The conundrum : how scientific innovation, increased efficiency, and good intentions can make our energy and climate problems worse / David Owen.
Owen, David, 1955-
2012
TD148 .O94 2012 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection

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Title The conundrum : how scientific innovation, increased efficiency, and good intentions can make our energy and climate problems worse / David Owen.
Author Owen, David, 1955-
Edition 1st Riverhead trade pbk. ed.
ISBN 9781594485619 (paperback)
1594485615 (paperback)
Publication Details New York : Riverhead Books, 2012.
Language English
Description ix, 261 p. : ill. ; 19 cm
Call Number TD148 .O94 2012
Dewey Decimal Classification 628
Summary "This is a mind-changing manifesto about the environment, efficiency, and the real path to sustainability. Hybrid cars, fast trains, compact florescent lightbulbs, solar panels, carbon offsets: everything you've been told about being green is wrong. The quest for a breakthrough battery or a 100 mpg car are dangerous fantasies. We are consumers, and we like to consume greenly and efficiently. But David Owen argues that our best intentions are still at cross-purposes to our true goal: living sustainably while caring for our environment and the future of the planet. Efficiency, once considered the holy grail of our environmental problems, turns out to be part of the problem, one discovered in the late nineteenth century by a twenty-nine-year-old English economist named William Jevons. Efforts to improve efficiency only exacerbate the problems they are meant to solve, more than negating the environmental gains. We have little trouble turning increases in efficiency into increases in consumption. David Owen's elegant narrative, filled with fascinating information and anecdotes, takes you through the history of energy and the quest for efficiency. He introduces the reader to some of the smartest people working on solving our energy problems. He details the arguments of efficiency's proponents and its antagonists--and in the process overturns most traditional wisdom about being green. This is a book that will change how you look at the world. We are not waiting for some geniuses to invent our way out of the energy and economic crisis we're in. We already have the technology and knowledge we need to live sustainably. But will we do it? That is the conundrum"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references.
Record Appears in On-Campus Resources > Books
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The conundrum
Setting things on fire
Fossil fuels as credit card
Leed-certified landfill
Problems innovate, too
The greenest community in the United States
Learning from Manhattan
Unconsciously green
Sierra Club or Manhattan Club?
Sierra Club or A.A.R.P
Why oil is worse than coal
Let them eat kale?
Traffic congestion is not an environmental problem
Transit that's bad for the environment
Fast trains and the prius fallacy
Increased efficiency is not the answer
William Stanley Jevons
The coal question
How increasing efficiency causes overall energy consumption to rise
Rebound creep
The importance of less
What would a truly green car look like?
Plentiful, inexpensive natural gas is not an environmental solution
Cheap, efficient lighting is not an environmental solution
Using water more efficiently will not solve the world's steadily worsening water problems
Burning trash is not the answer
When solar power isn't green
Green or not green?
Flying a kite
Harnessing wind without windmills?
The discouraging economics of innovation
Getting from lab to grid
Retrograde innovation
The conundrum.

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