Bøger i Qif Focus Books serien

Energy Choices: Opportunities to Make Wise Decisions for a Sustainable Future focuses on steps that we can take as individuals to reduce fossil fuel emissions in our daily lives. Rapid advances in solar and wind energy, electrification of transportation, and energy storage are making the move to clean renewable energy quite feasible and even cheaper in the long run. We can help to stem the tide of climate change, end the air pollution that is inevitable when we burn fossil fuels, and halt the ongoing degradation of land and water caused by unrestrained extraction of fossil fuels. We are never more than a few years away from making a major personal energy decision: when we buy a car or a lawnmower, when the roof needs replacing, when the water heater stops heating water, when the furnace breaks down, or when we move. When we pay our utility bill, we might be able to buy energy generated by wind or solar.Energy Choices is a guide to making these decisions: selecting your next electric vehicle, installing solar panels on your roof or signing up for community solar, replacing your water heater with a heatpump water heater, replacing your furnace with a heatpump, planning your new house. Whether you live in an apartment in an urban area, on a farm, or in a single-family house, Energy Choices will lead you through making the changes needed for a sustainable future.

Toward a Life-Centered Economy: From the Rule of Money to the Rewards Stewardship shows how we as consumers and investors could shift the marketplace toward sustainable, non-polluting products and promote geographic re-localization. Economic synergism will give all the stakeholders a place at the table: labor, management, shareholders, customers, suppliers, community and, most especially, Earth's ecosystems.The current money-centered economy is not sustainable because it is dependent on infinite growth. Human exploitation, or overexploitation of Earth's land, natural resources and biological productivity now approaches or exceeds many natural limits. By discounting the future in monetary terms our current system drives short-term extraction of resources at the expense of future generations.However, an attractive alternative can develop from the grassroots in parallel with the current system and replace its worst aspects. This life-centered economic system emphasizes "quality of life" over "quantity of stuff." It implies a more thoughtful use of our time for the things that are truly important, such as, fulfillment of our individual potentials, and our relationships with family, friends and our greater community. Toward a Life-Centered Economy is the 12th QIF Focus Book.