Sunday, December 16, 2007

How to live a low-carbon life - Holiday green gift guide for book lovers - part 9

Today it's rainy and cold (at least in Newark, DE), just the perfect weather to cuddle with a good green book and also to recommend on one :-).

I'm happy to present you with part 9 of Eco-Libris blog's holiday green gift guide, the guide that will help you find the best green books to give as gifts this holiday season. Today we have the pleasure to bring you a recommendation of Adam Vaughan of SmartPlanet.com on a great new book that is will guide you how to reduce your carbon footprint.

Adam Vaughan is a green consumer journalist who edits
SmartPlanet.com and blogs at thegreenguy.co.uk.

Adam's recommendation for this holiday's gift is:

How to Live a Low-Carbon Life: The Individuals Guide to Stopping Climate Change

Author:
Chris Goodball

Publisher: Earthscan Publications Ltd.

Published in: 2007

What it is about: A handbook for cutting your carbon footprint and bills -written by a former director at consumer champion
Which?. All the green choices consider the accompanying cost, so in the case of a hybrid Prius, Goodall concludes that its £18K price means you’re paying £350 per tonne of CO2 the car saves. Which he thinks is too much.

When it comes to motoring he also does the maths and concludes car clubs like Streetcar and Zipcar are better news than hydrogen cars and biofuel vehicles. This book has bags of authority, and nicely couples personal anecdotes (his allotment) with table after table of hard-headed maths, saving you doing the tedious sums yourself.

The occasional slip into academic language (“replacing labour with energy is one of the primary engines of economic growth”) will turn off some readers, but for most people this’ll make for a rewarding and inspiring read.

Why it's a great gift: Because it’s ideal for anyone at the early stage of greening up their life when you want the facts, and you want a cash-saving incentive to help you get motivated. Goodall’s book has a sufficient depth of detail to help your giftee make decisions and shopping choices to cut their carbon emissions, instead of general and ultimately unhelpful advice like “drive less”, “use less energy” or “shop greener.”

Thank you Adam for a great recommendation! If you want to learn more on the book's topic, please check out Chris Goodall's
lowcarbonlife.net, a website with the single purpose of helping individuals in the UK and elsewhere to do something about greenhouse gas emissions. You can also read on a student that spent a week following Chris Goodall’s advice.

And just a reminder, here are the other recommendations we had so far on our guide:
Part 1 - The Man who Planted Trees by Jean Giono
Part 2 - Home Work : Handbuilt Shelter by Lloyd Kahn
Part 3 - The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau
Part 4 - The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
Part 5 - Deep Economy by Bill McKibben
Part 6 - The Armchair Environmentalist by Karen Christensen
Part 7 - Worldchanging - A user's guide for the 21st century by Alex Steffen (Editor), Al Gore (Foreword), Bruce Sterling (Introduction)
Part 8 - How to live off-grid by Nick Rosen

The whole guide can be found here - http://www.ecolibris.net/holiday_guide.asp.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: a great green gift for the holidays!

Now you can find on our website two special offers for the holidays - holiday greeting cards and holiday certificate gifts.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Carbon Free Too!
Recent efforts into Hydrogen Fuel research have uncovered an improved method for creating hydrogen gas - the process utilizes microbial fuel cells to produce carbon-neutral hydrogen with *nearly 300% more energy than current procedures.