With COP-15 less than a month away -- for an unusual coalition's response to the international "Conference of Parties" of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, check out http://www.hopenhagen.org -- we're lucky to have three of the world's leading advocates and experts, Al Gore, Lester Brown and Guy Dauncey, delivering some of the best-ever climate change books focusing on solutions. And while not that long ago ago we worried that many in the climate change world had not recognized the importance of transportation electrification and the near-term benefits possible with today's technology, that's no longer the case.

Find these books at your local bookstore or order them via the link at http://www.calcars.org/­books.html (the CalCars Books Page):

• PLAN B 4.0: MOBILIZING TO SAVE CIVILIZATION by the Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown has been substantially revised and expanded. It includes extended discussions about integrating wind power and plug-in cars, and it reviews the water and climate change complexities of biofuels. It presents a persuasive description of the components for a global transition to a sustainable and more equitable world. If you want to show people you're what Amory Lovins calls a "practical idealist," buy this book so you can read and be able to convey the story on pages 259-261: the all-important post-Pearl Harbor mobilization of U.S. manufacturing was led by the auto industry. Everyone was skeptical about President Roosevelt's call for 60,000 planes -- but the transformed industry turned out 229,600 in three years. See a review at Climate Progress http://climateprogress.org/­2009/­10/­13/­lester-brown-new-book-plan-b-4-0-mobilizing-to-save-civilization/ .
• THE CLIMATE CHALLENGE: 101 SOLUTIONS TO GLOBAL WARMING, by Canadian author, speaker and journalist Guy Dauncey, fulfills the promise of its title in ways that many "list books" don't: it's comprehensive as well as specific. Jumping out of 2-page-spread-by-spread are 35 key challenges, then 10 solutions each for individuals, champions, communities, businesses, farmers, transportation, energy companies, government, and developing nations. It ends with 10 global solutions. PHEVs appear prominently in three main solutions, with the final one, "Develop a Sustainable Vehicles Strategy" highlighting Andy Grove's advocacy of conversion of millions of gas-guzzlers. We won't be spoil the plot when we say #101 is "One Solution for All of Us: Don't Sit this One Out." You can learn more and order the book from the author directly at http://www.theclimatechallenge.ca . Disclosure: we're delighted that a CalCars PHEV is among the 15 photos on the cover (and larger inside)(, and that the inside pages include our blurb. We said, "Finally here's a book that combines thorough explanations for newcomers with innovative perspectives for experts and effective answers for people, industries and institutions. The Climate Challenge's imaginative format is up-to-date, comprehensive, and immensely handy. It's as if Whole Earth Catalog had been reborn 40 years later. Guy Dauncey pulls no punches and is deeply, urgently persuasive. Anyone who reads this will be moved to act."
• OUR CHOICE: A PLAN TO SOLVE THE CLIMATE CRISIS, by Al Gore, is the long-awaited sequel to "An Inconvenient Truth." If you felt that wake-up call lacked a focus on solutions beyond those for individual consumers, now you have a bonanza. Like the other two above, this book is comprehensive. In fact, it's almost encyclopedic, reflecting the advice of hundreds of experts and including effective illustrations and graphics. Though Gore had much help, this is not a ghost-written product: you can hear his voice in almost every sentence. In the Super Grid chapter a section starting on page 286 focuses on the benefits of plug-in cars in providing energy storage solutions, concluding with a two-page graphic envisioning the future grid, with a PHEV plugged in to a house via a grid transmitter and smart meter. And it includes an excellent introduction to "black carbon." And for those who may say the book has toomuch "wonkish" detail, as we see it, there's no need to be defensive about science and facts. Michelle Obama understood that when she praised Energy Secretary Steven Chu in a Nov. 5 morale-building visit to the DOE, saying "we are so incredibly grateful for his leadership. My husband loves his Cabinet. He was extremely excited that he had a real nerd on his team. (Laughter.) He talked about it for weeks on end." http://www.whitehouse.gov/­the-press-office/­remarks-first-lady-department-energy-event-0 And a few days later, Chu agreed with the First Lady telling her, at a mock National Science Bowl event, that the competition " elevates the social status of nerds everywhere." http://www.er.doe.gov/­News_Information/­News_Room/­2009/­Nov%2010_ScienceBowl.html