In 2017, the heat waves, extreme wild fires, and flooding around the world confirmed beyond doubt that climate disruption is now a full-blown emergency. We have entered Churchill’s “period of consequences”, yet governments have simply watched the disasters magnify, while rushing ahead with new pipelines and annual trillions in fossil fuel subsidies. Governments simply cannot say they did not know. The events we are seeing today have been consistently forecast ever since the First Assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was signed by all governments back in 1990, which The Lancet has described as the best research project ever designed. Unprecedented Crime first lays out the culpability of governmental, political and religious bodies, corporations, and the media through their failure to report or act on the climate emergency. No emergency response has even been contemplated by wealthy high-emitting national governments. Extreme weather reporting never even hints at the need to address climate change. It then reports how independently of governments, scores of proven zero-carbon game changers have been coming online all over the world. These exciting technologies, described in the book, are now able to power both household electricity and energy-dense heavy industry. We already have the technical solutions to the CO2 problem. With these solutions we can act in time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to near-zero within 20 years. These willful crimes against life itself by negligent governments, oblivious media and an insouciant civil society are crimes that everyday citizens can nonetheless readily grasp – and then take to the streets and to the courts to protest on behalf of their children and grand-children. This thoroughly researched and highly-documented book will show them how.
Life on 1/10th the fossil fuels turns out to be awesome. We all want to be happy. Yet as we consume ever more in a frantic bid for happiness, global warming worsens. Alarmed by drastic changes now occurring in the Earth's climate systems, the author, a climate scientist and suburban father of two, embarked on a journey to change his life and the world. He began by bicycling, growing food, meditating, and making other simple, fulfilling changes. Ultimately, he slashed his climate impact to under a tenth of the US average and became happier in the process. Being the Change explores the connections between our individual daily actions and our collective predicament. It merges science, spirituality, and practical action to develop a satisfying and appropriate response to global warming. Part one exposes our interconnected predicament: overpopulation, global warming, industrial agriculture, growth-addicted economics, a sold-out political system, and a mindset of separation from nature. It also includes a readable but authoritative overview of climate science. Part two offers a response at once obvious and unprecedented: mindfully opting out of this broken system and aligning our daily lives with the biosphere. The core message is deeply optimistic: living without fossil fuels is not only possible, it can be better. AWARDS GOLD (tie) | 2017 IPPY Awards: Books Most Likely to Save the Planet SILVER | 2017 Nautilus Book Awards: Green Living / Sustainability BRONZE | 2017 Foreword INDIES: Ecology & Environment
The importance of telling new climate stories—stories that center the persistence of life itself, that embrace comedy and radical hope. “How dare you?” asked teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg at the United Nations in 2019. How dare the world’s leaders fiddle around the edges when the world is on fire? Why is society unable to grasp the enormity of climate change? In Beyond Climate Breakdown, Peter Friederici writes that the answer must come in the form of a story, and that our miscomprehension of the climate crisis comes about because we have been telling the wrong stories. These stories are pervasive; they come from long narrative traditions, sanctioned by capitalism, Hollywood, and social media, and they revolve around a myth: that the nation exists primarily as a setting for a certain kind of economic activity. Stories are how we make sense of the world and our place in it. The story that “the economy” takes priority over everything else may seem foreordained, but, Friederici explains, actually reflect choices made by specific people out of self-interest. So we need new stories—stories that center the persistence of life, rather than of capitalism, stories that embrace contradiction and complexity. We can create new stories based on comedy and radical hope. Comedy never says no; hope sprouts like a flower in cracked concrete. These attitudes require a new way of thinking—an adaptive attitude toward life that slips the narrow yoke of definition.
In 2017, the heat waves, extreme wild fires, and flooding around the world confirmed beyond doubt that climate disruption is now a full-blown emergency. We have entered Churchill’s “period of consequences”, yet governments have simply watched the disasters magnify, while rushing ahead with new pipelines and annual trillions in fossil fuel subsidies. Governments simply cannot say they did not know. The events we are seeing today have been consistently forecast ever since the First Assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was signed by all governments back in 1990, which The Lancet has described as the best research project ever designed. Unprecedented Crime first lays out the culpability of governmental, political and religious bodies, corporations, and the media through their failure to report or act on the climate emergency. No emergency response has even been contemplated by wealthy high-emitting national governments. Extreme weather reporting never even hints at the need to address climate change. It then reports how independently of governments, scores of proven zero-carbon game changers have been coming online all over the world. These exciting technologies, described in the book, are now able to power both household electricity and energy-dense heavy industry. We already have the technical solutions to the CO2 problem. With these solutions we can act in time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to near-zero within 20 years. These willful crimes against life itself by negligent governments, oblivious media and an insouciant civil society are crimes that everyday citizens can nonetheless readily grasp – and then take to the streets and to the courts to protest on behalf of their children and grand-children. This thoroughly researched and highly-documented book will show them how.
This book is designed to complement the author's A New Land Law,integrating with that work in its simplified terminology, and emphasising a three-fold functional classification of leases – short residential tenancies, long residential leases and commercial leases. Rented housing is treated as a unified whole, with particular prominence being given to shorthold arrangements. The book includes reference to the changes to the allocation and homelessness regimes proposed by Part II of the Homes Bill 2000. It also considers the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998, the changes to repossession procedures implemented by the Woolf Reforms, and the year 2000 bumper crop of decisions on housing law. Leasehold tenure is undergoing dramatic changes. The book draws a functional distinction between long residential leases and rental arrangements, based on the registrability of long leases, their freedom from rent controls and security of tenure, special controls of management and forfeiture, and enfranchisement rights. Extensive coverage is given to the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill 2000, introduced into the House of Lords in December 2000, and promising improvements in the enfranchisement schemes, additional management controls, and a commonhold scheme. Topics on commercial leases (business and agricultural) given special attention include the reasonable recipient principle for the construction of notices, a decision on the effect on a sub-tenant of an upwards notice to quit by his head tenant, and Law Commission proposals on the Termination of Tenancies (1999).
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