Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book was difficult to read because it is written in a glib, blustery style ill-suited to a text on an important subject. To be fair we are given adequate warning. The last page of the preface describes the premise of the book. "The paramount objective of US energy policy should be to promote abundant supplies of cheap energy and to facilitate their distribution and consumption." The remainder of the book is focused on proving this assertion. But there are several places where the book falls short on intellectual rigor. To pick one example, let's start with the section that introduces the concept of the "Bottomless Well" on page 3. Figure 1.1 shows that the price of oil has stayed relatively constant over time even as the maximum distance to oil has increased. The authors go on to assert that "`Energy supply' is determined not by `what's out there' but how good we are at finding and extracting it." The conclusion seems to be that the more we use the more we find. In other words the well is bottomless. They are using the example of one source of energy (oil) over 125 years to predict out into the future for oil and by extension all other sources of energy. They gloss over the fact that the amount of oil is finite. Finite means that it will run out if we consume it and the faster we consume it the faster we will run out. The depth of oil is irrelevant to the discussion and yet it is used as evidence for the core assumption. I'm not saying these guys are not clever at convincing us that everything is going to be OK. Their ability to conclude, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that we can go on burning as much fuel as we like without consequence, is a testament to their skill. I just wouldn't use the book as a guide to understanding our energy future or any other future for that matter. History will show, that the value of this book is not in its text but in its calorific value, because when we do run out of heating oil I'll be looking for a substitute, and this is the first book I'll reach for.