Green Building Law Blog

The Best Way To Spend $10

Give up two days worth of lattes or a new lipstick and buy the paperback Climate Solutions by Peter Barnes from Chelsea Green publishers instead.

The book is an easy to read, "citizens guide" to saving the planet through efficient regulation.  Barnes explains, in broad enough terms that everyone can understand (and pictures!) climate policy, including a very accessible explanation of the tragedy of the commons. 

Barnes also details four possible regulatory solutions, including cap-and-trade, carbon tax, and Barnes' preferred method, cap-and-dividend. In a cap-and-dividend system, the additional payments for carbon are returned to the people through a dividend payment, much like Alaska does already.  In addition to the simple, but not simplistic, explanations of climate policy, Barnes includes a well researched list of resources for additional information.

Someone once told me that if you truly understand something, you can explain the most complicated concepts in a simple enough way that everyone can understand. Barnes strips away the technical language and lawyer-speak generally associated with books discussing climate policy, but does not dumb down the concepts in the process.  Since we will all have to be mobilized to make carbon regulation a reality it is critical that Barnes created a guide on this topic accessible to all citizens.

Once you are done with Barnes' book, do not keep it.  Give it to your neighbor, your high school aged child, or the person you sit next to on the commuter rail.  It just might help make carbon regulation a reality. 

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Comments (2) Read through and enter the discussion with the form at the end
Christopher G. Hill - January 27, 2009 10:41 AM

Pictures! I like Pictures! I will check it out.

Bygningsentreprise - February 3, 2009 3:00 AM

thanks for sharing!

Shari Shapiro, Esq., LEED AP
Suite 300, Liberty View, 457 Haddonfield Road, P.O. Box 5459
Cherry Hill, NJ 08002-2220,