Product Description

That climate change is happening is now all too clear. Many of us want to take action to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions. Yet the lack of a consolidated source of reliable information on how to calculate one’s individual emissions and the difficulty in assessing different options for effectiveness and cost savings has proven to be a major stumbling block. But personal actions to reduce carbon emissions, if replicated on a sufficient scale, might just save the planet.

How to Live a Low-Carbon Life provides the first comprehensive, one-stop reference guide to calculating individual carbon emissions and it lays out clear plans for how individuals can reduce their emissions. Covering all aspects of modern life from transport to home heating to food sources and the vexing issue of vacations, the book provides easy-to-use tables for conducting a personal lifestyle carbon audit.

Easy reference tables enable rapid carbon footprint calculations, and a companion website houses downloadable spreadsheets to facilitate a complete lifestyle carbon audit as well as up-to-the minute information on new products and carbon-reducing technologies.

This is the most comprehensive guide to calculating and reducing individual and home carbon emissions. It provides all the information needed for people and families to understand their impacts on the world’s climate. It gives us the information to enable us to adjust lifestyles and live a responsible life.

Written in an optimistic tone, How to Live a Low-Carbon Life shows how easy it is to take responsibility and reduce our personal carbon emissions.

Listen to Chris Goodall on NPR's Science Friday.  Click here to download the audio file.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #110767 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 326 pages

Robert Napier, Chief Executive WWF-UK
"Chris Goodall's thoroughly researched book sets out in detail how we can each help the planet pull back from the abyss - not through any high-powered international initiatives, but by ordinary individual actions in our daily lives. We ignore his advice at our peril."

About the Author
Chris Goodall is Chair of telecommunications company Dynmark International, a member of the UK Competition Commission and Utilities Appeal Panel, and the Green Party's Parliamentary Candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon. He is also a former Director of Which? Ltd.

Customer Reviews

Detailed home guide to helping the planet
Despite the strong evidence for global warming, neither industries nor governments are changing their assumption that the world has an inexhaustible supply of inexpensive fossil fuel. Instead, individuals will make the difference, because consumer desires fuel the business cycle. In chapters that cover daily activities such as home heating, cooking, travel and use of appliances, Chris Goodall explains how you can reduce your carbon emissions from an average of 12.5 tons per year to three. Though the book sometimes bogs down in an overabundance of information, charts and formulas, we recommend it to individuals and organizations who want to learn how they can make an immediate difference.

A guide for the socially responsible to reducing one's carbon emissions
Chris Goodall (Telecommunications chair of software company Dynmark International) presents How to Live a Low-Carbon Life: The Individual's Guide to Stopping Climate Change, a guide for the socially responsible to reducing one's carbon emissions and therefore aid in preventing global catastrophe. Chapters cover how to calculate one's carbon dioxide emissions and reduce them to 3 tonnes a year or less, the amount that the Earth can sustainably absorb per person. From home heating to lighting, appliances, car travel, air travel, means of cancelling out emissions, and much more, How to Live a Low-Carbon Life is thoroughly easy to use. "Anyone looking for energy efficiency should concentrate the search on the smaller fridge freezers. Going from a 300 litre capacity machine to a 400 litre will typically add about 60kWh/year to electricity consumption, so it makes sense to try to buy a moderately sized appliance." Highly recommended.

I found to be a good read but
This book has a lot of interesting fact and data, but they are all center on England and little is said about the USA and our energy use. I found the mathematical formulas and their process of think and conclusions about data to be the most interesting part of the book. I found to be a good read but was disappointed that all of the suggestions they made where to reform government to make it more environmental friendly. The book did show how our person choices have an impact but the book said that all real change had come from the government of course I disagree with this.