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The Blueprint: Averting Global Collapse
 
 

The Blueprint: Averting Global Collapse [Kindle Edition]

Daniel Rirdan
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

Print List Price: £12.95
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Product Description

Review

From Kirkus Reviews

“Rirdan’s prescriptive nonfiction debut provides suggestions to ensure the planet’s continued environmental health. The author sets forth his plan for salvation, ambitiously addressing every major threat to the environment: climate change, deforestation, overfishing, wetlands drainage and excess consumption. His scope is broader than most environmentalist writers, including Al Gore in his seminal book on climate change....Rirdan’s thorough, readable treatment of the questions society must confront makes this book an essential addition to any environmentalist’s reading list.”

Review

“Books and websites may tout “ten easy ways to save the planet”....The way to avoid the catast­rophe that confronts us is not going to be easy or simple, but urgently imperative. For all who care about the future for our children and our species, Rirdan’s book must be read so we can follow his recommendations. We have no choice and time is terrifyingly short.” —David Suzuki, Ph.D., award-winning scientist and environmentalist author

“This book is filled with interesting ideas—it will get you thinking in new directions!” —Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth, founder of 350.org

“The Blueprint is an epic analysis of the world perched on the cliff of catastrophe. Rirdan’s first stab is brilliant, innovative, and radical. Don’t dismiss it as utopian. Join the conversation. Prove that homo sapiens is not a failed species. Secure the future.” —Niels Schonbeck, Professor of Chemistry at Metropolitan State University of Denver

Product Description

We are faced with an impending calamity that threatens to bankrupt the planetary ecosystem and with it much of the manmade world. In this book, Rirdan submits a plan that truly goes the distance: a highly detailed, planetary-wide blueprint that lays out a new course for our technological and industrial engines. It calls for sweeping adjustments in the way every person thinks and lives. Rirdan takes existing key stressors—from climate change to land degradation to fossil fuel shortages—that are afflicting the planet, and offers solutions that put its survival at the center. The plan is grounded in over five hundred peer-reviewed articles, communication with scores of other top experts, advanced computations, and simulations. Rirdan offers immediately employable designs that lay down new paths for our economy, technology, industry, and politics. The plan includes renewables that in tandem can provide 24/7 power for the entire electrical grid; a radically altered economy, based on regenerative management of existing resources; and the use of rotational, intensive grazing of livestock as part of the effort to rewild nature. Furthermore, the book illustrates why a carbon neutral economy is inadequate at this late stage and introduces a practical plan to capture hundreds of billions of tons of carbon from the air over the span of a few decades. The author writes clearly and comprehensively, carefully exploring the logistics and infrastructure changes required in moving forward. The Blueprint is a call to arms, an argument for remaking the world and reclaiming the future for our children.


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Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 3932 KB
  • Print Length: 483 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 098496200X
  • Publisher: Corinno Press (16 July 2012)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B008MBG094
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • X-Ray: Not Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #525,920 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Food for thought 2 July 2012
Format:Paperback
If you're starved for food for thought, The Blueprint is a royal dish.

As the years go by, environmental problems are only getting worse. We really seem to be in for a major eco-disaster. Rirdan's book provides more details on possible threats and - unusually - follows up with suggested solutions.

As you can probably imagine, solving global environmental dilemmas requires something more than minor attitude adjustment. Rirdan designed a comprehensive plan for a total, dramatic world overhaul. The number of new technologies presented in his design is astonishing. Additionally, each new invention is followed with detailed analysis of its usefulness, cost, raw materials availability etc.

Obviously, a dramatic change of global infrastructure will not be possible without concurrent change of social, political and economical systems. Here again solutions and ideas are provided.

The technological solutions from Rirdan's plan convinced me, but I can't shake off scepticism as to the social aspects of his design. I judged their implementation unlikely or impossible although for the sake of our lovely planet, I wish I was wrong. Time will tell.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Rirdan's book ought to be required reading for all those who seek a future for their grandchildren and future generations. While some may find his radical approach to political, technological, societal and economic change idealistic and improbable, if we collectively look deeply into our planet in crisis we can find no "compromise" that doesn't come at a cost much too high for the urgency of our times. Our political systems have paid lip service to the necessary changes for planetary conservation, while promoting none other than Big Money and corporations that seek to further plunder and pillage what little resources we have left to support a population that will be pushing 10 billion by the end of this century.

Like frogs patiently boiling to death in the pot of water called earth, we sit around pretending that life can go on ad infinitum at the rate we are destroying remaining ecosystems one by one. Or perhaps we are more aware and have no idea what to do apart from recycling, insulating our homes, and buying green products. We know this is no where near enough, but what to do? Here, finally, is a guide to a complete planetary revival:

In a broad sweep that has left no dark corner un-investigated, Rirdan presents us with a bold, brutally honest, and unapologetic portrait of what is left of our planet's current land, sea and climate environments. But instead of leaving us horror-struck, shocked and immobilized, he quickly guides us through many chapters of practical solutions that can be immediately implemented. Through "The Blueprint" Rirdan has accomplished a feat previously not attempted: he has taken technologies that currently already exist and applied them on a global scale. Using computations, analysis and many interactions with experts in a variety of fields, he shows meticulously and clearly how these technologies may be applied to save our collapsing ecosystems, including achieving not only a neutral but a negative carbon footprint, the use of solar power towers on a grand scale to provide almost complete power to the North American grid, mass transportation solutions that include electric cars and trains as well as nuclear-powered ships, the rewilding of nature, a simple and compassionate human population control and reduction plan, and much more.

Of course, we realize that current political and economic paradigms would never embrace such radical transformation. So Rirdan concludes with a portrayal of a future we might still be able to achieve should we choose at a grassroots level to leave these systems where they belong--in a past that could be designated a disgrace to the human spirit and potential in partnership to the planet--and forge ahead with what needs to be done.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Valuable, but only part of the picture 19 Oct 2012
Format:Kindle Edition
This book is forthrightly honest in describing many aspects of the syndrome we must change. However, it isn't a blueprint: it doesn't identify practical mechanisms for implementing change, & so risks leaving the reader in despair. Nevertheless, I think this is a useful contribution to our quest for a viable future.
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