How Bad Are Bananas?
The carbon footprint of everything
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
'It is terrific. I can't remember the last time I read a book that was more fascinating and useful and enjoyable all at the same time.' Bill Bryson
How Bad Are Bananas? was a groundbreaking book when first published in 2009, when most of us were hearing the phrase 'carbon footprint' for the first time. Mike Berners-Lee set out to inform us what was important (aviation, heating, swimming pools) and what made very little difference (bananas, naturally packaged, are good!).
This new edition updates all the figures (from data centres to hosting a World Cup) and introduces many areas that have become a regular part of modern life - Twitter, the Cloud, Bitcoin, electric bikes and cars, even space tourism. Berners-Lee runs a considered eye over each area and gives us the figures to manage and reduce our own carbon footprint, as well as to lobby our companies, businesses and government. His findings, presented in clear and even entertaining prose, are often surprising. And they are essential if we are to address climate change.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From its modest initial entry, a text message (which creates .014 CO2e ), to its grand finale: burning all the world's fossil fuel reserves (2.5 trillion CO2e, or 50 years of current global emissions), this compendium of the specific costs to the climate (in carbon emissions) of our everyday behaviors deftly blends intelligence with entertainment, perhaps creating a unique genre: a page-turner for the climate conscious. Berners-Lee, founding director of a British climate change consulting company, doesn't claim absolute accuracy; although he believes that the carbon footprint is the essential "climate change metric," it's "also impossible to measure." His book is intended as "an early map," and it covers the carbon footprint gamut, with entries for a heart bypass operation and the World Cup, revealing some startling conclusions: "tomatoes, at their worst, are the highest-carbon food in the book," but grown locally in season are fine; the intensive electrical use of data centers may make paperless offices as carbon-heavy as old-fashioned paper-intensive ones. Berners-Lee also offers ideas about cost efficiency, giving readers a sense of how to "pick our battles." Refreshingly, the book shows how difficult it is to accurately track carbon usage while providing ways to realistically analyze day-to-day actions and make responsible and effective decisions for the most climate-friendly results. And bananas, by the way, at only 80 grams CO2e even when imported from across the world, are "brilliant!"
