Did you know…

Bad News

• Climate change has secondary impacts in every aspect of our lives: flooded homes and roads, inflation, loss of precious beaches, diseases, famines… (pp. 28-29)
• 634 million people (~2x US population) risk climate-related flooding (p. 34)
• Flying adds 6x atmospheric carbon per person as the same trip done by train (p. 37)
• Despite years of pretending they didn’t know, Exxon released a memo (excerpts reproduced on pages 46-47) on November 12, 1982 outlining the consequences of human-caused climate change and identifying fossil fuel industries as the major cause
• Methane traps 80 times as much heat as CO2; nitrous oxides trap 270 times as much (p. 51)
• We use 8x energy and produce 7x emissions to support 3x the population of 1950 (p. 72)
• Plastic produces 6x its weight in CO2 over its lifetime (pp. 78, 79); plastics manufacturing also causes massive deforestation (preventing capture of 6.5 million metric tons per year of carbon) and emits gigatons of CO2. Only 9 percent of discarded plastic is recycled; 12 percent is incinerated, further worsening carbon impact (p. 34).

Good News

• Only 8 percent of Norway’s 2021 new-vehicle sales were powered by fossil fuels (p. 101)
• We improved air and water quality and slashed food waste during the pandemic (pp. 113-114)—so we can replicate that success through behavior changes
• Switching from chemiculture to organic could cut crop losses by about half—as they were before most farmers switched to chemical pesticides (p. 120)
• Trees, wetlands, and coral reefs embody biodiversity; a single tree can host 2.3 million organisms; coral reefs contain 25 percent of marine species; peat bogs (wetlands) capture twice the carbon of forests (pp. 136-140)
• Tools such as “border carbon adjustments” (p. 163) and counting GNP to factor in environmental and social costs and benefits (Robert F. Kennedy quote, p. 117) could eliminate the competitive advantage of poor carbon habits and help businesses actively mitigating their environmental and carbon impact
• Primitive solar continues to power the Vanguard I satellite, launched in 1960 (p. 178)
• Humans first harnessed tidal power in 687 A.D.; it was widely used in 18th-century England (pp. 182-183)
• 25 percent of all US fossil fuel hubs are ideally suited to green energy (which provided 90 percent of new capacity in 2020)—thus offering retraining opportunities for thousands of miners (p. 196)
• We could probably eliminate world hunger by using the 1/3 of all food that’s thrown away uneaten (p. 201)
• Drip irrigation cuts water 60 percent while increasing crop yield 90 percent over open-channel irrigation (p. 204)
• Cross-laminated wood buildings have many superiorities over steel (p. 223)
• Solarizing all US K-12 schools could replace 18 coal plants (p. 245)
• Above all, humans have risen to overcome all sorts of “insurmountable” crises (p. 326); this book proves we have the know-how—let’s find the will to do it!

You’ll find or extrapolate hundreds more takeaways in The Carbon Almanac, spearheaded by Seth Godin and written by 300+ volunteers. Forthcoming in July from Penguin/Random House. It’s a readable and comprehensive single-volume guide to…

1. Why atmospheric carbon must be addressed
2. The many ingenious solutions—and a refreshing willingness to confront the new problems these solutions (from bioplastics to mass-scale solar) sometimes bring
3. The impact of lifestyle choices, such as using an electric bicycle instead of a car for the short trips that represent more than half of our car travel (p. 166), changing our fashion habits (p. 162), planting trees (p. 155, in numerous suggestions to switch your primary search engine Ecosia, and in the collective’s pledge to replace 10x as many trees as are consumed to produce the book, p. 226), and eating less meat (pp. 76, 200, 203)—and the potential impacts of our activism (I love that the glossary, p. 312, defines “activist” as “You”—and the long list of activist organizations to get involved with).
4. The way all these factors and many more intersect and interact, presenting a holistic analysis a bite at a time

Besides 40+ pages of information and action resources within the book, each article has an info/sources page on https://thecarbonalmanac.org —which keeps that single volume to a manageable size while encouraging interested readers to drill much deeper. That also allows the content to be updated easily: As a long-time opponent of nuclear power, I wrote to Godin challenging the nuclear fission article’s implication that there have been only three accidents, vs. the actual 100+. While it was too late to change the book text, he immediately posted a correction at the top of that web page, https://thecarbonalmanac.org/093

I’d scheduled my review expecting a mid-June release date. That’s been pushed back a month. I urge you to 1) preorder your copy from your favorite independent bookstore (a chance to make a lifestyle change and support your local economy), 2) get involved in the launch promotion: https://seths.blog/joining-the-almanac-launch-team/ , and 3) sign up for the Carbon Almanac Network’s Daily Difference newsletter (at the bottom of thecarbonalmanac.org home page).