The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions for Everyone - Softcover

Roop, Heidi

 
9781632174147: The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions for Everyone
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1632174146 ISBN 13: 9781632174147
Verlag: Sasquatch Books, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

“What can I do, personally, about the climate crisis? . . . Ask yourself, what are you passionate about? Using this passion may motivate you to help shape the future of your community.”
—The New York Times Climate Forward newsletter

This must-have book shows us WHY we need to take action now to combat climate change and then, critically, HOW, through easy-to-understand language and fascinating infographics that offer each of us varied and doable solutions to the many challenges facing our planet.

As more focus is put on climate science, there is a need for each of us to learn how we can change our habits in our home, communities, and government to save our planet. Enter The Climate Action Handbook.

A visually stunning guide, it does what no other climate change book manages to do: it's approachable, digestible, and offers the average person ideas, options, and a roadmap for action. It also offers hope—often overlooked in climate change conversations. Climate actions can create near-instantaneous improvements in air quality and can offer ways to address societal inequities, green our communities, save money, and build local economies.

From food and fashion choices, rethinking travel, greening up our homes and gardens, to civic engagement and championing community climate planning, Dr. Heidi Roop shares 100 wide-ranging ways that readers from all walks of life can help move the needle in the right direction. 

Actions include:
• Cutting down on food waste
• Reducing your driving speed
• Voting in every election
• Using the cold-water cycle on your washing machine
• Supporting healthy soils in your gardens and community green spaces
• Engaging in local climate action planning
• Preparing an emergency kit for your home
• Deleting unused emails and online accounts
• Swapping out milk for nondairy alternatives like oat milk
• Opting for slower shipping whenever possible
• Regularly maintaining and clean your heating and cooling systems
• Engaging in climate conversations at work and at home
And many more!

Return to this invaluable resource again and again to discover a roadmap for action and much-needed hope. What will your climate journey look like?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

DR. HEIDI ROOP is the Director of the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership and an Assistant Professor of Climate Science and Extension Specialist at the University of Minnesota. Her research and Extension programs combine cutting-edge climate science and effective science communication to increase the use and integration of climate change information in decision-making at a range of scales—from city and state to national and international levels. Her climate science research takes her around the world from Antarctica to California to the shores of Lake Superior. She is also an affiliate assistant professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington, and serves as an expert advisor to organizations and agencies as they seek to build resilience to climate change.

JOSHUA M. POWELL is the author of The Pacific Crest Trail: A Visual Compendium. He works as a graphic designer and lives in the Inland Northwest with his wife and son.

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Preface
In 2015, 196 countries endorsed the Paris Agreement, committing to the goal of limiting global temperature rise to “well below” 2°C (3.6°F) and “pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C” (2.7°F) above pre-industrial levels (the mid- to late-1800s is commonly used as a reference point for pre-industrial conditions and is a baseline against which current temperatures are compared). If the rate of current warming continues, global average warming is likely to reach the 1.5°C target between 2030 and 2052--within the lifetime of most people alive today. With every increment of additional warming, the costs and challenges of climate impacts increase. The next decade is pivotal for climate action and for global society. What we choose to do--or not do--over the next several years will shape our collective climate-changed future for generations.

Limiting warming to 1.5°C can be achieved only if action is taken to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by around 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, and to net zero by 2050. Net zero means that the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) being produced is matched by the amount being removed, by activities that take it out of the atmosphere, like planting trees, and deploying technologies that remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

This all requires societal transformation and rapid implementation of ambitious greenhouse gas reduction measures. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for evaluating the science related to climate change, makes it clear that no single sector, action, or fuel type can provide the needed emission reductions to reach these targets. Limiting warming to 1.5°C will require largely phasing out coal use by midcentury, reducing CO2 emissions from industry by 75 to 90 percent by 2050 (relative to 2010), supplying most electricity from renewable energy sources like wind and solar, and significantly enhancing energy efficiency across all sectors, including in commercial buildings and homes.

Much of this work is underway, but reaching these goals means we must accelerate the pace and scale of our global climate work over the next 10 to 20 years. And while there is no question that this type of transformative change will require large-scale systemic changes, each and every one of us can show up in the conversations and actions needed to help meet these ambitious goals. Something you care about is at risk from climate change. We each need to learn about the local and global consequences of these changes and find ways, large and small, to engage in solutions.

This book is an attempt to outline just a few of the myriad ways that individuals from all walks of life and perspectives can better understand what climate change will mean for the things they care about, as well as to outline ways we can show up. This book represents a passion project meeting a practical need. I, too, wanted to know where there were opportunities for me to learn, engage, and act. I wanted to help to answer the question I hear daily: What can I do to help address climate change?

The climate actions presented here are an attempt to help paint a picture of the breadth, depth, and opportunity that abounds in the space of climate change solutions. Importantly, not all climate actions captured here are directly associated with emissions reductions; climate solutions aren’t only an emissions-related numbers game, and not all actions are easily quantifiable. This book intentionally doesn’t use a hierarchy or quantification of what actions are “best” or have the biggest ‘impact.” Other resources, like Project Drawdown, an award-winning climate nonprofit, paint a sophisticated, data-driven picture of climate solutions at scale. Some of those same solutions are here in this book, but so are actions like being a savvy consumer of climate information, becoming civically engaged, and participating in climate conversations. Some actions are costly; some are free. Some are time-intensive; some require a little forethought or reflection. All have value and represent some form of impact whether that is environmental, social or at the individual or collective scale.

Ultimately, the sections in this book are bite-size pieces to help us get our arms around a big, beautifully complex challenge. For each fact or statistic in this book, there were dozens more that weren’t able to fit. Each action or idea offers an entry point into a topic that might be of particular interest to you. Some might inspire you to think (and act!) in a different way. Others might just provide you with more knowledge around the impacts and consequences of climate change. There is a wealth of information available and numerous nuances for each topic. Each one could easily have become a book in its own right.

And this amount of information is growing every day as concern grows and solutions are developed or scaled. The data sources, in fact, seem infinite, and the calculus, facts, and figures are ever-evolving and changing. Even over the time it took to write this book, new research, poll results, and climate commitments were made. This will continue. I choose to see this as a sign that the climate change landscape is shifting and evolving to meet the challenge of the moment, with new interest and investments being made to work toward climate change. We are living through in a dynamic moment that will surely make it into history books.

Facts and figures don’t necessarily change hearts and minds, but people doing things can. And many of the people I interact with, from all different walks of life, are seeking more information to inform their unique climate solutions journey. They are often looking for more information about specific actions to inform themselves, but also to share in conversations with their family members, friends, and coworkers, and in their communities.

Let’s be clear, climate change will bring environmental, social, and cultural change. Our past emissions of greenhouse gases have committed us to change, but we still get to choose how much change we experience, and what kind. Human-caused climate change is already causing people to experience loss of property, loss of culture and identity, and loss of livelihoods. But embedded within many climate solutions are opportunities--opportunities to create a healthier, brighter future. Climate actions can create near-instantaneous improvements in air quality and can offer ways to address societal inequities, green our communities, save money, build local economies and jobs, and help develop or deepen relationships.

My hope is that something in the pages that follow will empower you to evaluate, engage, and act. How we engage and what we do may change day-to-day, month to month, or year to year, but what matters is that we do act and that we build and maintain momentum. We can do that by each doing some of the work as individuals and work with others to advocate for the systems-based changes we know are needed to decarbonize the world and build climate-ready communities. Together, we can help shape and create the future we want through actions big and small. At the end of the day, every action really can matter. We just have to act.


Action 15: Fly Less, Fly Economy
Commercial and freight aviation produces an estimated 2.5 percent of total global carbon dioxide emissions and 1.9 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions. However, aviation’s impact on the warming of the planet is higher, at around 3.5 percent, due to a complex set of factors including the production of water vapor, soot and sulfate aerosols, and increased cloudiness that are created by the formation of contrails. While these numbers may seem small,...

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Verlag
Sasquatch Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1632174146
ISBN 13 
9781632174147
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
272
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
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