In 2020, Christiaan De Beukelaer spent 150 days covering 14,000 nautical miles aboard the schooner Avontuur, a hundred-year-old sailing vessel that transports cargo across the Atlantic Ocean. Embarking in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, he wanted to understand the realities of a little-known alternative to the shipping industry on which our global economy relies, and which contributes more carbon emissions than aviation. What started as a three-week stint of fieldwork aboard the ship turned into a five-month journey, as the COVID ...
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In 2020, Christiaan De Beukelaer spent 150 days covering 14,000 nautical miles aboard the schooner Avontuur, a hundred-year-old sailing vessel that transports cargo across the Atlantic Ocean. Embarking in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, he wanted to understand the realities of a little-known alternative to the shipping industry on which our global economy relies, and which contributes more carbon emissions than aviation. What started as a three-week stint of fieldwork aboard the ship turned into a five-month journey, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced all borders shut while crossing the ocean, preventing the crew from stepping ashore for months on end. Trade winds engagingly recounts De Beukelaer's life-changing personal odyssey and the complex journey the shipping industry is on to cut its carbon emissions. The Avontuur's mission remains crucial as ever: the shipping industry urgently needs to stop using fossil fuels, starting today. If we can't swiftly decarbonise shipping, we can't solve the climate crisis. 'Trade Winds is an absorbing account of a voyage that starts off as an effort to prove the continuing viability of sail, but becomes far more challenging than expected when the Covid pandemic shuts of all access to the shore. It is also a thoughtful analysis of practical ways for shrinking the carbon footprint of one of the world's most polluting industries - shipping.' - Amitav Ghosh, author of The Nutmeg's Curse 'This book is both important and beautiful: important, in that it describes one of the best ways we can move into a post-fossil fuels civilisation, which is to say by sail; and beautiful, because it shows on every page how this bursting out of the cocoon of heavy oil that we have been living in will return us to a life in the real world, with the wind felt in the hands and on one's face, and every day an adventure. What a joy to read these pages and learn their news.' - Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry for the Future 'The story is original - a sailing ship undertaking a quixotic mission to deliver a tiny amount of cargo (in order to demonstrate that it can be done) when the pandemic descends, trapping the narrator - makes for a diverting narrative.' - Horatio Clare, author of Down to the Sea in Ships 'This is a book that should change the world. Beautifully written and brimming with bold yet careful analysis, Christiaan De Beukelaer has given the world a tremendous gift.' - Deborah Cowen, author of The Deadly Life of Logistics 'De Beukelaer tackles a subject that's growing in importance, giving us his perspective from the deck of a sailing cargo boat. No mean achievement.' - Tom Cunliffe, sailor, presenter and author of The Complete Yachtmaster 'A truly fascinating account - of a voyage, but also of an idea that is counter-intuitive in a world based on speed, but revelatory for a planet that is going to have to start taking real care of itself. There's a bit of romance here, and a lot of reality.' - Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature 'Simultaneously engaging and scholarly, Trade winds combines sailing memoir and environmental analysis to provide important insights about the environmental effects of global shipping and about what plausible alternatives might be. De Beukelaer brings together personal experience with an impressive command of scholarly literatures across history, economics, philosophy, climate science, among many others, and brings them all together in an interdisciplinary tour de force that is realistic and yet ultimately hopeful.' - Elizabeth R. DeSombre, Camilla Chandler Frost Professor of Environmental Studies, Wellesley College 'Scientists, scholars, and sailors have long turned to the ocean to conjure futures that lie just beyond reach. In his dive into the quixotic movement to revive shipping by sail, Christiaan De Beukelaer leaves us wondering which is more of a folly: imagining that sail could once again be a viable technology for transporting goods around the world, or imagining
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Add this copy of Trade Winds: A Voyage to a Sustainable Future for to cart. $29.46, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2023 by Manchester University Press.
