Author: John L Renne and Billy Fields
Publisher: Island Press
Rating: WORTHY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
This is one of two book reviews on books about the oil crisis which I am posting today - and yes, it is a crisis. Oil has powered civilization for getting on for two centuries, believe it or not (the first commercial oil was discovered in 1859), and it needs to stop. The US uses a fifth to a quarter of the world's oil. Believe it or not, this is less than it used to be, and it's very likely to be overtaken by the Chinese before long. Some 90% of the oil in the US goes, one way or another, into cars and trucks.
So obsessed is the US in prolonging its oil crisis that it's now using technology to frack the hell out of Earth's crust to suck out the last expensive, nasty, sludge-caked barrels of this vile substance - and who cares if it pollutes the water table? So what if some people turn on their taps and have "water" come out which you can literally set alight?
If you want to see an example of this, watch the documentary: Gasland. It's on Netflix. There's a preview you can watch on YouTube. It’s very revealing of the extent of our oil addiction and how much cheap oil has blinded us, that the US, which prides itself on being a technology leader, is offering no leadership whatsoever on alternative means of powering transportation.
Island Press is a non-profit organization dedicated to "…stimulating, shaping, and communicating ideas that are essential for solving environmental problems worldwide." That's a fine-sounding statement, but when a publisher publishes a book with thirteen or fourteen pages - most of which are significantly, if not completely, blank - before chapter one even begins, I have to wonder how well thought-out is this commitment is to solving environmental problems! That's thirteen pages which come from trees, which are the environment's best bet right now, for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and every extra page in a book contributes to destroying yet another of these trees!
Yes, in an ebook this doesn’t matter, but if a book goes to a print run, and if the run goes to a large printing, then it does make a difference. I skipped those thirteen pages and went straight to chapter one. I don’t do forewords, introductions, prologues and what-not because they rarely, in my experience, contribute a single thing to the reading experience.
And yes, I know that both tradition and organizations like, for example, the Library of Congress, demand a certain layout of a book, but screw them, I say. The environment is more important than any book-printing tradition, and it's far more important than the Library of Congress's antiquated rule book.
Those observations and gripes aside, the topic of this particular book is one of critical importance because the massive bulk of oil use in the world is in powering transportation, particularly that of road vehicles. So what are the alternatives? As this book makes disturbingly clear, the alternatives are known - we’re just not moving to them.
Bio-fuels are being pushed as an alternative, but these are still carbon dioxide producers! They reduce emissions only 10% - 20%, and how are we going to grow them? Are we going to cut down more trees to make room for growing the bio-fuel plants? Are we going to cut back on food production? Actually it wouldn’t hurt to put the USA on a diet as the other book I review today will show.
The only truly clean alternatives are vehicles which use electricity or those which use hydrogen fuel cells. Electric vehicles, though, are only as clean as the fuel which produces the electricity they use. If the plan is to go all electric, but to use electricity generated from coal-fired electricity plants, then this is actually a backward step! This book discusses all of this.
Of course, you can argue that burning coal produces sulfur dioxide, which acts as a coolant on the atmosphere by reflecting sunlight, but this is a short-term "solution". The carbon dioxide we’re putting into the air now will still be here a century hence. Do you really want to screw your children and their children just so you can be selfish now? I hope not.
This book goes beyond a simple look at what we burn in our motor vehicles. Chapter two focuses on how we live and travel, surveying six cities and comparing how they developed and how the advent (or lack) of, for example, light rail, impacts something as seemingly unconnected as housing finance, and how the ability of people to live and work might be pressured by fluctuating oil prices.
The cost of using oil isn’t just a matter of what we pay at the gas pump - which in the US is a way-too-low spoiled-rotten price. Right now, in the US, where the price of a gallon is (as of this writing) significantly below two dollars, would be a good time, in my opinion, to slap a tax of ten or twenty cents per gallon on the gas and use that money to finance an alternative fuel infrastructure, diminishing our dependence upon oil and creating jobs at the same time. Of course, this is never going to happen in real life, not in the USA.
Chapter three considers the hidden costs of our chronic dependence upon oil. How about $25 billion to $50 billion per year in assorted subsidies? How about between two and four dollars of subsidies of one sort or another per gallon? Is it cheap now?
When was the last time you saw one of the big petroleum corporations running a deficit? Compare that with how many times they've proudly reported record profits to their shareholders. How many children would fifty billion dollars feed? How many homeless could it house? How many jobs could it create? How much of a clean fuel transportation infrastructure could it build? How much would a gallon of gas cost if it were not subsidized?
In a chapter on oil security, writer Todd Litman points out this startling fact: In 2009, the US had a $381 billion trade deficit. Of this, $253 billion (66%) was from oil imports. Another 21% of the total was from vehicle and vehicle part imports. Almost 90% of our trade deficit is tied to the oil nightmare! Imagine what it would do for all of us if the US really did become a leader in non-gasoline dependent transportation technology!
Other chapters in this comprehensive overview cover the role of walking and biking as alternatives to using motorized transportation, the economics of bio-fuels, and building an optimized freight transportation system. There's more, and extensive end-notes after each chapter facilitate those who want to verify facts or do more reading.
The bottom line for each of us is that we do not have to wait for technology to arrive or for blind governments to act. There are ways we can all start cutting back on burning oil now in our vehicles, and in our home.
I recommend this essential contribution to kicking the oil habit.
