Description
Book SynopsisCould the race to de-carbonize our energy systems be leading us closer to environmental disaster?Why did biology choose carbon, in a variety of compounds, as its energy carrier and storage substance? From the smallest life forms, through multicellular organisms, and up to whole ecosystems, this economy of carbon compounds is fundamentally sustainable. Yet today, many are working to expunge carbon-based energy carriers from human economies, replacing them with solutions based on other elements and minerals. In The Decarbonization Delusion, independent scientist and writer Andrew Moore shows that the race to decarbonize is leading us further down the road to environmental degradation. Instead of banishing carbon, Moore argues that we should look to life on Earth, which has used carbon in highly sustainable ways for 3.5 billion years, as a model for how humans can use carbon sustainably.The Decarbonization Delusion begins by discussing carbon''s role in the inception of the universe and i
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Foreword Chapter 1: What carbon "does" in the universe - From the first stars to life on Earth Chapter 2: The carbon economy of nutrition and food production - Getting out of control in most respects Chapter 3: Sources and sinks - Where carbon compounds accumulate on Earth, and what they do there Chapter 4: Fuels, efficiency, and emissions - Understanding carbon-based energy carriers in the larger picture of sustainability Chapter 5: The call to "decarbonize" - Public perception, hard-to-abate carbon-positives, and hard-to-achieve carbon-negatives Chapter 6: Decarbonizing the car - Trading off CO2 against larger environmental problems? Chapter 7: A carbonaceous, biology-inspired recipe for sensible and environmentally-conscious energy economies List of figures References Index of topics
