonizing cement production’, Joule 5, 1305–11 (2021). 48 ‘Concrete needs to lose its colossal carbon footprint’, Nature 597, 593–94 (2021). 49 D. Klenert et al., ‘Making carbon pricing work for citizens’, Nat Clim Chang 8, 669–77 (2018). 50 IPCC

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to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge University Press, 2022). 51 M. Berners-Lee, How Bad are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything (Profile Books Ltd, 2010). 52 Ipsos, ‘Ipsos Perils of Perception: climate change’, https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/ipsos-perils-perception-climate-change

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example for livestock products’, Int J Life Cycle Assess 17, 962–72 (2012). 42 C. Cederberg et al., ‘Including Carbon Emissions from Deforestation in the Carbon Footprint of Brazilian Beef’, Environ Sci Technol 45, 1773–9 (2011). 43 M. Clark & D. Tilman, ‘Comparative analysis of environmental impacts of agricultural production systems, agricultural

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Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them

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The Land Grabbers: The New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth

by Fred Pearce  · 28 May 2012  · 379pp  · 114,807 words

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by Damien Simonis  · 31 Jul 2010

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by Lonely Planet

The New Economics: A Bigger Picture

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Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places

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Southwest USA Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

American Made: Why Making Things Will Return Us to Greatness

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City 2.0: The Habitat of the Future and How to Get There

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by Lonely, Planet

Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution

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Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup

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Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth

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Who Owns the Future?

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Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism

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by Lonely Planet and Shawn Low  · 1 Apr 2015  · 3,292pp  · 537,795 words

Stuffocation

by James Wallman  · 6 Dec 2013  · 296pp  · 82,501 words

Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness

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Nepal Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

Coastal California Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

A Sting in the Tale

by Dave Goulson  · 24 Apr 2013  · 260pp  · 87,958 words

Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, From the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

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Cities Are Good for You: The Genius of the Metropolis

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The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything

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WEconomy: You Can Find Meaning, Make a Living, and Change the World

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Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?

by Alan Weisman  · 23 Sep 2013  · 579pp  · 164,339 words

The Challenge for Africa

by Wangari Maathai  · 6 Apr 2009  · 288pp  · 90,349 words

Impact: Reshaping Capitalism to Drive Real Change

by Ronald Cohen  · 1 Jul 2020  · 276pp  · 59,165 words

The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions

by Jason Hickel  · 3 May 2017  · 332pp  · 106,197 words

Lonely Planet Sri Lanka

by Lonely Planet

The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism

by Hubert Joly  · 14 Jun 2021  · 265pp  · 75,202 words

Smart Cities, Digital Nations

by Caspar Herzberg  · 13 Apr 2017

Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

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Lonely Planet Best of Hawaii

by Lonely Planet  · 453pp  · 79,218 words

Four Battlegrounds

by Paul Scharre  · 18 Jan 2023

How to Spend a Trillion Dollars

by Rowan Hooper  · 15 Jan 2020  · 285pp  · 86,858 words

ECOVILLAGE: 1001 ways to heal the planet

by Ecovillage 1001 Ways to Heal the Planet-Triarchy Press Ltd (2015)  · 30 Jun 2015

Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food

by Chris van Tulleken  · 26 Jun 2023  · 448pp  · 123,273 words

Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care About Inequality

by Marcos González Hernando and Gerry Mitchell  · 23 May 2023

The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel

by Paige McClanahan  · 17 Jun 2024  · 206pp  · 78,882 words

Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life

by Kristen R. Ghodsee  · 16 May 2023  · 302pp  · 112,390 words

A Half-Built Garden

by Ruthanna Emrys  · 25 Jul 2022  · 431pp  · 127,720 words

A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity and a Shared Earth

by Chris Smaje  · 14 Aug 2020  · 375pp  · 105,586 words

The Rough Guide to New Zealand: Travel Guide eBook

by Rough Guides  · 1 Jan 2024  · 1,383pp  · 367,401 words

The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy

by Nick Romeo  · 15 Jan 2024  · 343pp  · 103,376 words

Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future

by Alan Weisman  · 21 Apr 2025  · 599pp  · 149,014 words

Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors

by Edward Niedermeyer  · 14 Sep 2019  · 328pp  · 90,677 words

Green Gold

by Sarah Allaback  · 14 Mar 2025  · 346pp  · 99,142 words

Tomorrow's Capitalist: My Search for the Soul of Business

by Alan Murray  · 15 Dec 2022  · 263pp  · 77,786 words

On Time and Water

by Andri Snaer Magnason  · 15 Sep 2021  · 272pp  · 77,108 words

Living in a Material World: The Commodity Connection

by Kevin Morrison  · 15 Jul 2008  · 311pp  · 17,232 words

Great Britain

by David Else and Fionn Davenport  · 2 Jan 2007

The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth

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Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It

by Azeem Azhar  · 6 Sep 2021  · 447pp  · 111,991 words

The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance

by Eswar S. Prasad  · 27 Sep 2021  · 661pp  · 185,701 words

Lonely Planet's Best in Travel 2020

by Lonely Planet  · 21 Oct 2019  · 201pp  · 33,620 words

Hawaii

by Jeff Campbell  · 4 Nov 2009

An Optimist's Tour of the Future

by Mark Stevenson  · 4 Dec 2010  · 379pp  · 108,129 words

Conscious Capitalism, With a New Preface by the Authors: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business

by John Mackey, Rajendra Sisodia and Bill George  · 7 Jan 2014  · 335pp  · 104,850 words

The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide: How to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify Your Life

by Francine Jay  · 253pp  · 79,595 words

Ukraine

by Lonely Planet

The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans

by Mark Lynas  · 3 Oct 2011  · 369pp  · 98,776 words

Live Green: 52 Steps for a More Sustainable Life

by Jen Chillingsworth  · 19 Feb 2019

Eastern USA

by Lonely Planet

Egypt Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

Ireland (Lonely Planet, 9th Edition)

by Fionn Davenport  · 15 Jan 2010

France (Lonely Planet, 8th Edition)

by Nicola Williams  · 14 Oct 2010

Lonely Planet France

by Lonely Planet Publications  · 31 Mar 2013

The Industries of the Future

by Alec Ross  · 2 Feb 2016  · 364pp  · 99,897 words

The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us

by Diane Ackerman  · 9 Sep 2014  · 380pp  · 104,841 words

The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis

by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac  · 25 Feb 2020  · 197pp  · 49,296 words

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

by Bill McKibben  · 15 Apr 2019

How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World

by Dambisa Moyo  · 3 May 2021  · 272pp  · 76,154 words

Israel & the Palestinian Territories Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

Greece Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet

by Varun Sivaram  · 2 Mar 2018  · 469pp  · 132,438 words

The Future Is Asian

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Lonely Planet Southern Italy

by Lonely Planet

Egypt Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

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by Lonely Planet

The Soil Will Save Us

by Kristin Ohlson  · 14 Oct 2014

Pocket Berlin

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Invention: A Life

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by Lonely Planet

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by Lonely Planet  · 476pp  · 132,840 words

Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America's Edge

by Ted Conover  · 1 Nov 2022  · 391pp  · 106,255 words

Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves

by Nicola Twilley  · 24 Jun 2024  · 428pp  · 125,388 words

Lonely Planet Scotland

by Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet Scotland

by Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet Scotland's Highlands & Islands

by Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet Lonely Planet's Best in Travel 2022

by Lonely Planet  · 26 Oct 2021  · 147pp  · 33,578 words

Green Interior Design

by Lori Dennis  · 14 Aug 2020

Carbon: The Book of Life

by Paul Hawken  · 17 Mar 2025  · 250pp  · 63,703 words

The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

by Jeff Goodell  · 10 Jul 2023  · 347pp  · 108,323 words

Makeshift Metropolis: Ideas About Cities

by Witold Rybczynski  · 9 Nov 2010  · 232pp  · 60,093 words

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

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Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2020

by Lonely Planet  · 147pp  · 33,580 words

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by Lonely Planet  · 394pp  · 104,952 words

How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance

by Parag Khanna  · 11 Jan 2011  · 251pp  · 76,868 words

The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing

by Lisa Gansky  · 14 Oct 2010  · 215pp  · 55,212 words

Greece

by Korina Miller  · 1 Mar 2010

The Survival of the City: Human Flourishing in an Age of Isolation

by Edward Glaeser and David Cutler  · 14 Sep 2021  · 735pp  · 165,375 words

The Enlightened Capitalists

by James O'Toole  · 29 Dec 2018  · 716pp  · 192,143 words

Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives

by Michael Specter  · 14 Apr 2009  · 281pp  · 79,958 words

Central Europe Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

Fodor's Costa Rica 2013

by Fodor's Travel Publications Inc.  · 1 Oct 2012

Fodor's Costa Rica 2012

by Fodor's  · 6 Oct 2011

Rome

by Lonely Planet

Frommer's Los Angeles 2010

by Matthew Richard Poole  · 28 Sep 2009  · 356pp  · 186,629 words

Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives

by Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz Fernandez  · 5 Jan 2010  · 269pp  · 104,430 words

Coastal California

by Lonely Planet

Germany

by Andrea Schulte-Peevers  · 17 Oct 2010

The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

by Richard Heinberg  · 1 Jun 2011  · 372pp  · 107,587 words

Lonely Planet Morocco (Travel Guide)

by Lonely Planet, Paul Clammer and Paula Hardy  · 1 Jul 2014  · 2,020pp  · 267,411 words

Lonely Planet Chile & Easter Island (Travel Guide)

by Lonely Planet, Carolyn McCarthy and Kevin Raub  · 19 Oct 2015

Lonely Planet Ireland

by Lonely Planet

This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook

by Extinction Rebellion  · 12 Jun 2019  · 138pp  · 40,525 words

Rick Steves Florence & Tuscany 2017

by Rick Steves  · 8 Nov 2016  · 920pp  · 237,085 words

Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business

by Ken Auletta  · 4 Jun 2018  · 379pp  · 109,223 words

Discover Caribbean Islands

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Red Flags: Why Xi's China Is in Jeopardy

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A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next

by Tom Standage  · 16 Aug 2021  · 290pp  · 85,847 words

Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead

by Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman  · 22 Sep 2016

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class

by Joel Kotkin  · 11 May 2020  · 393pp  · 91,257 words

Shorter: Work Better, Smarter, and Less Here's How

by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang  · 10 Mar 2020  · 257pp  · 76,785 words

Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World

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The Price Is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet

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The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

by Amitav Ghosh  · 16 Jan 2018

The New Nomads: How the Migration Revolution Is Making the World a Better Place

by Felix Marquardt  · 7 Jul 2021  · 250pp  · 75,151 words

The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future

by Keach Hagey  · 19 May 2025  · 439pp  · 125,379 words

Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World

by Anupreeta Das  · 12 Aug 2024  · 315pp  · 115,894 words

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by Lonely Planet  · 14 May 2024  · 232pp  · 61,272 words

Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change

by George Marshall  · 18 Aug 2014  · 298pp  · 85,386 words

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

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by Lonely Planet, Stephen Lioy, Anna Kaminski, Bradley Mayhew and Jenny Walker  · 1 Jun 2018  · 1,046pp  · 271,638 words

When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe  · 3 Oct 2022  · 689pp  · 134,457 words

Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet?

by Pete Dyson and Rory Sutherland  · 15 Jan 2021  · 342pp  · 72,927 words

Cancelling Billionaires Before They Cancel Us: The Urgent Case for a Wealth Tax

by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks  · 3 Mar 2026  · 291pp  · 83,422 words

The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World

by John Robbins  · 14 Sep 2010  · 468pp  · 150,206 words

The End of Money: Counterfeiters, Preachers, Techies, Dreamers--And the Coming Cashless Society

by David Wolman  · 14 Feb 2012  · 275pp  · 77,017 words

Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters With Reality and Virtual Reality

by Jaron Lanier  · 21 Nov 2017  · 480pp  · 123,979 words

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World

by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott  · 9 May 2016  · 515pp  · 126,820 words

A History of Future Cities

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Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work

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Lonely Planet Cancun, Cozumel & the Yucatan (Travel Guide)

by Lonely Planet, John Hecht and Sandra Bao  · 31 Jul 2013

The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy

by Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley  · 10 Jun 2013

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by Lonely Planet and Carolyn McCarthy  · 30 Jun 2013

The Gated City (Kindle Single)

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Meet the Frugalwoods: Achieving Financial Independence Through Simple Living

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Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy

by George Gilder  · 16 Jul 2018  · 332pp  · 93,672 words

Frommer's Oregon

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by Lonely Planet

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by Lonely Planet  · 1,429pp  · 189,336 words

California

by Sara Benson  · 15 Oct 2010

The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World

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Discover Maui

by Lonely Planet

What's Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption Is Changing the Way We Live

by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers  · 2 Jan 2010  · 411pp  · 80,925 words

The Zero-Waste Lifestyle: Live Well by Throwing Away Less

by Amy Korst  · 26 Dec 2012  · 347pp  · 88,114 words

USA's Best Trips

by Sara Benson  · 23 May 2010  · 941pp  · 237,152 words

The World According to Bertie

by Alexander McCall Smith; Robert Ian MacKenzie  · 1 Jan 2007  · 415pp  · 113,875 words

Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization

by Jeff Rubin  · 19 May 2009  · 258pp  · 83,303 words

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by Lonely Planet

Among Chimpanzees

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Hope for Animals and Their World

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Lonely Planet London

by Lonely Planet  · 22 Apr 2012

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by Lonely Planet  · 31 May 2012

The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa

by Calestous Juma  · 27 May 2017

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

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The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis

by Jeremy Rifkin  · 31 Dec 2009  · 879pp  · 233,093 words

The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order

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Lonely Planet Norway (Travel Guide)

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Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity

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Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain's Underclass

by Darren McGarvey  · 2 Nov 2017  · 224pp  · 73,737 words

Future Files: A Brief History of the Next 50 Years

by Richard Watson  · 1 Jan 2008

The Default Line: The Inside Story of People, Banks and Entire Nations on the Edge

by Faisal Islam  · 28 Aug 2013  · 475pp  · 155,554 words

The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today

by Ted Conover  · 15 Jan 2010  · 366pp  · 123,151 words

Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies

by Geoffrey West  · 15 May 2017  · 578pp  · 168,350 words

The Toaster Project: Or a Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance From Scratch

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The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All

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Lonely Planet Maldives (Travel Guide)

by Planet, Lonely and Masters, Tom  · 31 Aug 2015  · 449pp  · 85,924 words

A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order

by Richard Haass  · 10 Jan 2017  · 286pp  · 82,970 words

The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth

by Tim Flannery  · 10 Jan 2001  · 427pp  · 111,965 words

Cuba Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

Heaven Is a Place on Earth: Searching for an American Utopia

by Adrian Shirk  · 15 Mar 2022  · 358pp  · 118,810 words

The New Class Conflict

by Joel Kotkin  · 31 Aug 2014  · 362pp  · 83,464 words

The People's Republic of Walmart: How the World's Biggest Corporations Are Laying the Foundation for Socialism

by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski  · 5 Mar 2019  · 202pp  · 62,901 words

Your Own Allotment : How to Find It, Cultivate It, and Enjoy Growing Your Own Food

by Russell-Jones, Neil.  · 21 Mar 2008

Lonely Planet Turkey (Travel Guide)

by Lonely Planet, James Bainbridge, Brett Atkinson, Steve Fallon, Jessica Lee, Virginia Maxwell, Hugh McNaughtan and John Noble  · 31 Jan 2017  · 2,313pp  · 330,238 words

The Allotment Chef: Home-Grown Recipes and Seasonal Stories

by Paul Merrett  · 3 Sep 2014  · 269pp  · 91,325 words

Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism

by John Elkington  · 6 Apr 2020  · 384pp  · 93,754 words

The Future of Fusion Energy

by Jason Parisi and Justin Ball  · 18 Dec 2018  · 404pp  · 107,356 words

Working

by Robert A. Caro  · 8 Apr 2019  · 182pp  · 64,847 words

Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing

by Andrew Ross  · 25 Oct 2021  · 301pp  · 90,276 words

Norman Foster: A Life in Architecture

by Deyan Sudjic  · 1 Sep 2010

Greater: Britain After the Storm

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B Is for Bauhaus, Y Is for YouTube: Designing the Modern World From a to Z

by Deyan Sudjic  · 17 Feb 2015  · 335pp  · 111,405 words

The Smartphone Society

by Nicole Aschoff

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil  · 25 Jun 2024

Investing Amid Low Expected Returns: Making the Most When Markets Offer the Least

by Antti Ilmanen  · 24 Feb 2022

The Capitalist Manifesto

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Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis

by Scott Patterson  · 5 Jun 2023  · 289pp  · 95,046 words

What We Owe the Future: A Million-Year View

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Lonely Planet Cancun, Cozumel & the Yucatan (Travel Guide)

by Lonely Planet, John Hecht and Lucas Vidgen  · 31 Jul 2016

Lonely Planet Pocket Reykjavík & Southwest Iceland

by Lonely Planet  · 139pp  · 34,917 words

Lonely Planet Mongolia (Travel Guide)

by Lonely Planet, Trent Holden, Adam Karlin, Michael Kohn, Adam Skolnick and Thomas O'Malley  · 1 Jul 2018

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by Lonely Planet  · 570pp  · 145,712 words

Your Computer Is on Fire

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Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson  · 15 May 2023  · 619pp  · 177,548 words

Moon Prague, Vienna & Budapest: Palaces & Castles, Art & Music, Coffeehouses & Beer Gardens

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Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It

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The Rough Guide to Peru

by Rough Guides  · 27 Apr 2024  · 960pp  · 267,168 words

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

by Steven Pinker  · 13 Feb 2018  · 1,034pp  · 241,773 words

Cooking for Geeks

by Jeff Potter  · 2 Aug 2010  · 728pp  · 182,850 words

Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success

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The Purpose Economy: How Your Desire for Impact, Personal Growth and Community Is Changing the World

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Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex

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Money in the Metaverse: Digital Assets, Online Identities, Spatial Computing and Why Virtual Worlds Mean Real Business

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How I Escaped My Certain Fate

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Corduroy Mansions

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Cyclopedia

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The Caryatids

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Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places

by Bill Streever  · 21 Jul 2009  · 302pp  · 92,507 words

America, You Sexy Bitch: A Love Letter to Freedom

by Meghan McCain and Michael Black  · 31 May 2012  · 367pp  · 117,340 words

To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism

by Evgeny Morozov  · 15 Nov 2013  · 606pp  · 157,120 words

Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm

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Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone

by Eric Klinenberg  · 1 Jan 2012  · 291pp  · 88,879 words

New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future

by James Bridle  · 18 Jun 2018  · 301pp  · 85,263 words

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power

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The Rough Guide to Cape Town, Winelands & Garden Route

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Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

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The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide

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by Rough Guides  · 2 Feb 2025

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An Edible History of Humanity

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by Lonely Planet, Alex Egerton and Greg Benchwick  · 30 Jun 2013

Lifestyle Entrepreneur: Live Your Dreams, Ignite Your Passions and Run Your Business From Anywhere in the World

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Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World

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AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

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One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger

by Matthew Yglesias  · 14 Sep 2020

Machine: A White Space Novel

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by Andy Symington  · 24 Feb 2012

The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths

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Simply Living Well: A Guide to Creating a Natural, Low-Waste Home

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Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions

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The Midnight Library

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Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things

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The Data Journalism Handbook

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A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

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The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

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The Skeptical Economist: Revealing the Ethics Inside Economics

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The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good

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The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity

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The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership

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A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

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Alone on the Wall: Alex Honnold and the Ultimate Limits of Adventure

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Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity Into Prosperity

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by Lonely Planet

Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and Their Ideas Have Changed the World—for Better and for Worse

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Hacking the Code of Life: How Gene Editing Will Rewrite Our Futures

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A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution

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The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket

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Autonomous Driving: How the Driverless Revolution Will Change the World

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Notes From an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back

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Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything

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Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World

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Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom

by Grace Blakeley  · 11 Mar 2024  · 371pp  · 137,268 words

AI in Museums: Reflections, Perspectives and Applications

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These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means

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by Fodor’s Travel Guides  · 1 Aug 2022

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by Ray Taras  · 15 Dec 2009  · 267pp  · 106,340 words

Puzzling People: The Labyrinth of the Psychopath

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Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture

by Designing The Mind and Ryan A Bush  · 10 Jan 2021

The Fundamentals of Interior Design

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The Dark Net

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Designing Social Interfaces

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by Amy Poehler

Shadow Work: The Unpaid, Unseen Jobs That Fill Your Day

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No. More. Plastic.: What You Can Do to Make a Difference – the #2minutesolution

by Martin Dorey  · 2 May 2018  · 54pp  · 13,620 words

Mastering Blockchain, Second Edition

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How to Murder Your Life: A Memoir

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Open for Business Harnessing the Power of Platform Ecosystems

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The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century

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Driverless Cars: On a Road to Nowhere

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The Rough Guide to Sweden (Travel Guide eBook)

by Rough Guides  · 1 Nov 2019

The Rough Guide To Devon & Cornwall

by Rough Guides  · 29 Apr 2024  · 558pp  · 147,947 words

The Rough Guide to France (Travel Guide eBook)

by Rough Guides  · 1 Aug 2019  · 1,994pp  · 548,894 words

The Rough Guide to Cyprus (Travel Guide eBook)

by Rough Guides  · 30 Apr 2019

Amateurs!: How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters

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The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir

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Oil Panic and the Global Crisis: Predictions and Myths

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The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire

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by Lonely Planet

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by Lonely Planet, Alex Egerton, Tom Masters and Kevin Raub  · 30 Jun 2015

Straphanger

by Taras Grescoe  · 8 Sep 2011  · 428pp  · 134,832 words

With a Little Help

by Cory Efram Doctorow, Jonathan Coulton and Russell Galen  · 7 Dec 2010  · 549pp  · 116,200 words

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by Takuro Sato  · 17 Nov 2015

Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Shaped the Modern World - and How Their Invention Could Make or Break the Planet

by Jane Gleeson-White  · 14 May 2011  · 274pp  · 66,721 words

The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America

by Victor Davis Hanson  · 15 Nov 2021  · 458pp  · 132,912 words

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

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Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital

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Eat People: And Other Unapologetic Rules for Game-Changing Entrepreneurs

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Grow Green: Tips and Advice for Gardening With Intention

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Fire and Steam: A New History of the Railways in Britain

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The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World's Favorite Soft Drink

by Michael Blanding  · 14 Jun 2010  · 385pp  · 133,839 words

Four Futures: Life After Capitalism

by Peter Frase  · 10 Mar 2015  · 121pp  · 36,908 words

One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility

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Diet for a New America

by John Robbins  · 566pp  · 151,193 words

The Great Race: The Global Quest for the Car of the Future

by Levi Tillemann  · 20 Jan 2015  · 431pp  · 107,868 words

Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water

by Peter H. Gleick  · 20 Apr 2010  · 257pp  · 68,383 words

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet

by Jeffrey Sachs  · 1 Jan 2008  · 421pp  · 125,417 words

Berlin

by Andrea Schulte-Peevers  · 20 Oct 2010  · 638pp  · 156,653 words

Tomorrowland: Our Journey From Science Fiction to Science Fact

by Steven Kotler  · 11 May 2015  · 294pp  · 80,084 words

Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth

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Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America

by Shawn Lawrence Otto  · 10 Oct 2011  · 692pp  · 127,032 words

Sardinia Travel Guide

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Croatia

by Anja Mutic and Vesna Maric  · 1 Apr 2013

Them And Us: Politics, Greed And Inequality - Why We Need A Fair Society

by Will Hutton  · 30 Sep 2010  · 543pp  · 147,357 words

The Making of a World City: London 1991 to 2021

by Greg Clark  · 31 Dec 2014

Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life

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by Lonely Planet  · 17 Apr 2017  · 1,181pp  · 163,692 words

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy

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Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy

by Nathan Schneider  · 10 Sep 2018  · 326pp  · 91,559 words

Inside the Nudge Unit: How Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference

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The Nation City: Why Mayors Are Now Running the World

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Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

by Merlin Sheldrake  · 11 May 2020

Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire

by Brad Stone  · 10 May 2021  · 569pp  · 156,139 words

Ten Technologies to Save the Planet: Energy Options for a Low-Carbon Future

by Chris Goodall  · 1 Jan 2010  · 297pp  · 95,518 words

Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs

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Lonely Planet Switzerland

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by Lonely Planet

Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet

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The Truth About Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit

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Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It

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Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid

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Arguing With Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

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by Lonely Planet  · 1,006pp  · 243,928 words

Home: Why Public Housing Is the Answer

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The Ones We've Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America

by Charlotte Alter  · 18 Feb 2020  · 504pp  · 129,087 words

The Sport and Prey of Capitalists

by Linda McQuaig  · 30 Aug 2019  · 263pp  · 79,016 words

Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

by Jon Kabat-Zinn  · 23 Sep 2013  · 706pp  · 237,378 words

Elon Musk

by Walter Isaacson  · 11 Sep 2023  · 562pp  · 201,502 words

The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip

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by Lonely Planet

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by Lonely Planet  · 233pp  · 61,033 words

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future

by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson  · 26 Jun 2017  · 472pp  · 117,093 words

Lonely Planet Iceland (Travel Guide)

by Lonely Planet, Carolyn Bain and Alexis Averbuck  · 31 Mar 2015

Rough Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area

by Nick Edwards and Mark Ellwood  · 2 Jan 2009

Discardia: More Life, Less Stuff

by Dinah Sanders  · 7 Oct 2011  · 267pp  · 78,857 words

The Butcher's Guide to Well-Raised Meat: How to Buy, Cut, and Cook Great Beef, Lamb, Pork, Poultry, and More

by Joshua Applestone, Jessica Applestone and Alexandra Zissu  · 6 Jun 2011  · 363pp  · 11,523 words

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The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman

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Behind the cloud: the untold story of how Salesforce.com went from idea to billion-dollar company--and revolutionized an industry

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Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism

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Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food: A Grocer's Guide to Shopping, Cooking & Creating Community Through Food

by Sam Mogannam and Dabney Gough  · 17 Oct 2011

Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society

by Eric Posner and E. Weyl  · 14 May 2018  · 463pp  · 105,197 words

My Custom Van: And 50 Other Mind-Blowing Essays That Will Blow Your Mind All Over Your Face

by Michael Ian Black  · 14 Jul 2008  · 144pp  · 47,632 words

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by Lonely Planet, Virginia Maxwell and Nicola Williams  · 1 Dec 2013  · 874pp  · 154,810 words

The Most Human Human: What Talking With Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive

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Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

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Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI

by Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson  · 15 Jan 2018  · 523pp  · 61,179 words

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Hunger: The Oldest Problem

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Smart Machines: IBM's Watson and the Era of Cognitive Computing (Columbia Business School Publishing)

by John E. Kelly Iii  · 23 Sep 2013  · 118pp  · 35,663 words

Information: A Very Short Introduction

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A Book for Her

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Team Human

by Douglas Rushkoff  · 22 Jan 2019  · 196pp  · 54,339 words

The Participation Revolution: How to Ride the Waves of Change in a Terrifyingly Turbulent World

by Neil Gibb  · 15 Feb 2018  · 217pp  · 63,287 words

Drink?: The New Science of Alcohol and Your Health

by David Nutt  · 9 Jan 2020

Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam

by Vivek Ramaswamy  · 16 Aug 2021  · 344pp  · 104,522 words

Rummage: A History of the Things We Have Reused, Recycled and Refused To Let Go

by Emily Cockayne  · 15 Aug 2020

Lights Out in Wonderland

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Food Intolerances: Fructose Malabsorption, Lactose and Histamine Intolerance

by Michael Zechmann and Genny Masterman  · 30 Apr 2013

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by Lonely Planet

Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

by Reeves Wiedeman  · 19 Oct 2020  · 303pp  · 100,516 words

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by Lonely Planet

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The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider

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by Lonely Planet, Jessica Lee, Joe Bindloss and Josephine Quintero  · 1 Feb 2018

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Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America

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Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

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The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy

by David Gelles  · 30 May 2022  · 318pp  · 91,957 words

Lost at Sea: Poverty and Paradise Collide at the Edge of America

by Joe Kloc  · 14 Apr 2025  · 249pp  · 71,929 words

The Cheapskate Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of Americans Living Happily Below Their Means

by Jeff Yeager  · 8 Jun 2010  · 189pp  · 64,571 words

Mattering: The Secret to Building a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose

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Googled: The End of the World as We Know It

by Ken Auletta  · 1 Jan 2009  · 532pp  · 139,706 words

Fodor's Hawaii 2013

by Fodor's  · 22 Jul 2012

How to Be Black

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Frommer's England 2011: With Wales

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ZeroMQ

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Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto

by Mark Helprin  · 19 Apr 2009  · 272pp  · 83,378 words

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Dear Fatty

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The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy

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The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics

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The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy

by Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz  · 4 Nov 2016  · 374pp  · 97,288 words

City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

by Catie Marron  · 11 Apr 2016  · 195pp  · 58,462 words

Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation

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The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--And How We Must Adapt

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Austin Like a Local

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Nadiya's British Food Adventure

by Nadiya Hussain  · 14 Jun 2017  · 247pp  · 61,183 words

Inner Entrepreneur: A Proven Path to Profit and Peace

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The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar Scandal

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Secrets of the Sprakkar

by Eliza Reid  · 15 Jul 2021

The Taste of Empire: How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World

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Built on a Lie: The Rise and Fall of Neil Woodford and the Fate of Middle England’s Money

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Magic Internet Money: A Book About Bitcoin

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Practical Anarchism: A Guide for Daily Life

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by Dk Eyewitness  · 22 Dec 2022  · 157pp  · 39,207 words

Pivot: A Story of Dropping the Ball, Picking It Up Again, and Turning Things Around.

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