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The Plot to Save the Planet: How Visionary Entrepreneurs and Corporate Titans Are Creating Real Solutions to Global Warming | 
 enlarge | Author: Brian Dumaine
Publisher: Crown Business
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $14.85
You Save: $11.10 (43%)
New (31) from $14.85
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 188957
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0307406180
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.4083
EAN: 9780307406187
ASIN: 0307406180
Publication Date: June 24, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
American entrepreneurs, corporate tycoons, and financiers are plotting what they do best—creating new industries that change the world and making billions in the process—a plot that will ultimately save the planet.
The Plot to Save the Planet is an illuminating and inspiring look at the “conspiracy” to make green technology the Silicon Valley of the twenty-first century—the creator of massive numbers of jobs and huge amounts of wealth. Suddenly, the ugly mudslinging between environmentalists and big business has abated, and these two previously opposed forces are now strange bedfellows in a race to head off climate change.
How is this new frontier being shaped? Brian Dumaine is your guide in this intriguing look into the very near future filled with colorful and informative stories about the entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate mavericks who are managing to pull off the feat of combining economic growth and environmental protection to battle global warming. You’ll read about:
• The savvy investors: Why Warren Buffett is investing heavily in wind power; and why John Doerr, the venture capitalist and early backer of Google, is saying that “green tech is bigger than the Internet and could be the biggest economic opportunity of the twenty-first century.”
• The cars of the future: The competitively priced plug-in hybrids that will get 60 miles to the gallon, and the battle being waged by fifteen start-ups competing to capture the electric car market.
• The fuels without fossils: New sources of energy from plants such as prairie grass and algae that could capture a big chunk of the $300 billion U.S. wholesale gasoline market.
• The corporate mavericks: Companies such as Duke Energy and GE who are creating the low-carbon business models of the future, as well as cleaner ways to provide our power needs.
• The energy-miser homes and buildings: The new Bank of America Tower in New York City and the green low- and middle-income homes being constructed by visionaries who were told it couldn’t be done and still be affordable.
• The “thin film” solar energy: How it is making the cost of heating a home comparable to traditional methods without emitting greenhouse gas.
Plenty of obstacles still exist—among them resistance from the rich and powerful owners of the world’s oil supply, developing nations such as China with their reliance on coal, and an American public reluctant to give up their McMansions, SUVs, and extreme air-conditioning. But the battle cry has been sounded. The green overhaul of the utility, energy, construction, shipping, and automobile industries is well on its way and—contrary to prevailing fears—the ultimate solutions will sustain the environment without demanding huge sacrifices to our contemporary comforts and lifestyles.
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| Customer Reviews:
Fresh Ideas + Entrepreneurial Attitude = Green Future, Great Book! July 28, 2008
Brian Dumaine's "The Plot to Save the Planet" is excellent. As a college student interested in environmental issues, I hear a lot about the coming environmental apocalypse and the heavy burden of CO2 that my generation will inherit. How refreshing to read about real ways to turn the tide!
Dumaine's book focuses on green technologies that have been substantially developed and invested in already -- technologies that can help to reduce our carbon footprint today, whose impact will only grow as investors and consumers continue to recognize their green power and economic viability. It is fueled by the idea that the same creative, entrepreneurial sensibility that got us into this climate change pickle can --- and will --- get us out of it.
"The Plot" covers everything from electric cars to carbon munching algae to green architecture. It is divided by chapter into segments on each of these topics, profiling green up-starts and their venture capital supporters, describing how the new technologies work, how they could reduce our CO2 output, and how they are getting big. Each chapter represents one part of the puzzle, and Dumaine shows that a mosaic of all these new ideas could have an enormous effect.
The book is infused with the author's enthusiasm for the possibilities offered by these new technologies, and the enthusiasm is contagious. "The Plot to Save the Planet" is a highly informative, fun read, written for the layman. Check it out --- you'll enjoy yourself, learn a lot, and feel much better about the many ways we can turn around our energy crisis.
Reasons for hope July 18, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Fortune magazine veteran Brian Dumaine has just published a highly readable new book. It will be of interest to anyone in need of having their spirits lifted from the assumptions that we will be hostages forever to third world oil despots, or that global warming must inevitably lead to Pittsburgh being the next great beach town.
He identifies technological advances that are likely to play a significant role in lessening our middle east oil Jones, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. What makes this an exciting read is that these are not theoretical laboratory experiments, these are tested technologies that are already working their way into daily economic life, or at minimum are in the prototype stage. My favorite is the algae that eats carbon and poops biodiesel.
Dumaine is a guy who looks more at home in wingtips than Birkenstocks - another reason to feel some optimism after reading the book. He has done his own research and filtered all these ideas through the screen of how much venture capital each idea is attracting. The VCs get plenty of things wrong, but it is not usually because they have failed to thoroughly consider the economic viability of an idea, and these all pass the test.
Read it. You'll sleep better.
A Sustainable Future July 1, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
The author explains that "green= growth". Ultimately,
carbon emissions drive costs up on many fronts.
Traffic jams cost $65 billion dollars annually.
The book provides some unique engineering feats to
promote the "green" goal. For instance, a raised floor
in a building facilitates an efficient use of the
duct system so that night air cools the building from
the bottom up. Resultingly, less air conditioning is used.
The Pope Manufacturing Co, of Hartford has built an
electric car costing $98,000. The Tesla auto costs .02/mile
to drive. Transportation is known to account for 20% of
Greenhouse gases. Walmart has cut back energy use by
creating "green supercenters" . Lower energy use means more
profits. i.e. This feat is accomplished by using motion
sensors to control the freezer light.
The German government guarantees that renewable energy
companies will make money. Heiner Gartner has created a
solar energy complex ; wherein, 10,000 solar panels
fuel 1500 houses. Q Cells is a profitable solar energy
company. Carbon sequestration is a process; wherein,
greenhouse gases are buried. The ABB Grid System is a
Swiss company specializing in power. The author explains
a scenario; whereby. the Mojave Desert can power the
entire West Coast.
This book ought to be read by the entire USA Congress.
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