Low Impact

In Australia, George Monbiot isn’t exactly a household name. In fact, I’ve yet to run into any of my colleagues who even recognise the name. Until I picked up a copy of “Heat” at my local bookstore, I’d never heard of him either so I really wasn’t sure what to expect from this densely packed book.

The theme behind the book is simple - Monbiot, a regular writer for The Guardian newspaper in the UK, contends that the science is clear that we need to cut our emissions by 90% by 2030 to prevent dangerous climate change, and he proceeds to analyse the different areas of our lives to determine if such a cut… Continue reading

A friend pointed me to this Triple J web page carrying an MP3 of an interview with Tim Flannery on climate change.

Professor Tim Flannery was named as Australian of the Year in 2007, largely due to his work in raising the profile of environmental issues. He has been vocal in pointing out the damage that climate change could bring, as well as promoting the importance of society taking steps to reduce our carbon emissions.

In the interview linked above, Professor Flannery discusses the impact of recent findings that CO2 levels have increased much faster than earlier forecasts.  Its interesting stuff, if a little sobering.

Its not a long interview, and its well worth a listen. If you find… Continue reading

There have been a lot of books published lately that aim to provide a quick and easy introduction to environmental issues. They perform a valuable function in making information about sustainable living accessible and easy to understand. The flip side is that in many cases, they don’t have much detail - should you happen to get involved in a workplace debate with your resident climate change skeptic, you may quickly get out of your depth!

“Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy”, by Dr Mark Diesendorf takes a different tack altogether.

This is a book crammed with tables, graphs, figures, and summaries of countless reports… Continue reading