At this point, the damage is so severe that even rapid conversion to clean energy isn’t sufficient to save our planet. It is critical that we physically remove the carbon dioxide that is currently in the atmosphere.
NEW YORK (PRWEB) November 02, 2020
Dr. Graciela Chichilnisky, the award-winning economist who designed the carbon market and is CEO of Global Thermostat, is one of the world’s most prominent experts on climate change. Her new book, Reversing Climate Change: How Carbon Removals Can Resolve Climate Change and Fix the Economy (World Scientific Publishing; $48 trade paperback; ISBN: 978-9814719353) is a call to action that provides tangible solutions to end global warming and related threats to the environment.
Throughout the book, Dr. Chichilnisky warns that “we are truly at a point of no return when it comes to climate change. The next few years will determine whether we will implement solutions or unleash irreversible, catastrophic damage.” With those dire consequences in mind, Dr. Chichilnisky and her co-author Peter Bal outline concrete actions that governments and corporations can take to not only halt climate change, but reverse it.
“At this point, the damage is so severe that even rapid conversion to clean energy isn’t sufficient to save our planet. It is critical that we physically remove the carbon dioxide that is currently in the atmosphere,” she explains. In fact, Dr. Chichilnisky and her team at Global Thermostat have already created a carbon capture technology that sucks carbon out of the air so that it can be used in other industrial processes. In Reversing Climate Change, she explains how this technology is enabling profitable re-use of carbon dioxide, reducing harmful emissions and helping to close the global carbon cycle.
Beyond discussing carbon capture, Reversing Climate Change also focuses on the complex international negotiations needed to cap greenhouse gas emissions as well as how to wean the world’s energy systems off fossil fuels. Other topics include:
- How climate change and global warming went from being a scientific debate to an economic and political debate
- Why the financial crisis and the environmental crisis are two sides of the same coin
- The importance of Green Capitalism and how it can stop a major climate disaster
- The pros and cons of a carbon tax versus a carbon market.
Most importantly, Reversing Climate Change reveals unequivocally that the Earth is at a crisis point. It is clear that future generations will inherit a world that is vastly different from our own. Either they will inherit a planet with a severely diminished capacity to support human life or they will inherit a global economic system fueled by cleaner, renewable energy that respects ecological limits and is capable of meeting everyone’s basic needs.
“Which path we set them on is entirely dependent on our response to this crisis,” writes Dr. Chichilnisky. “Everything hinges on the choices we make today.”
To learn more, visit https://globalthermostat.com.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dr. Graciela Chichilnisky is a Professor of Economics and Mathematical Statistics at Columbia University, and Director of the Columbia Consortium for Risk Management. She is also co-founder and CEO of Global Thermostat, and co-creator of a carbon removal technology that the National Academy of Sciences has said is the only one that can reverse climate change. In 2020, Global Thermostat was named to the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School’s third annual Most Fundable Companies list and one of the 50 Best Companies to Watch 2020 by The Silicon Review. Global Thermostat’s technology was chosen by MIT Technology Review as one of the Ten Breakthrough Technologies of 2019, curated by Bill Gates. Additionally, the company was named one of the top ten most innovative companies in energy by Fast Company in 2015 and Dr. Chichilnisky was selected by International Alternative Investment Review as the 2015 CEO of the Year in Sustainability.
In 2020, Global Thermostat and ExxonMobil expanded their joint development agreement following 12 months of technical evaluation to determine the feasibility and potential scalability of Global Thermostat’s technology.
Dr. Chichilnisky worked extensively on the Kyoto Protocol, creating, designing, and negotiating the carbon market that became international law in 2005, and she acted as the lead U.S. author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which received the 2007 Nobel Prize for its work in deciding world policy with respect to climate change.
Dr. Chichilnisky is the author of more than 300 scientific articles and more than 15 books, including the award-winning Saving Kyoto, which won the American Library Association’s 2010 Outstanding Academic Title of the Year and the American Geographical Society’s Book of the Month Award in October 2009. She holds two Ph.D. degrees, in Mathematics and Economics, and her graduate studies were at MIT and the University of California, Berkeley.
Peter Bal is a businessman and ecological restoration practitioner. He sees carbon dioxide as an asset to be mined, focusing on natural plant absorption as well as industrial solutions to retrieve carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. He is currently working on a containerized carbon dioxide absorbing unit with Global Thermostat and involved in setting up ecological research and training centers.
