Energy
*see also Solar Power
Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction
by Terry Tamminen
The author's generally seen as a liberal Democratic environmentalist, but he became Arnold Schwarzenegger's Cal/EPA secretary in 2003. After winning wide respect for the work he did in that capacity, he stepped down two months ago - in part because of this book and its arguments, many of which apparently don't jibe very well with those of California's GOP "base."
Tamminen says that the real cost of the petroleum products we burn is far higher than what we pay at the pump. The health care costs incurred as a result of exhaust-fouled air are enormous. Additional "hidden" costs include those of "oil security" (Would we be in Iraq if it didn't have oil?) and catastrophic climate change. Tamminen shows how the automobile and oil companies have actively conspired to destroy workable alternatives to petroleum-based transportation, and he contends that they should be hit with the same kinds of lawsuits that are now extracting billions of dollars from the tobacco industry. Meanwhile, he says, we must start switching to petroleum alternatives such as hydrogen NOW.
Lives Per Gallon ... published October 6, 2006 by Island Press
Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives by Edwin Black
The author of several other well-received volumes including War Against the Weak and IBM and the Holocaust reflects on energy monopolies through the ages, and how we can convert from a petroleum-shackled economy to one based largely on hydrogen. Black shows that from wood to coal to petroleum, energy has been monopolized for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful for thousands of years. In the early 20th century, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford seemed poised to help individual citizens achieve off-grid, electricity-based energy independence, but a variety of circumstances and organizations conspired to ensure that that the world would instead became addicted to petroleum-based products. Black concludes by calling for a Manhattan Project-like effort to save us from various fossil fuels-related catastrophes by making hydrogen our energy of choice. The book's website is nicely done. Among its many worthwhile features is a link to a brief but well-made promo video.
Internal Comustion ... published September 5, 2006 by St. Martin's Press
Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future
by Jeff Goodell
A veteran author and contributor to Rolling Stone and the New York Times Magazine offers a commendably thorough and accessible overview of coal and what it means to America -- economically, socially, technologically and environmentally. The world's easy-to-extract oil and gas is running out, but U.S. coal reserves are vast. As a result,
In the coming decades, the great danger is not that the world will burn more coal -- that's a given, but that we will burn it badly, cheaply, exploitatively. Instead of building modern IGCC plants that at least allow for the possibility of sequestering the CO2 underground, we will throw up another generation of coal burners that will pump millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and accelerate global warming. ... Instead of helping developing countries leapfrog beyond coal we will turn them into fossil fuel addicts like ourselves. But it doesn't have to be this way.
Goodell was featured on NPR's Talk of the Nation.
Big Coal ... published June 8, 2006 by Houghton Mifflin
Sustainable Fossil Fuels by Mark Jaccard
A respected Canadian ecological economist makes two remarkable claims: (1) we're not even close to "out of oil"; and (2) it's possible to burn oil and other fossil fuels without releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Though the world's conventional oil supplies are dwindling, it's feasible -- and not ruinously expensive, Jaccard maintains -- to get plenty of additional oil from unconventional (for now) sources.
He further explains how it's possible, through carbon sequestration and other means, to use fossil fuels without producing the catastrophic climatic effects now widely feared. While Jaccard certainly doesn't rule out such alternates as solar, wind, or hydrogen, he argues persuasively that they can produce only small percentages of the human energy demands for the 21st century. Sustainable Fossil Fuels offers some unconventional but pragmatic thinking not only regarding fossil fuels, but also about other energy issues that are typically oversimplified and viewed (to the extent that they're viewed at all) in vague, abstract terms.
Sustainable Fossil Fuels ... published January 16, 2006 by Cambridge University Press
Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity's
Unappeasable Appetite for Energy by Alfred W. Crosby
A former UT-Austin history and geography prof observes that most of the fuels humans have harnessed for energy during our species' history have actually been one form or another of solar energy. Fossil fuel, he points out, is solar energy that's been stored (via photosynthesis and pressure) as coal, oil, and natural gas. Though continued dependence on such "solar energies" is impossible, the technology to replace them doesn't exist. The author holds out hope, however, that a path to the Holy Grail of energy -- fusion power -- may yet be found in time to bail out the species. This slim volume's a pleasure to read. Crosby writes well, judiciously doling out both humorous anecdotes and profound ideas. Among the latter (and essential to the book) is the notion that the human development of cooking is an integral component of a process so powerful that it's even shaping geologic history.
Children of the Sun ... published January 9, 2006 by W. W. Norton