- Paperback: 360 pages
- Publisher: Routledge; New edition edition (30 April 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0415931029
- ISBN-13: 978-0415931021
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.6 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 830,470 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
| |||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in Carbon War for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"A racy account of a key time for the environmental movement, when the battle between big-time, carbon-belching corporations and adamant greens was at its hottest . . . powerful and highly readable". -- New Scientist
Product Description
Excessive burning of oil, gas, and coal is raising our planet's thermostat to unacceptable levels-a problem which as already resulted in increased natural catastrophes: storms, floods, droughts, and fire. Yet big oil companies have repeatedly hijacked efforts to slow global carbon emissions.
"The Carbon War" is a major call-to-arms for the safety of our planet. Throughout the last decade, Jeremy Leggett, a distinguished scientist at Oxford University and former director for Green peace, has worked doggedly to alert human kind to the threat of ecological catastrophe, He contents that the main enemies-Arab countries, the United States government, oil companies, and automobile manufacturers-have used junk science, an army of lobbyists, and outright lies to ensure that their profits stayed safer than the planet's future.
With the grace of a novelist and the precision of a scientist, Leggett recount his maddening interactions with scientific councils, international governmental meetings, and business leaders. Still, despite the government's backpedaling on eco-promises, the media's laziness, and fossil fuel company rhetoric, the transition to solar energy is coming, he argues. Called the "best book yet about the politics of global worming" by John Gribbin the "London Sunday Times," "The Carbon War" is a riveting read and a critical contribution to the fight for sustainable energy.
"The Carbon War" is a major call-to-arms for the safety of our planet. Throughout the last decade, Jeremy Leggett, a distinguished scientist at Oxford University and former director for Green peace, has worked doggedly to alert human kind to the threat of ecological catastrophe, He contents that the main enemies-Arab countries, the United States government, oil companies, and automobile manufacturers-have used junk science, an army of lobbyists, and outright lies to ensure that their profits stayed safer than the planet's future.
With the grace of a novelist and the precision of a scientist, Leggett recount his maddening interactions with scientific councils, international governmental meetings, and business leaders. Still, despite the government's backpedaling on eco-promises, the media's laziness, and fossil fuel company rhetoric, the transition to solar energy is coming, he argues. Called the "best book yet about the politics of global worming" by John Gribbin the "London Sunday Times," "The Carbon War" is a riveting read and a critical contribution to the fight for sustainable energy.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
My first sight of the Berlin Wall etched itself on my mind for life. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
My first sight of the Berlin Wall etched itself on my mind for life. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good references for the new comers,
By A Customer
This review is from: Carbon War (Paperback)
The author, Dr. Jeremy Leggett, used a diary approach to describe his experience as a Greenpeace campaigner and lobbyist to flight for the Climate Change which is the number one threat to the human nature. It is an extraordinary experience. He traveled around the world to attend meeting related to climate change. A good reference for the new comers. There are eleven chapters. The highlight of each chapter was from its title. However, sometimes it was difficult to find the highlight inside the chapters because of the diary approach. In Prologue, the author gave a brief summary how he 'transformed' from an 'instructor of oilman' to an environmentalist, and then a solar-energy entrepreneur. He has worked in the Royal School of Mines at the Imperial College. He has trained hundreds petroleum geologists and petroleum engineers. His research area was so called 'blue skies' related to the geological history of oceans. If Dr. Leggett revises the book, I would like to know more his thoughts when he was In the first six chapters, the author described the atmosphere of the 1990 IPCC meeting to indicate the early warning signal. He pointed out that there should be no difference between the environmental security threat assessment and any threat assessment involving military security. During a geological community conference the author told an 'oil-man' speaker about the basic arithmetic to the carbon cycle and the price of oil. At the end, he found out that the 'oil-man' was his former student. I was impressed by the author's honest description. I recommend we, people, should always remember the following line from the Prime Minister Paeniu (Tuvalu) during the press conference in the Earth Summit. 'There is someone up there who will judge us. We will all be judged...' Then the author found out that those big insurance business did worry about the global warming. I fully agreed with his opinion which when one looked at extreme event as a whole, it certain that the numbers of catastrophes will continue to rise. There were a few weather-related records breaking during 1992-1993. Billions dollars lost from natural disasters. 'Burning by Warming' was given by the headline of an article in a magazine. In the same week, he learnt one of the most depressing scientific discovery. I agreed with the author it was a very bad news for us. When he visited Tokyo, Japan was forced to import water because of drought problem. Oil refineries had also imported water. I agreed with the author's the bad cycle explanation: importing water; producing oil; burning oil; more drought; to force importing more water. In the last five chapters, the author described that the hundred-plus mayors from 65 countries at the Municipal Leader's Summit on Climate Change. In the Epilogue, the author sent a reminder to readers once more about the weather-related catastrophes. The solution is 'deep cuts in greenhouse gas emission' and the solar energy has a huge future. Final line in the book, 'The only questions left unanswered is, will it come in time?' I strongly believe that we must take actions and do our bit in order to make it come in time. I really enjoyed to read the book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Carbon war,
By
This review is from: Carbon War (Paperback)
This is a good place to start if you're interested in Climate Change and how politics works surrounding this issue. This looks at how Climate change was debated at the Kyoto summit and how oil companies and governments act in relation to this issue. It is fairly easy to read and although a little dry in places, it is well worth persevering with. I recommend other books by this author as he has a genuine interest in this issue and is able to put it across in an accessible way.
Feel free to check out my blog which can be found on my profile page.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.7 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews) 12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Climate Change and Politics,
By Boris Bangemann "boyse" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Carbon War (Paperback)
Jeremy Leggett's "The Carbon War" is the story of how the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 came about, and how companies in the business of thermal fuel (coal, oil, gas) - Leggett calls them the "Carbon Club" - tried to derail the process of setting enforceable goals for lowering greenhouse gas emissions. It is also the story of how self-interest, not surprisingly, overrides the general interest; how the United States, home to some of the largest oil and gas multinationals and the world's premier carbon dioxide emitting nation, sided with the Carbon Club; how Australia, the world's largest coal exporter, joined forces with the United States.
The Kyoto Protocol will come into force on 16 February 2005. It has been ratified by more than 55 of its signatory countries. The United States, led by George W. Bush, however, walked out on the agreement in March 2001. The fact of global warming is hardly disputable. The five hottest years recorded since 1880 were 1998, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2001, with 1998 having been the hottest. Whether the warming effect is man-made is still subject to discussion. But a full three quarters of scientists working in the field of climate change make the burning of fossil fuels responsible for the recorded increase in temperature. The emission of carbon dioxide could be easily reduced if power could be economically generated by photovoltaic solar energy (PV). However, Adam Smith's invisible hand won't do the job in this particular case. It is a Catch-22 situation because PV will only be economically viable if the PV cells are mass-produced, but they are not mass-produced because people can't afford today's expensive PV products. This is a situation where government would have a proper role to fulfill - to jump-start a process that would help the common good where the mechanics of the market do not work. But unfortunately most governments do not care to do that. Already in 1997, Leggett notes, "every country had its companies lost in skepticism about climate change. But in the USA the scale of the collective denial was unique." (264) Eight years later it is not much different. This denial comes at a cost, though. Not only the cost of becoming more and more isolated from global trends and losing the moral authority the USA enjoyed after Roosevelt and Truman established the country as a world power, but also an economic cost. State of the art ecological cars that really sell are not made by GM or Ford these days, but by Japan's Toyota. World-class oil companies with a comprehensive environmental policy are not ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco of the US, but BP and Shell of Europe. Jeremy Leggett, by the way, founded his own company to promote and sell PV technology after he realized, with a certain bitterness, that his lobbying efforts to get emission limits agreed were not getting anywhere. 8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A clear, informative outline that reads like a novel,
By "germanac" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Carbon War (Paperback)
This is an excellent book which gives a very clear and readable outline of how global negotiations on climate change have been carried through over a decade and how they have been influenced behind the scenes by powerful lobby groups which had a vested interest in inaction. The author describes how a few of these groups later decided to shift away from their earlier position, a move which had a tremendous impact on the fate of the Kyoto Protocol, enabling it to move forward.The book has something in it for everyone. Despite the very complex topic and the breadth of information it contains, which can cater as well for specialists as for the layman, it reads like a novel. Leggett has successfully managed in the unlikely task to cover in one book: the evolving scientific findings on climate change; international politics and historical events which had an impact on negotiations; the growing role of non-governmental organisations; weather events and other environmental impacts of climate change in the past decade, and, crucially, the business and industry perspective, with its changing moods. In the background, Leggett also provides the reader with some information on his personal life choices and beliefs, which emanate a certain degree of optimism. This crucially turns the book into a motivating, albeit realistic, read. This book should be read not only by those who have an interest in climate change. Anyone currently working in the energy sector, for example, could benefit from knowing more about how the industry has influenced climate change negotiations. In addition, the decision by George W. Bush to walk out of the Kyoto Protocol after his election will seem hardly surprising after reading this book, which can also help to put into perspective the current debate in the US on energy and climate policy.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Front row seat,
By Betsy Mendelsohn - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Carbon War (Paperback)
The author participated as an NGO spokesperson at many international meetings about CO2's contribution to climate change. His chronological treatment imposes order on the confusing, repeated climate prep meetings and negotiations of the 1990s. It was very helpful to read an unapologetic, informed account of these negotiations, replete with the hope & despair many felt about the participation of U.S. negotiators 1992-2000.
I bought it for my husband for his birthday, then proceeded to read it night after night until it was done. Leggett's first person accounts engaged and entertained me, and I admired his ability to switch between his memories of his own involvement and his descriptions of the state of science and policy at a given time. The sketches of the opposition always were worth reading, and I kept wondering whether he'd ever get really mean. As a coda to reading the book, one could visit the website of OPEC to read their short policy statement on global climate change; see their FAQs number 20, an interesting read. |
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
