Global Cooling: Strategies for Climate Protection (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780415620772)

This book redefines climate protection measures and readjusts climate protection targets in line with what is scientifically necessary and economically feasible. The reader is provided with an overview of recent developments and failings in, and successful instruments for, fighting climate change and global warming.

Effective climate protection measures rest on two pillars: stopping all greenhouse gas emissions and cleaning the atmosphere of spare carbon. Both are possible, if the use of fossil fuels in the energy, transport, construction and chemistry sectors is terminated and the decision is made to consistently switch to a world economy with zero emissions instead. Global Feed-in-Tariffs can provide incentives for renewable energies as the German Feed-in-Tariff has proven - a measure which has been copied by almost 70 nations around the world. At the same time agricultural practices are necessary to support an increase in biodiversity, e.g. re-greening the desert, afforestation and organic agriculture and active storage of atmospheric carbon emissions within agricultural soils.

This book demonstrates that investment in renewable energies and a sustainable economy is not only a worthwhile cause but also has an economic value. The book introduces new actors such as the financial industry as an investor and political actor. If the financial industry becomes a political actor and calls for a necessary regulatory framework, more nations will follow - accompanied by an economic benefit - which will create a class of pioneer nations instead of the ever failing project of a global climate agreement. The transformation of the world economy can be accelerated through the right political measures. Active legislative support is necessary, for example the implementation of Feed-in-Tariffs for renewable energies, ending all subsidies for fossil fuels and the internalization of external damage costs such as nuclear waste management.

Global warming does not have to be our inescapable fate. If mankind pursues the right climate protection strategies, the earth can be cooled down to an acceptable level in a few decades.