Product Description: How to harness the great forces of capitalism to save the world from catastrophe.
The forecasts are grim and time is running out, but that's not the end of the story. In this book, Fred Krupp, longtime president of Environmental Defense Fund, brings a stirring and hopeful call to arms: We can solve global warming. And in doing so we will build the new industries, jobs, and fortunes of the twenty-first century.
In these pages the reader will encounter the bold innovators and investors who are reinventing energy and the ways we use it. Among them: a frontier impresario who keeps his ice hotel frozen all summer long with the energy of hot springs; a utility engineer who feeds smokestack gases from coal-fired plants to voracious algae, then turns them into fuel; and a tribe of Native Americans, for two thousand years fishermen in the roughest Pacific waters, who are now harvesting the fierce power of the waves themselves.
These entrepreneurs are poised to remake the world's biggest business and save the planet—if America's political leaders give them a fair chance to compete.
Great book to improve understanding of the energy debate This book details the global crisis stemming from our energy usage and the related carbon emissions, and pushes cap and trade standards/policy as the optimal solution. Although the primary concern here is the environment, the economic & defense implications are also clear. Chapter by chapter, it delves into various alternative sources of cleaner energy by detailing accounts of multiple entrepreneurs and scientists in each field. The science gets a little technical for a layman at times, but I learned enough as I read to keep me going. Overall, I am much more informed for having read it, and hopeful that some of these new technologies will improve the future.
Alternative Energy Information Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming, is an excellent book and should be read by all Americans. It gives a good overview of the different types of alternative energy sources. It is a valuable resource for all of us to better understand the issues surrounding energy and global warming.
Great Information Thank you for this book and the knowledge about what is actually being done about reinventing energy and kudos to environmentalists and scientists. We should impeach all of our senators and reps, not to mention Bush and CHaney and get some real, honest people in charge of our `world'.
Fascinating read that provides hope The shear volume of emerging technologies described in this book is astounding and inspiring. It quickly becomes apparent that there are no more excuses for continuing our business-as-usual fossil fuel economy. There are so many clean energy solutions right on the brink of success. All they need are the right incentives and investments. A strong and compelling argument is made for a carbon cap-and-trade system, which would go a long way in helping to achieve a meaningful reduction in greenhouse gases and the migration to a clean (and cheaper) energy future. This needs to happen now and it should be the first priority of the new administration. I highly recommend this book.
Good introduction to renewable energy alternatives (with one thing missing)
Earth: The Sequel The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming by Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund, and Miriam Horn, is a good place to acquaint yourself with many of the alternative energy technologies currently under development. The style is easy to read and Krupp and Horn do a good job of explaining the complexities of a given technology in simple, easy-to-understand language. The focus is on future technologies that, in many cases, are still not proven, i.e. biofuels from algae, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).
The book's one notable flaw is that there is virtually no discussion of wind technology. In one sense this may be good news given Krupp's enthusiasm for new technology. Perhaps he regards wind as too simple and well established to merit detailed discussion in a book dedicated to complicated technical solutions to the problems posed by fossil fuels. Nonetheless, it's a curious omission.
The authors describe in detail a number of ongoing alternative-energy projects and the scientist-entrepreneurs who are developing them. Attention is paid to the challenges faced by these entrepreneurs in technology development, permitting and arranging the financing that they need to make their projects a reality.
At the end of the book, the authors discuss the policy changes they believe it will be necessary to implement if these projects are to succeed, chief of which is the enactment of some form of cap and trade program. They also briefly revisit some of the options already discussed, this time with a more critical eye, (I suspect the last chapters were written quite a bit later than the first ones) particularly as regards ethanol and hydrogen, both of which can now be clearly seen to have been way overhyped.