Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution

Download or read book Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution written by Kolya Abramsky and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2010-08-01 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the earth’s carrying capacity continues to be stressed, the question of renewable energies is no longer whether, but when and by whom. Climate change and peak oil have hit the mainstream. Kolya Abramsky’s collection maps the world’s energy sector and shows how addressing these challenges necessitates an analysis of our economic priorities. Solutions must include massive shifts in our use of technologies and, most importantly, a democratization of the economic landscape based on broad new coalitions. With four distinct sections—Oil Makes the World Go 'Round; From Petrol to Renewable Energies; Struggle Over Choice of Energy Sources and Technologies; and Possible Futures—and over fifty essays from approximately twenty countries, there’s nothing like Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution to address our global energy crisis. The different chapters bring together a wealth of organizational and analytical experience from across the different branches of the energy sector, both conventional and renewable. Contributors include the following organizations and individuals: China Labour Bulletin (Hong Kong/China), Energy Watch Group (Germany), Focus on the Global South (Thailand), Integrated Sustainable Energy and Ecological Development (India), Public Services International Research Unit (United Kingdom), World Information Service on Energy (Netherlands), Preben Maegaard, and Hermann Scheer. Kolya Abramsky is a former secretariat of the World Wind Energy Institute, based in Denmark, a pioneering country in renewable energy. He is currently a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society in Austria, and is pursuing a PhD in sociology at State University of New York, Binghamton.

Download or read book Ignition written by Jonathan Isham and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The evidence is irrefutable: global warming is real. While the debate continues about just how much damage spiking temperatures will wreak, we know the threat to our homes, health, and even way of life is dire. So why isn’t America doing anything? Where is the national campaign to stop this catastrophe? It may lie between the covers of this book. Ignition brings together some of the world’s finest thinkers and advocates to jump start the ultimate green revolution. Including celebrated writers like Bill McKibben and renowned scholars like Gus Speth, as well as young activists, the authors draw on direct experience in grassroots organization, education, law, and social leadership. Their approaches are various, from building coalitions to win political battles to rallying shareholders to change corporate behavior. But they share a belief that private fears about deadly heat waves and disastrous hurricanes can translate into powerful public action. For anyone who feels compelled to do more than change their light bulbs or occasionally carpool, Ignition is an essential guide. Combining incisive essays with success stories and web resources, the book helps readers answer the most important question we all face: “What can I do?”

Download or read book Taming the Sun written by Varun Sivaram and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How solar could spark a clean-energy transition through transformative innovation—creative financing, revolutionary technologies, and flexible energy systems. Solar energy, once a niche application for a limited market, has become the cheapest and fastest-growing power source on earth. What's more, its potential is nearly limitless—every hour the sun beams down more energy than the world uses in a year. But in Taming the Sun, energy expert Varun Sivaram warns that the world is not yet equipped to harness erratic sunshine to meet most of its energy needs. And if solar's current surge peters out, prospects for replacing fossil fuels and averting catastrophic climate change will dim. Innovation can brighten those prospects, Sivaram explains, drawing on firsthand experience and original research spanning science, business, and government. Financial innovation is already enticing deep-pocketed investors to fund solar projects around the world, from the sunniest deserts to the poorest villages. Technological innovation could replace today's solar panels with coatings as cheap as paint and employ artificial photosynthesis to store intermittent sunshine as convenient fuels. And systemic innovation could add flexibility to the world's power grids and other energy systems so they can dependably channel the sun's unreliable energy. Unleashing all this innovation will require visionary public policy: funding researchers developing next-generation solar technologies, refashioning energy systems and economic markets, and putting together a diverse clean energy portfolio. Although solar can't power the planet by itself, it can be the centerpiece of a global clean energy revolution. A Council on Foreign Relations Book

Download or read book Visionary Pragmatism written by Romand Coles and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-28 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As neoliberal capitalism destroys democracy, commonwealth, and planetary ecology, the need for radically rethinking and generating transformative responses to these catastrophes is greater than ever. Given that, Romand Coles presents an invigorating new mode of scholarship and political practice he calls "visionary pragmatism." Coles explores the profound interrelationships among everyday micropractices of grassroots politics and pedagogy, institutional transformation, and political protest through polyfocal lenses of political and social theory, neuroscience research, complex systems theory, and narratives of his cutting-edge action research. Visionary Pragmatism offers a theory of revolutionary cooptation that, in part, selectively employs practices and strategies of the dominant order to radically alter the coordinates of power and possibility. Underscoring the potential, vitality, and power of emerging democratic practices to change the world, Visionary Pragmatism's simultaneous theoretical rigor and grounding in actual political and ecological practices provokes and inspires new ways of cocreating knowledge and action in dark times.

Download or read book Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution written by Kolya Abramsky and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With over 50 chapters written by contributors from approximately 20 countries, Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution forms a collective map of the most dynamic struggles within the energy sector.

Download or read book Energy and Ethics written by Benjamin K. Sovacool and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-07-08 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Benjamin K. Sovacool applies concepts from justice and ethics theory to contemporary energy problems, and illustrates particular solutions to those problems with examples and case studies from around the world.

Download or read book Global Capitalism and Climate Change written by Hans A. Baer and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in its second edition, Global Capitalism and Climate Change: The Need for an Alternative World System examines anthropogenic climate change in the context of global capitalism, a political economy that emphasizes profit-making, is committed to on-going economic growth, results in massive social inequality, fosters a treadmill of production and consumption, and is heavily reliant on fossil fuels. Looking ahead, Hans A. Baer explores the systemic changes necessary to create a more socially just, democratic, and environmentally sustainable world system capable of moving humanity toward a safer climate. This book is recommended for readers interested in anti-systemic efforts, including eco-anarchism, eco-feminism, the de-growth perspective, Indigenous voices, and the climate justice movement.