ISBN 978-1-84407-910-0. "How to live a low-carbon life" second edition was published by Earthscan in 2010. The paperback gives you 300 easy-read pages consisting of 13 Chapters, Notes, Acknowledgements and Index. As an update upon his earlier 2006 book you can probably copy everything from the review, four years ago, and paste it here. So we'll focus on what is new or different. First things first, whereas the original spoke about getting carbon footprints down from 12.5 tonnes per person to 3 tonnes, the new edition talks about getting from 14 tonnes down to 2. This difference comes from updated accounting which now includes the embodied energy for imported goods. The new target adopts the UK Climate Change Act's recommendations of an 80% cut. This was good to see as our 2006 review did suggest the adding of more work on embodied energy. The first four chapters in Chris's original work have been condensed down into just one which accounts for the lower chapter and page count of the new edition (300 pages vs 318 and 13 chapters versus 17).
As before though, this first chapter is probably the most important. If you judged a book by its cover and took into account the fact that Chris's previous work was "Ten Technologies to Save the Planet" you might think him to be some techno-optimist. However, the truth is far from this stereotype. Although Chris writes in his comfort zone of numbers and science, he treats the problem as a very human one. He takes the first 30 pages to tear through lazy assumptions that somehow our carbon footprints are either someone else's problem or to be solved by technology. His most impassioned pleas concern flying. Chris believes the key is individual action. Private Companies and the Government cannot ... more »
