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Christian Dittus
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LIVE SUSTAINABLY NOW

Karl S. Coplan

A Low-Carbon Vision of the Good Life

Any realistic response to climate change will require reducing carbon emissions to a sustainable level. Yet even people who already recognize that the climate is the most urgent issue facing the planet struggle to understand their individual responsibilities. Is it even possible to live with a sustainable carbon footprint in modern American society?much less to live well? What are the options for those who would like to make climate awareness part of their daily lives but don't want to go off the grid or become a hermit?

In Live Sustainably Now, Karl Coplan shares his personal journey of attempting to cut back on carbon without giving up the amenities of a suburban middle-class lifestyle. Coplan chronicles the joys and challenges of a year on a carbon budget?kayaking to work, hunting down electric-car charging stations, eating a Mediterranean-style diet, and enjoying plenty of travel on weekends and vacations while avoiding long-distance flights. He explains how to set a personal carbon cap and measure your actual footprint, with his own results detailed in monthly diary entries. Presenting the pros and cons of different energy, transportation, and lifestyle options, Live Sustainably Now shows that there does not have to be a trade-off between the ethical obligation to maintain a sustainable carbon footprint and the belief that life should be fulfilling and fun. This powerful and persuasive book provides an individual-level blueprint for a carbon-sustainable tweak to the American dream.

Karl Coplan (JD Columbia) is a Professor of Law at Pace Law School, and Co-Director of its Environmental Litigation Clinic. He has authored several chapters in academic and legal practice books, and is the co-author of the second edition of Introduction to Environmental Law (Environmental Law Institute, 2016). This book grows out of the author's many public lectures over the years on how individuals and society can lower its carbon footprint.
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Published 2019-12-01 by Columbia University Press

Comments

"Talking the environmental talk is one thing, but if you want to walk the walk, too, Karl Coplan's book will tell you how to do it and how to do it happily." -- Colin Beavan, author of How To Be Alive and No Impact Man "In clear prose, sometimes taking a colloquial turn, Coplan walks the reader through questions of individual culpability for global warming, ranging?quite usefully, in my view?between philosophical abstractions and quantifiable realities of daily life. He balances theory and practice with aplomb." -- Mark Hineline, author of Ground Truth: A Guide to Tracking Climate Change at Home "Coplan reminds us that low-carbon living not only contributes to the cultural shift required for systems-level change, but is satisfying, meaningful, and fun." -- Peter Kalmus, climate scientist and author of Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution