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Climate Change Begins at Home: Life on the Two-Way Street of Global Warming
by Dave Reay
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (2006-07-14)
ISBN: 0230007546
EAN: 9780230007543
Dewy Decimal #: 363.738747
Paperback: 224 pages
Edition: New edition
SKU: B456-1379
Condition: New
Comments: In stock - Immediate despatch from an efficient and professional leading British bookselling firm.
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Customer Reviews
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Everyone should read this book.
Rating  (5)
Date: 2006-11-02
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book despite it being the first book I've ever read on environmental issues. The book is written in a clear, catchy and humourous style. It is educational without patronising the reader. The author is realistic about what powers we have to make changes which can positively impact on the environment and offers good suggestions on what we can do. It is a must read for anyone who feels guilty about their contribution towards global warming. I finished reading this book feeling more positive and hopeful about the future.
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Keeping up with the Carbones
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-11-26
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
If anybody has packed more common sense into such a small space as David Reay has accomplished with this book, i've missed it. "Common sense" is the concept which supposedly governs our daily lives. However, somewhere along the way, there's been a slippage. Our lives, and that of our children, are under threat. Our common sense couldn't perceive the rapid rate of change occuring in the environment around us. Now, we must take back charge of the future. Reay isn't asking you to make drastic changes in your lifestyle to accomplish this. Instead, he demonstrates how small steps can improve our condition and make it sustainable for our children.The author's method is well suited to the task. He invents a "typical" family of four, the Carbones, who could be your neighbours. There are John and Kate, with their two boys. Later, Kate will be discovered pregnant with Lucy. Lucy will become a guiding example for choices leading to alternative futures. Reay outlines the daily lives of the Carbones. There's getting the boys to school, John and Kate to work, and the various side trips for groceries and the like. Grandma Carbone visits from her house across town. What contribution to greenhouses gases does this lifestyle make every day? Every year? What changes can and should be made? Or can this daily round continue without modification? Reay's answer to the last question is a resounding "No!". He provides numerous examples of visible and hidden costs that perhaps only a few of us recognise. Is your house one of the "uninsurable" residences? Insurance companies view climate change and sea level rise as inevitable and know the risks are too high for coverage. There are more direct considerations than insurance, however. What will your next automobile be? Reay suggests you review just what type of vehicle you really need. He favours the "dual-fuel" solution, since the overwhelming use of cars is local and urban. Can you resist the "upgrade" of your fridge to one that talks to you? If you need more space, is renovation more cost effective than shifting to a newer, larger residence? Finally, give thought to your workplace. How many lights, computers and other office appliances sitting there humming away drawing hydroelectric power for 24 hours per day, 365 days a year? What can you do about that? Reay asks a good many questions of us all. He provides the reasons for the questions. One major factor behind many of them is the hidden "embodied" resource cost. That new fridge or upgraded personal computer arrived manufactured. The components, case and other parts required mining or other processing. While we're on the subject of hidden costs, what are you paying in "food-miles" - the shipping of foodstuffs from distant places that might just as readily be grown locally? Reay's approach isn't preachy nor does he want you to don a hair shirt of guilt over your climate impact. He does, however, urge immediate consideration of what you can do to reduce that effect. The choices are all yours, not his. However, for you, your children and for the rest of us, it's important that you confront the issue and make the decisions. The Carbones considered them carefully and implemented them without significant lifestyle adjustment. Can you keep up with the Carbones? [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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Keeping up with the Carbones
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-11-24
7 out of 8 customers found this reveiw helpful
If anybody has packed more common sense into such a small space as David Reay has accomplished with this book, i've missed it. "Common sense" is the concept which supposedly governs our daily lives. However, somewhere along the way, there's been a slippage. Our lives, and that of our children, are under threat. Our common sense couldn't perceive the rapid rate of change occuring in the environment around us. Now, we must take back charge of the future. Reay isn't asking you to make drastic changes in your lifestyle to accomplish this. Instead, he demonstrates how small steps can improve our condition and make it sustainable for our children.The author's method is well suited to the task. He invents a "typical" family of four, the Carbones, who could be your neighbours. There are John and Kate, with their two boys. Later, Kate will be discovered pregnant with Lucy. Lucy will become a guiding example for choices leading to alternative futures. Reay outlines the daily lives of the Carbones. There's getting the boys to school, John and Kate to work, and the various side trips for groceries and the like. Grandma Carbone visits from her house across town. What contribution to greenhouses gases does this lifestyle make every day? Every year? What changes can and should be made? Or can this daily round continue without modification? Reay's answer to the last question is a resounding "No!". He provides numerous examples of visible and hidden costs that perhaps only a few of us recognise. Is your house one of the "uninsurable" residences? Insurance companies view climate change and sea level rise as inevitable and know the risks are too high for coverage. There are more direct considerations than insurance, however. What will your next automobile be? Reay suggests you review just what type of vehicle you really need. He favours the "dual-fuel" solution, since the overwhelming use of cars is local and urban. Can you resist the "upgrade" of your fridge to one that talks to you? If you need more space, is renovation more cost effective than shifting to a newer, larger residence? Finally, give thought to your workplace. How many lights, computers and other office appliances sitting there humming away drawing hydroelectric power for 24 hours per day, 365 days a year? What can you do about that? Reay asks a good many questions of us all. He provides the reasons for the questions. One major factor behind many of them is the hidden "embodied" resource cost. That new fridge or upgraded personal computer arrived manufactured. The components, case and other parts required mining or other processing. While we're on the subject of hidden costs, what are you paying in "food-miles" - the shipping of foodstuffs from distant places that might just as readily be grown locally? Reay's approach isn't preachy nor does he want you to don a hair shirt of guilt over your climate impact. He does, however, urge immediate consideration of what you can do to reduce that effect. The choices are all yours, not his. However, for you, your children and for the rest of us, it's important that you confront the issue and make the decisions. The Carbones considered them carefully and implemented them without significant lifestyle adjustment. Can you keep up with the Carbones? [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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A Book For All Seasons
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-11-01
4 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
In spite of its dire warning, this is actually a sane, factual and practical book, one that puts global warming right back where it can make a difference: with each one of us. In a series of highly readable, highly convincing (because the evidence is right there in front of us, and all of it thoroughly footnoted, if we want to check) and highly engaging chapters, Reay shows how every action by every individual has global warming consequences, and moreover can be changed, replaced by something less harmful and with fewer awful consequences for our children's generation. It's a positive book - not that it doesn't make you wince, and even swear from time to time, especially at the persistent stupidity and self-interested shortsightedness of governments and politicians. With being positive comes the right to laugh. We, after all, can do something: we needn't be total victims to this multinational conglomerate or that administration in hock to vested financial interests. We can learn the real implications of our choices and find the alternatives, with the help of this extraordinary book. (What's more, as Dave Reay shows over and over again, we can actually save money by doing so!)
Our generation is suffering the consequences of years of our own slaphappy use of energy. What this book shows us is that we can avoid our children, and their children, having to endure far worse consequences of our actions. That's a very positive thought to come away with, and to act on.
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More than an emissions reduction manual
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-10-20
5 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is easy to read, the metaphores are simple and powerful and the jokes are funny if a little ironic. It's more than an emissions reduction manual because Dave Reay gets inside your head through his fictitious family the Carbones. Ma and Pa Carbone start to feel good about themselves as they discover that cutting their emissions brings other benefits, Ma Carbone is proud of her organic vegetable patch and Pa saves money at work by a little thoughtful energy saving.
It's quite a useful book if you're already trying to reduce emissions, it explains where some emissions are hidden and ways to avoid these and points out easy ways to make reductions that seem obvious after you've read them.
It's very powerful in it's argument that we should be reducing our emissions as much and as soon as posible. This from the author's own feeling which he has poured into his writing and from his consideration of the future life of Lucy Carbone and others.
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