THE NEW ENTREPRENEURS Building a Green Economy
for the Future
By Andrew Heintzman
House of Anansi Press
320 pp.,
$32.95
hardcover
Alternative energy has taken
root. The world’s largest
wind farm opened in
Roscoe, Texas, last fall, and
the first battery-only sports cars have
taken to the highways. As researchers
worldwide push to develop new technologies,
countless other projects are
in the works. And yet global CO2
emissions continue to rise, with nonrenewable
sources generating a larger
percentage of the world’s energy every year. Peak oil production may be just
around the corner, but we won’t know
for sure until it has passed. So what’s
next? Can renewable energies step up to
meet demand? A wave of recent books
offers hints at what the future may hold and how we might navigate uncertainties
along the road ahead.
Capitalism is often viewed as a culprit
in our current societal predicament,
but as author and businessman Andrew
Heintzman points out in The New
Entrepreneurs, the energy and innovation
that drive private enterprise may well be
what’s needed to create the next generation
of environmentally sound technology.
Framed by Heintzman’s experiences
living and working in Canada, the book
is a tour of up-and-coming Canadian
companies, with environmental innovation
at the forefront.
TEN TECHNOLOGIES
TO SAVE THE PLANET Energy Options for a
Low-Carbon Future
By Chris Goodall
Greystone Books
320 pp.,
$22.95
softcover
Heintzman’s enthusiasm is contagious
as he takes readers to British Columbia,
where Triton Logging has discovered a
valuable, if overlooked, resource: the
world’s submerged forests. With an estimated
$50 billion of lumber preserved
within reservoirs worldwide, the company’s
remotely operated vehicles stand
to turn a handsome profit without cutting
a single living tree. But that’s just
a one-shot deal; other companies are
focusing on longer-term sustainability.
Saltworks Technologies, for example,
has come up with a novel desalinization
process, using sunlight and salt water
itself to purify seawater. If Saltworks
can scale up its design, this process
could improve living conditions across
much of the world.
Noting that our country was built on
industry, Heintzman advocates a system
of market cues, such as a carbon tax,
to nudge modern industries in the right
direction. “Put to the task of reducing
our use of resources and preserving
natural capital,” he writes, “[capitalism]
has an almost unlimited potential to
alter the way we live.”
Writer, businessman and climatechange
specialist Chris Goodall takes
a similar view. His book, Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, is a lucid and incredibly
thorough exploration of green
technologies worldwide.
“It is better to recognize early that
the road is not going to be easy,” writes
Goodall, arguing the need for massive
implementation of green technology
to keep up with climate projections.
Through chapters ranging from oceangenerated
power and soil conservation
to a California-based company making
clean petroleum from cellulose (and,
yes, that’s carbon-neutral), he analyzes
myriad new technologies, weighing the
benefits they may provide against the
technical, logistical and economic
hurdles they’ll have to overcome.
“The battle against global warming
should not be a game of roulette with countries tossing a few chips towards
random technologies,” writes Goodall,
and he’s right. Rigorous but easily comprehensible,
this book is a must-read for
technology enthusiasts, business leaders
and policy-makers worldwide.
TRANSPORT REVOLUTIONS Moving People and
Freight Without Oil
By Richard Gilbert and
Anthony Perl
New Society Publishers
448 pp.,
$26.95
softcover
Others contend that more drastic
changes are needed — and soon. In
Transport Revolutions, consultant
Richard Gilbert and political scientist
Anthony Perl team up to address the
world’s transportation options in anticipation
of peak oil production, which,
they assert, could bring about global
socio-economic collapse. In their title,
they really mean revolution. With 95
percent of global transportation currently
based on non-renewable energy,
they suggest sweeping changes to global
transportation, from the electrification
of intercity travel to sails to improve the fuel economy of ocean freight. Sound
unreasonable? To keep things in perspective,
the textbook-like treatise also
looks at past transport revolutions. In
1941, for example, the United States
manufactured 3.8 million cars. In 1943,
it produced just 143. In the face of
crisis, we have the capacity to change.
Our current oil habits are unlikely to
go away on their own, but as all three
books insist, there are viable, and perhaps
necessary, alternatives. All we have
to do is take them a little more seriously.
Whitehorse resident Scott Berdahl has a master's degree in science writing and an undergraduate degree in geology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. He was an intern at Canadian Geographic in the summer of 2010.
CLIMATE CHANGE IN CANADA
By Rodney White
Oxford University Press
184 pp., $16.95 softcover
Have you ever wondered why
Canada’s emission levels not only
have failed to meet our pledge under
the Kyoto Protocol but have actually
increased by 20 to 25 percent? How
greenhouse gases work? What effects
global warming could have on your
region? People hungry for answers need
look no further than this digestible duo.
COCKTAIL PARTY GUIDE TO
GLOBAL WARMING Everything You Need to Know to
Converse Intelligently About Global
Warming in Any Social Situation
By Annette Saliken with Martin G. Clarke
Heritage House Publishing
192 pp., $16.95 softcover
Rodney White’s pocket-sized handbook
serves up a potent, systematic
albeit sometimes dry analysis of climate
change and its Canadian and global
implications in language that is lean and
unassuming. In her Cocktail Party Guide,
Annette Saliken takes a similar tact, vowing
to connect the dots in non-technical
and non-partisan terms, although not
always achieving this end. Still, Saliken’s
summary of humankind’s culpability is
guaranteed to keep readers crying into
their martinis.
THE WAVE
In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks,
and Giants of the Ocean
By Susan Casey
Doubleday Canada
352 pp., $34.95 hardcover
Blond surfer dudes probably don’t
come to mind immediately when
one conjures up an image of environmental
experts. But Laird Hamilton,
arguably the world’s best big-wave surfer,
knows a few things about the giant rogue
waves that rear up unpredictably in the
Pacific and other oceans. In fact, the
handsome Hawaiian and his crew regularly
fly around the world with their Jet
Skis — Hamilton and his pals invented
tow surfing to allow them to catch bigger
waves — when satellite storm forecasts
predict monster swells. Toronto-born
writer Susan Casey, editor-in-chief of
O, The Oprah Magazine and author of
non-fiction shark best-seller The Devil’s
Teeth, rode shotgun to put together
The Wave. The fast-moving and deeply
engaging book is about much more than
surf culture; Casey also spent significant
time with scientists who study waves.
She comes away with the conclusion that
there’s a connection between 30-metreplus
ship- and shoreline-destroying
waves and global warming. And like a
surfer with a house-high wave about to
fall on his or her head, she writes, it’d
be wise for us to pay attention to these
untamed beasts of the ocean.
