Book review of Cold Cash, Cool Climate on Skeptical Science

The web site Skeptical Science posted a review of my book Cold Cash, Cool Climate:  Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs yesterday.  Here are the first few paragraphs:

Jonathan Koomey’s new book Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-Based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs puts forth an intriguing idea – entrepreneurs are one of the keys to meaningful, timely climate action. Society needs to make drastic changes to avoid dangerous global warming. However, institutions such as the government and big business only change slowly and incrementally, except under exceptional circumstances.

Koomey argues forcefully that it’s the very nature of entrepreneurs that make them an important part of the solution.  While institutions often fear and resist change, entrepreneurs embrace it. The changes required are so large, no part of the economy will be untouched. Most people look at the enormity of this issue and despair. But entrepreneurs are famously scornful of the phrase “it can’t be done” and see opportunity.

This is not to say entrepreneurs are the magic bullet. One of the key points that Koomey makes is that we need to be addressing climate change on many fronts. The key to speeding up the change is to make the systems that are causing the climate problem obsolete more quickly. What entrepreneurs do is develop replacements that are so much better than to existing ways of doing things that people are willing to “upgrade” to gain the advantages of the new technology.

To read more, go here.

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