Systemic global risks of oil supply, climate shock and financial collapse threaten tomorrow's economies and mean businesses and policy makers face huge challenges in fuelling tomorrow’s world. Jeremy Leggett gives a personal testimony of the dangers often ignored and incompletely understood - a journey through the human mind, the institutionalization of denial, and the reasons civilizations fail. It is also an account of tantalizing hope, because mobilizing renewables and redeploying energy funding can soften the crash of modern capitalism and set us on a road to renaissance.
In The Empty Tank, Jeremy Leggett, an internationally renowned geologist and energy entrepreneur who spent the 1980s working for Big Oil, sounds the alarm about an unprecedented crisis. The oil topping point–the day half of all the world’s oil is used up–will be reached, by many calculations, sometime soon. In fact, it may already be upon us. When the financial markets realize what’s happening, an economic crash and soaring energy prices will result. The entire global marketplace we all inhabit will crack and crumble. Oil companies and governments don’t want you to know this. They have been covering up depletion, while stoking addiction and holding back alternatives. Leggett shows how major energy producers have been exposed providing false information about climate change and underground reserves. He describes how governments collude with private enterprise and one another to keep the global economy hooked on oil. And he explains the science behind oil extraction, demonstrating with unimpeachable expertise why the well is indeed running dry a lot faster than we think. Written with verve and eloquence, The Empty Tank explains how we became addicted to oil and why that addiction is leading us toward disaster. Yet Leggett also points the way forward. All the technology we need to get off the road to disaster is already at hand. A new Manhattan Project for energy can save us if we can wake up and confront the problem directly, as this important book urges us to do. "Among the shelf full of books on the oil situation that have been published in the last year or so, (this) is far and away the best." -Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute What’s it all about? ... tough titles made simple by David Shukman THE EMPTY TANK by Jeremy Leggett WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT? OIL, gas, hot air and the global energy crisis, according to the explanation on the front cover. Delving into the nightmare scenario of mankind sleepwalking to global disaster, this book focuses on two related dangers: how we’ll run out of oil far sooner than we think and how burning what’s left of it will warm our planet to a catastrophic level. The central contention is that the oil industry is in a state of denial about the size of its reserves. The scandal over Shell’s distortion of its real figures is said to be the tip of the iceberg. And the conclusion is stark: that we’re all using the black stuff at a far faster rate than geologists are finding new deposits, and that as soon as the truth gets out there’ll be panic in the markets, soaring prices and a mega-crash. It’s scary. SO IS IT READABLE? YES, though towards the end some sections lapse into lists of points. But the writing is always clear and conveys complicated but important technicalities in very accessible terms. DAVID SHUKMAN is environment & science correspondent for BBC News Daily Mail, 18 November 2005
Systemic global risks of oil supply, climate shock and financial collapse threaten tomorrow's economies and mean businesses and policy makers face huge challenges in fuelling tomorrow's world. Jeremy Leggett gives a personal testimony of the dangers often ignored and incompletely understood - a journey through the human mind, the institutionalization of denial, and the reasons civilizations fail. It is also an account of tantalizing hope, because mobilizing renewables and redeploying energy funding can soften the crash of modern capitalism and set us on a road to renaissance.
An industry insider offers a dramatic yet scientific look at the politics and reality surrounding global warming, the oil, gas, and auto industries' attempts to downplay the threat, and the progress of international legislation to change the course of global warming. The author, formerly a professor at the Royal School of Mines, became concerned about environmental issues and joined the international environmental organization Greenpeace. First published in 1999 by Penguin Books Ltd. c. Book News Inc.
The excessive burning of oil, gas and coal is raising our planet's thermostat to unacceptable levels. And an unprecedented catalogue of weather-related disasters - storms, floods, droughts and fires - suggest that the earth's early warning system is already on alert. The 1990s saw a dramatic struggle to achieve international agreement on significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, which culminated in the Kyoto Protocol. An eye-witness to its key events, Jeremy Leggett, university academic turned environmental activist and solar-energy entrepreneur, is in a unique position to tell the inside story of the battle to avert ecological catastrophe.
Discusses the adverse impact of development and other activities on the ecology of tropical forests, and considers the consequences of large-scale deforestation.
Reasons for the importance of trees, and their role in keeping the world safe - Effects on climate, and the oxygen and carbon dioxide level - Water cycle - Deforestation - Air pollution - Acid rain - Pollution - Flooding - Climate.
Systemic global risks of oil supply, climate shock and financial collapse threaten tomorrow's economies and mean businesses and policy makers face huge challenges in fuelling tomorrow’s world. Jeremy Leggett gives a personal testimony of the dangers often ignored and incompletely understood - a journey through the human mind, the institutionalization of denial, and the reasons civilizations fail. It is also an account of tantalizing hope, because mobilizing renewables and redeploying energy funding can soften the crash of modern capitalism and set us on a road to renaissance.
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