Patents and Climate Change: There’s No Place Like Home

After 4.5 billion years of change, is the planet Earth a complex and delicate ecosystem? It is well-known that some human activities may be part of a climate-change process that affects global warming. Environmental scientists continue to make substantial progress in advancing our understanding of how such activities affect climate change. Since the year 1989, hundreds of global-warming related patents have been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. This original and important book thus provides an easy-to-read summary of such patents. Within many of the summaries, there are inventor profiles and news articles that are insightful and thought-provoking. Pioneering inventors hail from many locations including Brazil, Great Britain, India, Japan, Mexico, and Taiwan. At the beginning of several chapters, contradictory opinions on climate change are provided in the form of quotes. Chapter Seven offers an example of a fascinating application that failed to gain US patent protection. In the final chapter, several significant climate-change issues that continue to be addressed are outlined.