The Story of Upfront Carbon How a Life of Just Enough Offers a Way Out of the Climate Crisis

About this book

When you look at the world through the lens of upfront carbon, everything changes

Think that buying an electric car or switching to a heat pump is going to save the planet? Think again. We must cut carbon emissions to mitigate climate change. But emissions are not produced just by driving your car or heating your home. "Upfront carbon" refers to all emissions involved in making your car, your home, or any other item.

As we seek to incorporate more renewables and less fossil fuels into our energy supply, upfront carbon becomes increasingly dominant compared to operating emissions, yet they are often ignored. This is why the pursuit of sufficiency, or making and buying just what we need, has become a powerful strategy for tackling climate change.

By focusing on consumption rather than production, The Story of Upfront Carbon:
- Demystifies the complex web of cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessments, demonstrating that the accepted concept of "embodied carbon" is just one part of the carbon accounting equation
- Establishes the compelling rationale for carbon minimalism, arguing that only through frugality, simplicity, and materiality can we address global inequality and avoid climate catastrophe
- Shows how big-picture thinking and a broad, systemic approach to determining a product's ecological footprint is indispensable to help guide the transition to degrowth and a zero-carbon society.

Packed with concrete strategies for minimizing the upfront carbon produced by transportation, agriculture, consumer goods, the built environment, and more, this highly readable and accessible guide is required reading for a world on the brink.

Contents

Chapter 1: Carbon Upfront
The lens of upfront carbon
What are upfront carbon emissions and why are they important?
Why we are fixated on energy, not carbon
Carbon takes command
The IPCC does not say we're doomed
OK Doomer

Chapter 1: Carbon Upfront
- The lens of upfront carbon
- What are upfront carbon emissions and why are they important?
- Why we are fixated on energy, not carbon
- Carbon takes command
- The IPCC does not say we're doomed
- OK Doomer
- History of embodied carbon
- The carbon footprint of everything
- The unbearable heaviness of carbon
- Transparency from shoes to motorcycles
- The future we want: supply vs demand
- Dematerialization and degrowth
- Enjoy the ride with demand-side mitigation
- Why sufficiency is the solution

Chapter 2: Strategies for Sufficiency
- Materiality: building out of sunshine
- Materiality: use less stuff
- Materiality: using less of the bad stuff
- Ephemerality
- Frugality
- Simplicity
- Flexibility
- Circularity
- Universality
- Resiliency
- Satiety and enoughness
- Electricity
- Intermittency
- Operating efficiency
- Design efficiency
- Inequity

Chapter 3: Stuff
- Introduction to stuff
- The single-use coffee cup
- From the 2X4 to mass timber
- The e-cargo bike
- The heat pump
- The puffer jacket
- The hamburger
- The folly of foam insulation
- The car
- The block of flats/ apartments
- The shoe

Conclusion
- Everything connects
- A prosperous ascent
- Conclusion

History of embodied carbon
The carbon footprint of everything
The unbearable heaviness of carbon
Transparency from shoes to motorcycles
The future we want: supply vs demand
Dematerialization and degrowth
Enjoy the ride with demand-side mitigation
Why sufficiency is the solution

Chapter 2: Strategies for Sufficiency
Materiality: building out of sunshine
Materiality: use less stuff
Materiality: using less of the bad stuff
Ephemerality
Frugality
Simplicity
Flexibility
Circularity
Universality
Resiliency
Satiety and enoughness
Electricity
Intermittency
Operating efficiency
Design efficiency
Inequity

Chapter 3: Stuff
Introduction to stuff
The single-use coffee cup
From the 2X4 to mass timber
The e-cargo bike
The heat pump
The puffer jacket
The hamburger
The folly of foam insulation
The car
The block of flats/ apartments
The shoe

Conclusion
Everything connects
A prosperous ascent
Conclusion

Customer Reviews

Biography

Lloyd Alter is a writer, public speaker, architect, inventor, and Adjunct Professor of Sustainable Design at Toronto Metropolitan University. He has published many thousands of articles on TreeHugger where he was Design Editor, and on such diverse platforms as Planet Green, HuffPo, The Guardian, Corporate Knights Magazine, and Azure Magazine. A former builder of prefab housing and a tiny-house pioneer, Lloyd is a passionate advocate of Radical Sufficiency – the belief that we use too much space, too much land, too much food, too much fuel, and too much money, and that the key to sustainability is to simply use less. He is the author of Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle. Lloyd lives in Toronto, Ontario.