This is a new book (published by Portobello in the first week of
November) by Jeremy Leggett, former oil industry geologist and
scientific director of Greenpeace, and now director of Solar Century
Synopsis
Oil interests have hyped the product on which society has come to depend
while stoking
addiction and holding back alternatives. The oil industry's general
contention is that the "topping point" of oil production lies far off in
the 2030s or beyond. It doesn't. The peak is imminent, and will
certainly happen this decade. When it arrives, it will send the oil
price soaring beyond today's already dangerous level. This will trigger
the worst-ever energy crisis, which itself stands to create economic
chaos reminiscent of the depression in the 1930s. Meanwhile, global
warming caused by oil, gas and coal burning is in danger of running out
of control. Society will be forced, albeit in deplorable economic
conditions, to solve oil depletion with a crash programme to accelerate
alternative-energy sources. Whether it will do so with the technologies
that can also solve global warming and save the planet is an open
question. The biggest danger is that critical players like the US and
China will use their enormous coal reserves to run power plants and
provide gasoline substitutes without giving renewable alternatives
enough of a chance. The extent to which we can accelerate renewable
forms of power and fuel instead of coal, rather than alongside it, will
be the final battleground in the effort to save Earth from the ravages
of human-induced global warming. There is much that individuals, and
organisations including businesses - oil companies among them - can do
to influence the outcome of that struggle
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