Climate Action Planning

Climate Action Planning
Author: Michael R. Boswell
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2019-07-16
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1610919637

Climate change continues to impact our health and safety, the economy, and natural systems. With climate-related protections and programs under attack at the federal level, it is critical for cities to address climate impacts locally. Every day there are new examples of cities approaching the challenge of climate change in creative and innovative ways—from rethinking transportation, to greening city buildings, to protecting against sea-level rise. Climate Action Planning is designed to help planners, municipal staff and officials, citizens and others working at local levels to develop and implement plans to mitigate a community's greenhouse gas emissions and increase the resilience of communities against climate change impacts. This fully revised and expanded edition goes well beyond climate action plans to examine the mix of policy and planning instruments available to every community. Boswell, Greve, and Seale also look at process and communication: How does a community bring diverse voices to the table? What do recent examples and research tell us about successful communication strategies? Climate Action Planning brings in new examples of implemented projects to highlight what has worked and the challenges that remain. A completely new chapter on vulnerability assessment will help each community to identify their greatest risks and opportunities. Sections on land use and transportation have been expanded to reflect their growing contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. The guidance in the book is put in context of international, national, and state mandates and goals. Climate Action Planning is the most comprehensive book on the state of the art, science, and practice of local climate action planning. It should be a first stop for any local government interested in addressing climate change.

Climate Courage

Climate Courage
Author: Andreas Karelas
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2020-09-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0807084883

How Americans can take action in their own communities and unite across the political spectrum in pursuit of solutions to climate change. Andreas Karelas has a message we don’t often hear: we have all the tools we need to solve the climate crisis and doing so will improve our lives, our economy, and our society. But to engage people in the climate fight, we need stories that are empowering, inclusive, and solutions-oriented, not based in fear. Karelas digs into the latest data on the rapidly falling costs and increased efficiencies of clean energy technologies compared to fossil fuels, looks at the rate of job creation in the clean energy sector, and introduces the reader to the inspiring work of climate heroes on both sides of the aisle—from Republican mayors and governors to activists, from businesses to faith communities. Climate Courage shows us how we can move past our collective inaction on climate change and work together in our communities to create a more sustainable, just, clean energy–powered economy that works for everyone.

Living with Climate Change

Living with Climate Change
Author: Jane A. Bullock
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2017-08-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1040084206

The climate has changed and communities across America are living with the consequences: rapid sea level rise, multi-state wildfires, heat waves, and enduring drought. Living with Climate Change: How Communities Are Surviving and Thriving in a Changing Climate details the steps cities are taking now to protect lives and businesses, to reduce their vulnerability, and to adapt and make themselves more resilient. The authors included in this book have been directly involved in the successful design and implementation of community-based adaptation and resilience programs.

Climate Change and Threatened Communities

Climate Change and Threatened Communities
Author: Dan Taylor
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781853397257

Global climate change disproportionately affects rural people and indigenous groups, but their rights, knowledge, and interests concerning it are generally unacknowledged. Shifts in precipitation, cloud cover, temperature, and other climatic patterns alter their livelihood pursuits and cultural landscapes, accentuating their existing social and economic marginalization. This book argues that planners and researchers of climate change mitigation and adaptation must take into account the knowledge and capacity of rural people, and engage them as active participants in the design and governance of interventions, not as a matter of courtesy, but because it is their right. Furthermore, inclusion of local communities in genuine partnership will likely make climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts more effective. Climate Change and Threatened Communities presents 15 case studies and a variety of approaches to document the capacities and constraints to be encountered among communities facing changing climates in Bangladesh, Cameroon, Canada, Ecuador, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malawi, Mexico, Mozambique, Peru, South Africa, Sudan, United States, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. It explores human interactions in environments ranging from subarctic tundra to equatorial rain forest, from oceanic lagoons to inland mountains. Chapters investigate issues such as social vulnerability to climatic uncertainty, shifts in livelihood practices, local perceptions of climatic change, and the potential and limitations of the United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries. Authors consider the potential of archaeology, phenomenology, controlled comparisons, historical analysis, gender analysis and other analytical approaches to shed light on the experiences of communities and their members. This book is important reading for policy makers, academics, and students in the fields of climate change adaptation, anthropology and development studies, as well as more general readers.

Gray to Green Communities

Gray to Green Communities
Author: Dana Bourland
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2021-01-19
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 164283128X

US cities are faced with the joint challenge of our climate crisis and the lack of housing that is affordable and healthy. Our housing stock contributes significantly to the changing climate, with residential buildings accounting for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. US housing is not only unhealthy for the planet, it is putting the physical and financial health of residents at risk. Our housing system means that a renter working 40 hours a week and earning minimum wage cannot afford a two-bedroom apartment in any US county. In Gray to Green Communities, green affordable housing expert Dana Bourland argues that we need to move away from a gray housing model to a green model, which considers the health and well-being of residents, their communities, and the planet. She demonstrates that we do not have to choose between protecting our planet and providing housing affordable to all. Bourland draws from her experience leading the Green Communities Program at Enterprise Community Partners, a national community development intermediary. Her work resulted in the first standard for green affordable housing which was designed to deliver measurable health, economic, and environmental benefits. The book opens with the potential of green affordable housing, followed by the problems that it is helping to solve, challenges in the approach that need to be overcome, and recommendations for the future of green affordable housing. Gray to Green Communities brings together the stories of those who benefit from living in green affordable housing and examples of Green Communities’ developments from across the country. Bourland posits that over the next decade we can deliver on the human right to housing while reaching a level of carbon emissions reductions agreed upon by scientists and demanded by youth. Gray to Green Communities will empower and inspire anyone interested in the future of housing and our planet.

Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change

Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change
Author: E. Lisa F. Schipper
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2014-01-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1136252363

As climate change adaptation rises up the international policy agenda, matched by increasing funds and frameworks for action, there are mounting questions over how to ensure the needs of vulnerable people on the ground are met. Community-based adaptation (CBA) is one growing proposal that argues for tailored support at the local level to enable vulnerable people to identify and implement appropriate community-based responses to climate change themselves. Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change: Scaling it up explores the challenges for meeting the scale of the adaptation challenge through CBA. It asks the fundamental questions: How can we draw replicable lessons to move from place-based projects towards more programmatic adaptation planning? How does CBA fit with larger scale adaptation policy and programmes? How are CBA interventions situated within the institutions that enable or undermine adaptive capacity? Combining the research and experience of prominent adaptation and development theorists and practitioners, this book presents cutting edge knowledge that moves the debate on CBA forward towards effective, appropriate, and ‘scaled-up’ adaptive action.

Local Climate Action Planning

Local Climate Action Planning
Author: Michael R. Boswell
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2012-07-16
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1610912012

Climate change is a global problem, but the problem begins locally. Cities consume 75% of the world's energy and emit 80% of the world's greenhouse gases. Changing the way we build and operate our cities can have major effects on greenhouse gas emissions. Fortunately, communities across the U.S. are responding to the climate change problem by making plans that assess their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and specify actions they will take to reduce these emissions. This is the first book designed to help planners, municipal staff and officials, citizens and others working at local levels to develop Climate Action Plans. CAPs are strategic plans that establish policies and programs for mitigating a community's greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions. They typically focus on transportation, energy use, and solid waste, and often differentiate between community-wide actions and municipal agency actions. CAPs are usually based on GHG emissions inventories, which indentify the sources of emissions from the community and quantify the amounts. Additionally, many CAPs include a section addressing adaptation-how the community will respond to the impacts of climate change on the community, such as increased flooding, extended drought, or sea level rise. With examples drawn from actual plans, Local Climate Action Planning guides preparers of CAPs through the entire plan development process, identifying the key considerations and choices that must be made in order to assure that a plan is both workable and effective.

Low Carbon Communities

Low Carbon Communities
Author: Michael Derek Peters
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2010
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9781849807104

Community action is a vital strategy in the fight against climate change and has increasingly informed government policy, academic inquiry and grassroots action over the last decade. This timely and engaging volume explores both the promise of community-based action in tackling climate change and some of its limitations. On the one hand, community-based action offers a meaningful way to achieve global targets and an avenue for renewing social relations at the local level. On the other, it challenges fundamental aspects of social organization in the modern economy and sometimes comes into conflict with wider structures and constraints. This volume brings together theoretical and practical perspectives on community action to mobilize social change towards a sustainable, low carbon future. The opportunities and challenges are considered through a diverse range of models and case studies. Fresh conceptual insights are provided and new light is shed on the policy implications and practical ramifications of establishing effective community engagement in efforts to combat climate change locally.This book will prove a stimulating read for academic researchers in the fields of climate change science, local and national level policy analysis and governance research. Local authorities, development agencies and policymakers seeking to understand and to influence the behaviours and practices of 'energy consumers' and the communities in which they live will also find much to inspire them.

Community Action and Climate Change

Community Action and Climate Change
Author: Jennifer Kent
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2015-11-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317416961

The failure of recent international negotiations to progress global action on climate change has shifted attention to the emergence of grassroots sustainability initiatives. These civil society networks display the potential to implement social innovation and change processes from the ‘bottom up’. Recent scholarship has sought to theorise grassroots community-based low carbon practices in terms of their sustainability transition potential. However there are few empirical examples that demonstrate the factors for success of community-based social innovations in achieving more widespread adoption outside of their local, sustainability ‘niche’. The book seeks to address two significant gaps related to grassroots climate action: firstly the continuing dominance of the individualisation of responsibility for climate change action which presupposes that individuals hold both the ability and desire to shift their behaviours and lifestyle choices to align with a low carbon future. Secondly, the potential for community-based collectives to influence mainstream climate change governance, an area significantly under researched. Drawing on empirical research into Australian Climate Action Groups (CAGs) and related international research, the book argues that grassroots community-based collective action on climate change holds the key to broader social change. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, citizen participation, environmental sociology and sustainable development.

Drawdown

Drawdown
Author: Paul Hawken
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2017-04-18
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1524704652

• New York Times bestseller • The 100 most substantive solutions to reverse global warming, based on meticulous research by leading scientists and policymakers around the world “At this point in time, the Drawdown book is exactly what is needed; a credible, conservative solution-by-solution narrative that we can do it. Reading it is an effective inoculation against the widespread perception of doom that humanity cannot and will not solve the climate crisis. Reported by-effects include increased determination and a sense of grounded hope.” —Per Espen Stoknes, Author, What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming “There’s been no real way for ordinary people to get an understanding of what they can do and what impact it can have. There remains no single, comprehensive, reliable compendium of carbon-reduction solutions across sectors. At least until now. . . . The public is hungry for this kind of practical wisdom.” —David Roberts, Vox “This is the ideal environmental sciences textbook—only it is too interesting and inspiring to be called a textbook.” —Peter Kareiva, Director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, UCLA In the face of widespread fear and apathy, an international coalition of researchers, professionals, and scientists have come together to offer a set of realistic and bold solutions to climate change. One hundred techniques and practices are described here—some are well known; some you may have never heard of. They range from clean energy to educating girls in lower-income countries to land use practices that pull carbon out of the air. The solutions exist, are economically viable, and communities throughout the world are currently enacting them with skill and determination. If deployed collectively on a global scale over the next thirty years, they represent a credible path forward, not just to slow the earth’s warming but to reach drawdown, that point in time when greenhouse gases in the atmosphere peak and begin to decline. These measures promise cascading benefits to human health, security, prosperity, and well-being—giving us every reason to see this planetary crisis as an opportunity to create a just and livable world.