A new book by Dr. Adam Corner, entitled Promoting Sustainable Behavior: A Practical Guide To What Works, explores individual and societal behaviors linked to climate change and offers recommendations on how to achieve a sustainable campaign that creates a lasting change in behaviour.

In our 24th September Newsletter, we mentioned that the EU is considering plans to limit crop-based biofuels to 5% of transport fuel. Biofuels have been promoted in recent years, largely because of the belief that they will help reduce transport’s impact on the environment, and particularly because of its contribution to climate change. But the indirect effects of growing crops to make fuel have seriously challenged these assumptions.  

This modelling study, published in Global Change Biology, finds that if indirect land use change (iLUC) factors are not accounted for when assessing the GHG balance of biofuels, then “the Renewable Energy Directive could be expected to deliver only a 4% carbon saving compared to fossil fuel, with a 30% chance that it would actually cause a net emissions increase.” 

The EU is considering plans to limit crop-based biofuels to 5% of transport fuel. 

Carbon dioxide and global climate change are largely invisible, and the prevailing imagery of climate change is often remote (such as ice floes melting) or abstract and scientific (charts and global temperature maps). Using visual imagery such as 3D and 4D visualizations of future landscapes, community mapping, and iconic photographs, this book demonstrates new ways to make carbon and climate change visible  in our own backyards and local communities.

This report on biomass production is well worth reading.  It aims to support informed debate about the amount of biomass that might be available globally for energy, taking account of sustainability concerns. 

'Virtuous Circles: Values, Systems and Sustainability’, a recently published book by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), articulates an alternative future in which food, energy and water supplies are sustainable and in the control of local communities.  It focuses on local communities as the driver of alternative means of designing resilient food systems.

Timed to coincide with the UN climate convention negotiations in South Africa, this study by UNEP argues that the world has the technological and economic solutions to avert climate change.