Book Description
If the US continues with current policies, the next decades will be marked by war, economic collapse, and environmental catastrophe. Resource depletion and population pressures are about to catch up with us, and no one is prepared. The political élites, especially in the US, are incapable of dealing with the situation, and have in mind a punishing game of "Last One Standing."
The alternative is "Powerdown," a strategy that will require tremendous effort and economic sacrifice in order to reduce per-capita resource usage in wealthy countries, develop alternative energy sources, distribute resources more equitably, and reduce the human population humanely but systematically over time. While civil society organizations push for a mild version of this, the vast majority of the world's people are in the dark, not understanding the challenges ahead, nor the options realistically available.
Powerdown speaks frankly to these dilemmas. Avoiding cynicism and despair, it begins with an overview of the likely impacts of oil and natural gas depletion and then outlines four options for industrial societies during the next decades:
- Last One Standing: the path of competition for remaining resources;
- Powerdown: the path of cooperation, conservation, and sharing;
- Waiting for a Magic Elixir: wishful thinking, false hopes, and denial;
- Building Lifeboats: the path of community solidarity and preservation.
Finally, the book explores how three important groups within global society - the power élites, the opposition to the élites (the antiwar and anti-globalization movements, et al: the "Other Superpower"), and ordinary people - are likely to respond to these four options. Timely, accessible and eloquent, Powerdown is crucial reading for our times.
Listen to an interview with Richard Heinberg from WRPI.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent overview..........2007-10-11
As with "The Long Emergency" I won't go into too much detail since there are already many excellent reviews of this book. However, I do feel it is important to add my voice since all the evidence points to the fact that what Heinberg and the other "peak oil" folks are saying is reality...
Heinberg has done a remarkable job of presenting the overall picture of the main issue: our reliance on cheap oil as the basis for civilization and how we are now at the time when cheap oil is about to disappear. He presents the facts in a very quick way since his other book, "The Party's Over" goes into much more detail on the subject.
He then presents the reader with four possible scenarios to deal with the problem. Unfortunately, the first one ("last man standing") is basically a great die-off due to resource wars and appears to be our present choice. The second one, "power down", involves massive global reductions in consumption. It makes the most sense but, of course, is beyond any political level to implement. The next one is some sort of new-age "technology will save us" way to sleepwalk into a die-off. And finally there is the individual and, potentially, community-level life-boat building solution.
To be honest, the prospects even for the last solution are daunting. However, I must say that Heinberg gives all possibilities equal presentation and stays remarkably calm and neutral as he develops all possibilities. The choice is up to the reader...
The writing style is engaging and his sidebar "stories" are excellent. This is a quick and interesting read.
This book is really just a simplistic view of "Limits to Growth" and Jantsch's seminal "The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution" where these projections were made a long time ago. Too bad the baby-boomers didn't read and learn back then...
Weak; Verbose on non-thesis topics; Disappointing.......2007-07-15
The first 85 pages (of a 186 page book) are dedicated to verbosely enumerating the arguments from his previous book (without effectively arguing his reasoning). He also spends quite a bit of space to describing his opinions of the current U.S. administration. While I might agree with his political opinions, I believe that he undermines the thesis of this book in the minds of a lot more people. It is this reason why I would categorize this book is really nothing more than a "preaching to the choir" book.
The heart of the book is a 28 page chapter named "Powerdown" which provides some suggestions, but is mostly fluff. Probably the most important page in the chapter is the list of books that actually do discuss the powerdown scenario.
The third chapter is about how technology is unlikely to save us from dwindling energy.
The fourth chapter is about how people would react to the coming situation. He spends quite a while rehashing Gibbon's arguments on Rome and Diamond's arguments about ecological collapse. If you've read those two books you'll quickly notice that Heinberg and these two authors are on completely different planes of scholarship.
I was excited that he discussed, however briefly, how we might save information from the coming Dark Ages. Though, it was for only two pages.
Overall I thought that the author's arguments were weak and there really wasn't much that I got out of this book. I hope that other (and future) books in this genre will describe and defend the thesis better, and they should give more suggestions of what to do.
My eyes will never be the same........2007-04-29
From the article titled "Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force", in the Washington Post, "The White House went to great lengths to keep these meetings secret, and now oil executives may be lying to Congress about their role in the Cheney task force," Lautenberg said.
You might find the answer for why we are in Iraq, if you were to read "Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World". This book is not a fiction based peak oil theory written by some fanatic. If the CIA were to have read this book, I think their internal book review would be a shocking confirmation. With the connection in the recent news of Cheney's secret energy meeting with oil execs, the CIA to Cheney, Cheney to the oil industry, the unprecedented preemptive war in Iraq, the facts in this book about how horrible the prospect, limited the options are and awful I feel to contemplate it all, all point to the fact that we, the American people don't want to know the truth, but read it or not, we will know that truth soon as we are forced to deal with it. How bad is the situation? On a scale from 0 to 10, it is off the scale.
Nostalgia for the good ol' days will seem sad and silly, for these days are the last of the good ol' days. you will not have any problem believing it unless you do not finish it or choose to live in denial. All good things must end and concidering the way the world has squandered a non-renewable resource like oil, it is a soon to be obvious and logical eventuality.
How much can you afford to pay for a gallon of gas in today's economy? How much will gas cost in a collapsed economy where your money isn't worth 10 cents on a dollar?
Who could ever have imagined 9/11? Or even what possible reasons there could be for a 9/11 conspiracy? Or presidential election fraud 2 elections in a row? A democratic government that does not have to tell you anything except that, "that information is secret" or "that information would jeopardize the security of" what or who? I can't really say I want to know either.
What I see now when I go about my days are people of all ages enjoying a good life that they do not know is about to come to an end, objects I use like monofilament fishing line, my toothbrush, anything plastic or that comes in plastic or in part is plastic, clothes, shoes, carpet and more all made from oil. Things I do and once enjoyed without a thought, drive to the store, watch a movie, listen to music, to the radio, and the variety of food available to me, may all be unaffordable even if available in my lifetime, what is left of it anyway. Do I want to feel this way? No. Do I want you to? No.
In the sci-fi movie "They Live" an economic crisis brings unemployed Nada (Roddy Piper) to L.A. in search of work. What he finds instead is that the ruling elite of the world are aliens in disguise, their aim being to keep humans in a state of mindless consumerism. His discovery comes when he dons a pair of special sunglasses made by a resistance group and sees for the first time reality unadorned. Billboards, store signs, magazine covers--all bear subliminal messages to OBEY, to CONSUME, to have NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT. Money itself says THIS IS YOUR GOD. But worst of all, with these glasses you see which of us are really hideous, bug-eyed aliens.
Reading "Powerdown" is like putting on a pair of special sunglasses but you can only wish you could take them off. My eyes will never be the same.
Visionary.......2007-03-09
A must read for anyone concerned about the future. Heinberg understands the factors that will shape our world in the years to come as well as anyone.
PowerDown is a powerful book.......2007-01-11
Although the concept of Peak Oil and the implications it brings is growing in awareness amongst the general public, most people still don't understand what we will be facing in our lifetimes. This is an excellent primer for those who want to learn about peak oil, it's ramifications and what you can do to cope with this very real eventuality. Share it with those you love.
Customer Reviews:
Beautiful and inspiring........2005-08-30
With this book, David Suzuki takes us on a journey around the world and shares with us the intimate knowledge that idigenous tribes still have about the natural world they live in. Most of us live in cities and have all but lost our 'link' to the earth; this book makes me want to fight to get it back.
beautifully written and inspiring.......2000-05-25
A beautiful synthesis of native ecological knowledge and western scientific insights. Suzuki and Knudtson call for a new way of relating to nature by combining the "ways of knowing" of the indiginous and western mind. It is not only beautiful to read but incredibly important to our time. Highly recommended.
An OK book but largely a rehash of existing material.......1999-02-19
David is a sincere man and his TV series The Nature of Things broke ground in many areas. This book is well written but is mainly a collection a material from other sources pointing out that native peoples have had much more experience dealing with nature than science has. Many good points but does not draw strong philophical directions for those seeking to apply the illustrations to daily life.
Book Description
Ecuador is the third-largest foreign supplier of crude oil to the western United States. As the source of this oil, the Ecuadorian Amazon has borne the far-reaching social and environmental consequences of a growing U.S. demand for petroleum and the dynamics of economic globalization it necessitates. Crude Chronicles traces the emergence during the 1990s of a highly organized indigenous movement and its struggles against a U.S. oil company and Ecuadorian neoliberal policies. Against the backdrop of mounting government attempts to privatize and liberalize the national economy, Suzana Sawyer shows how neoliberal reforms in Ecuador led to a crisis of governance, accountability, and representation that spurred one of twentieth-century Latin America’s strongest indigenous movements.
Through her rich ethnography of indigenous marches, demonstrations, occupations, and negotiations, Sawyer tracks the growing sophistication of indigenous politics as Indians subverted, re-deployed, and, at times, capitulated to the dictates and desires of a transnational neoliberal logic. At the same time, she follows the multiple maneuvers and discourses that the multinational corporation and the Ecuadorian state used to circumscribe and contain indigenous opposition. Ultimately, Sawyer reveals that indigenous struggles over land and oil operations in Ecuador were as much about reconfiguring national and transnational inequality—that is, rupturing the silence around racial injustice, exacting spaces of accountability, and rewriting narratives of national belonging—as they were about the material use and extraction of rain-forest resources.
Customer Reviews:
Globalization on the ground in Amazonia.......2007-05-31
This is one of the best books on indigenous politics that has been written. The author's 20 years of experience in the Ecuadoran Amazonia show in the depth of her narrative and in her careful and accessible use of Foucault to draw out the complexities of indigenous identity, conceptions of nation and nationalism, and the impact of global forces. It is also beautifully written. Clearly, a labor of love and conviction by a scholar who has spent hours listening to indigenous activists , oil company officials, state officials, NGO workers, academics, and, most importantly native Ecuadorans of widely diverse political views and fashioned a wonderful book. If you are interested in all the complex political issues surrounding globalization as seen from the Amazon, you don't need a Ph.D to find this a great read
Book Description
The world is about to run out of cheap oil and change dramatically. Within the next few years, global production will peak. Thereafter, even if industrial societies begin to switch to alternative energy sources, they will have less net energy each year to do all the work essential to the survival of complex societies. We are entering a new era, as different from the industrial era as the latter was from medieval times.
In The Party's Over, Richard Heinberg places this momentous transition in historical context, showing how industrialism arose from the harnessing of fossil fuels, how competition to control access to oil shaped the geopolitics of the 20th century, and how contention for dwindling energy resources in the 21st century will lead to resource wars in the Middle East, Central Asia, and South America. He describes the likely impacts of oil depletion, and all of the energy alternatives. Predicting chaos unless the U.S. -- the world's foremost oil consumer -- is willing to join with other countries to implement a global program of resource conservation and sharing, he also recommends a "managed collapse" that might make way for a slower-paced, low-energy, sustainable society in the future.
More readable than other accounts of this issue, with fuller discussion of the context, social implications, and recommendations for personal, community, national, and global action, Heinberg's updated book is a riveting wake-up call for humankind as the oil era winds down, and a critical tool for understanding and influencing current U.S. foreign policy.
Listen to an interview with Richard Heinberg from WRPI.
Customer Reviews:
A Thoughtful and Balanced Overview of Peak Oil.......2007-09-03
I discovered Peak Oil in August 2006 through James Kunstler's 'The Long Emergency,' and since then I have read almost every book available on this subject, including all of Heinberg's books. I have even written my own essay for friends and family - which can be downloaded from my website at http://www.dougcraftfineart.com. This book is a great overview of the Peak Oil and energy depletion crisis facing us, and I recommend it for anyone looking for a comprehensive and thoughtful overview of this difficult subject.
I have found all of Heinberg's books to be thoroughly researched, and well written, and he does offer positive suggestions for dealing with Peak Oil in this book. Other reviewers who complain of doom and gloom with Heinberg, have clearly not read some of what many other authors in this field have to offer.
Whether you are a pessimist or optimist, the facts surrounding this issue and the nature of resource depletion are simply unassailable from an honest scientific evaluation. Peak Oil and energy depletion - coupled with climate change and exponentially growing population - are deadly serious issues representing the most calamitous crisis we humans have ever faced. Ever. The problem simply cannot be sugar coated.
Nonetheless, I found 'The Party's Over' to offer a positive vision of our future where human communities have the opportunity to rediscover the traditional benefits of local economic interdependence and a much more sane pace of life. Until I had read Heinberg, I was truly in despair over our future. Now, I understand that we are adaptable and creative beyond what we think, we will survive, and we will all have the opportunity to help make positive contributions if we so choose.
Sometimes hard to find the good parts among the diatribes.......2007-07-24
This work truly does have good material in it to stretch the mind on an important topic. The problems happen when the author strays from science into politics, sociology, history, and especially economics. Even some of his technology - engineering stuff - can be unreliable. But when he's good, he's quite good.
The mind-stretch parts are particularly good in chapter 4 and some of chapter 3, where Mr. Heinberg discusses various energy technology technologies, and the concept of a "peak oil date," respectively. Simply laying out the range of energy uses, abuses, and possibilities is a quick and excellent way to make the reader aware of the state of the planet. Since the major theme of the book, after all, is what to do when the oil supplies dry up, his sober and stark assessment is to the point. Kudos for his wish to end subsidies for oil companies, but catcalls for his equal wish to subsidize other unknown technology (p165). How about no subsidy for anybody? "Corporate welfare" hasn't done much for the regular person anyway.
The major weakness in this book is one that unfortunately afflicts many on the Left. That is, comparing the theory of a system they like, with the worst actual results of the competing system they don't like. A good example on the smaller scale is Heinberg's glowing certainty about EXPECTED energy production from solar panels and windmills, vs. the listing of worst possible results and costs seen from nuclear energy reactors. On the larger scale, his clear preference for central government rule over free market forces is unsupported and irritating. The notable exception is his choice to discount our US Geological Survey findings on oil reserves, in favor of his (half dozen) gloomy retired oilmen's assessments. Things go smoother when one picks sources that agree with one's line of argument!
Nevertheless, there are enough good parts in this book to make it worth reading. Unless the reader wishes to use chapters 3 and 4 for reference, maybe it would be better to just check "The Party's Over" out from the library.
Wake-up Call.......2007-05-13
This book was very informational and I especially enjoyed the initial chapters that offered an historical build up to our current crisis. From that point on, however, the author inspired a sense of hopelessness rather than motivating activism.
How Marx should have critiqued capitilism.......2007-04-08
The Party's Over lays it right out there for us - we are beginning the process of running out of oil. Doubters like to say "That can't be true, because the all mighty market hasn't yet started creating the viable alternatives" (in anything like replacement level quantities). Why then, I ask, is our foreign and military policy all about putting as much of a lock down as possible, on known supplies (see e.g. Blood and Oil by Michael T. Klare)? As Heinberg well notes, the politics of democratic capitalism depend on ongoing economic growth - which is why, from the point of view of George Bush and Dick Cheney, it seems reasonable to keep our army engaged in the middle of the Iraqi Civil War, even with little hope of short term victory. Its the oil, stupid (with a bit of desperate ego mixed in). And why there is as yet no serious politics of conservation alive and well in this country.
Heinberg mightily strengthens his case by framing the story of oil within the context of ecological science and industrial history. Industrial capitalist culture is behaving in a predictable way. We have had a fabulously productive oil party. As a player in this eco-system we have been on a roll. Such rolls tend not to want to be slowed by the soft voices of alarm pointing out that the highway ends at the edge of the cliff up there not so far ahead. The literal fuel to power our engines will likely run out sooner than the ideological fuel that powers our belief in this way of doing business. You hear the "new age" argument that its not the oil supply that should be our concern - that its the infinite supply of human ingenuity that's critical. What's scary to me is how this market sucks up so much of that ingenuity for enterprises like convincing us we need more of this, that and the other; like creating, using and selling ever more sophisticated weaponry around the globe; like sustaining our belief in the magic nature of capitalist markets.
Heinberg mentions in his afterword to the revised edition that many readers have reported finding the book depressing. Small wonder. I was depressed at times as I read it too. But I also felt something bracing about it. If you're like me, standing on the "liberal - progressive" side of the political spectrum, but feeling that there's a missing center to our politics, I recommend you read this. There is a new politics that needs to be invented, and quickly. Ever since Stalin, et. al. gave communism a bad name, and the right wing in America made liberalism tantamount to communism, progressives have been floundering. We're trying to find a way to say that we really need to wake up, learn to take care of each other and the earth, get real about the climate and the oil -- all without saying that all this will involve serious sacrifice and some serious form of the unmentionable S word (socialism). The more information like that found in The Party's Over and other like works gets into the main stream, the more likely it is that all that human ingenuity will start driving invention in the social and political realm, where we need it every bit as much as we do in the technical.
Heinberg is a definitely a Cassandra, but remember what happened to those who ignored her.......2007-02-11
Richard Heinberg set out to answer the questions, "How much petroleum is left? How much coal, natural gas, and uranium? Will we ever run out? When? What will happen when we do? How can we best prepare? Will renewable substitutes--such as wind and solar power--enable industrialism to continue in a recognizable form indefinitely?" (p. 3) He sorted the various responses to these questions into four broad voices--those of free-market economists, environmental activists, petroleum geologists, and politicians--and of these four, he found the third, the petroleum geologists, to be the most useful, if only because "theirs is a long-range view based on physical reality" (p.5). (Throughout the book, Heinberg notes that the free-market economists are almost constitutionally opposed to talk of Peak Oil, because, as economist Robert Solow said, "the world can, in effect, get along without natural resources." Resources, in other words, are merely commodities created by the market to satisfy demands, and when the demand arises, the market will find a supply. Needless to say, Heinberg finds this laissez faire approach to Peak Oil--"perilous optimism"--quite dangerous because it ignores hard ecological realities.)
"The message here is that we are about to enter a new era in which each year, less net energy will be available to humankind, regardless of our efforts or choices. The only significant choice we will have will be how to adjust to this new regime" (p.5). In short, an ecological perspective on humanity's consumption of petroleum and other nonrenewable resources reveals that the astronomical population growth and economic expansion of the last century are the biological bloom and population overshoot enabled by an energy subsidy from cheap, abundant oil, coal, and natural gas. As with other population overshoots in human (and evolutionary) history, the end probably won't be pretty, with massive die-offs and "structural readjustments" (to use free-market lingo) bringing the human population back into line with the Earth's carrying capacity. Heinberg's book challenges us to face this coming change NOW and to do what we can to mitigate against its worst effects through exploring and developing economical and social alternatives to the status quo.
The discovery of new oil resources peaked several decades ago, according to the majority of petroleum geologists, and as it seems that discovery and production follow similar curves, it will be but a matter of years until the production of oil peaks. (For the record, this doesn't mean that we will literally run out of oil, but only that it will seem like we've run out, because it will cost more--financially and energetically--to extract and refine the oil than it is worth.) The peak in oil production won't merely have a direct impact on the automobile industry, but will also undermine the production of plastics and pharmaceuticals, of which oil is the feed stock, and will yank the rug out from under petro-intensive, corporate, "Green Revolution" agriculture. Combine these consequences with growing population and energy consumption of developing nations like China and India, and you have a recipe for seriously ugly changes. Like James Howard Kunstler in The Long Emergency, Heinberg examines various other energy sources and technologies, from natural gas to zero-point energy, and finds them all wanting in one way or another. (Unlike Kunstler, Heinberg maintains a solid faith in our flexibility as a species and in our ability to adapt.) According to this perspective, oil (and other nonrenewables) were a one-time windfall in ecological terms, and once we've passed the peak in extracting them, we will have to recognize our ecological limitations as one species amongst many struggling for limited resources.
I recently read PowerDown, the follow-up to this book, and found it an excellently written, powerful and thought-provoking read. Perhaps it's because I read The Party's Over in conjunction with the contrarian book The Bottomless Well (Huber and Mills) or perhaps it's because I'm a bit burned out reading books on Peak Oil, but whatever the reason I did not find this book as compelling as its sequel. That said, it is still a better introduction to the subject of Peak Oil and to its ecological basis and implications than most others I have yet read.
Average customer rating:
- A start to a very ambitious project
- Very Broad
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A Social History of American Technology
Ruth Schwartz Cowan
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Programming Windows, Fifth Edition
ASIN: 0195046056 |
Book Description
For over 250 years American technology has been regarded as a unique hallmark of American culture and an important factor in American prosperity. Despite this American history has rarely been told from the perspective of the history of technology. A Social History of American Technology fills this gap by surveying the history of American technology from the tools used by the earliest native inhabitants to the technological systems -- cars and computers, aircraft and antibiotics -- we are familiar with today. Cowan makes use of the most recent scholarship to explain how the unique characteristics of American cultures and American geography have affected the technologies that have been invented, manufactured, and used throughout the years. She also focuses on the key individuals and ideas that have shaped important technological developments. The text explains how various technologies have affected the ways in which Americans work, govern, cook, transport, communicate, maintain their health, and reproduce. Cowan demonstrates that technological change has always been closely related to social development, and explores the multiple, complex relationships that have existed between such diverse social agents as households and businesses, the scientific community and the defense establishment, artists and inventors. Divided into three sections -- colonial America, industrialization, the 20th century -- A Social History of American Technology is ideal for courses in American social and economic history, as a correlated text for the American history survey, as well as for courses that focus on the history of American technology. It offers students the unique opportunity to learn not only how profoundly technological change has affected the American way of life, but how profoundly the American way of life has affected technology.
Customer Reviews:
A start to a very ambitious project.......2007-04-01
Ruth Cowan attempts to show how technology has developed since the colonial days through the present trends of biotechnology. This is a daunting task and it is pulled off as well as can be expected. There is a lot of information to be found here but a great deal more is missing. This book is still the best general overview on the history of technology and while more can be done this is a good start. If you want to understand how technology shaped our society you can't go wrong with this book.
The early chapters on the colonial economy are very well done and tightly analyzed. After that it starts to spread apart a little and the technology jumps around. The transportation revolution chapter is one of the more disappointing for me. While she does a decent job on the railroads she completely misses the significance of the canals on the early development in America. Her chapters on innovation and technological systems provide nice summaries of the relevant literature. Most of the chapters leading up to the twentieth century are filler that really don't address too many technological issues. The automobile chapter tries to do an amazingly quick history of cars and a lot gets left out in the process with even more wrong. The communications chapter does a better job of showing the evolution while looking at the technologies. The history of the military-academic-industrial complex provides an interesting look at how the Manhattan Project and NASA changed the way technology was developed. Cowan does a very good job on this particular topic and it is probably her best chapter in the later part of the book. The final chapter is on biotechnology and covers genetic corn, birth control and penicillin. These advancements while important are not really given justice.
Very Broad.......1999-07-30
Very broad overview of American technology starting with the beginning of the United States all the way through fairly current biotechnology. There are a few good stories in here and the second half is by far the best. I really liked the sections on the railroad, the automobile, radio communication, penicillin, and the section on the birth control pill was by far the best. Is it true that doctors and researchers weren't allowed to talk about birth control till past the early 1950's in the United States? Here's an interesting quote...
"In short, by 1880 if by some weird accident all the batteries that generated electricity for telegraph lines had suddenly run out, the economic and social life of the nation would have faltered. Trains would have stopped running; businesses with branch offices would have stopped functioning; newspapers could have not covered distant events; the president could not have communicated with his European ambassadors; the stock market would have to close; family members separated by long distances could have not relayed important news to each other. By the turn of the century, the telegraph system was both literally and figuratively a network, linking together various aspects of national life- making people increasingly dependent on one another."
Y2K, ay?
Book Description
This acidly funny account of the battle over an offshore wind farm is both a fascinating window on the business and politics of energy and a scathing portrait of the ruling class.
When Jim Gordon set out to build a wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod, he knew some people might object. But there was a lot of merit in creating a privately funded, clean energy source for energy-starved New England, and he felt sure most people would recognize it eventually. Instead, all Hell broke loose. Gordon had unwittingly challenged the privileges of some of America's richest and most politically connected people, and they would fight him tooth and nail, no matter what it cost, and even when it made no sense.
Cape Wind is a rollicking tale of democracy in action and plutocracy in the raw as played out among colorful and glamorous characters on one of our country's most historic and renowned pieces of coastline. As steeped in American history and local color as The Prince of Providence; as biting, revealing and fun as Philistines at the Hedgerow, it is also a cautionary tale about how money can hijack democracy while America lags behind the rest of the developed world in adopting clean energy.
Customer Reviews:
Outrageous Hypocrisy Revealed.......2007-09-07
Well researched and written. This book should be read by everyone who is really concerned about the reduction in use of fossil fuels. The outrageous hypocrisy of politicians of both parties as well as some of the beautiful people who claim to support the development of alternative energy sources is laid out for all to see.
A must read for any energy entrepreneur.......2007-09-03
It would be shame for an energy entrepreneur to be tripped up by the obfuscation described in this great book without its warning. Extensively researched, masterfully written, a lesson of the times. Read it and learn! Bet you won't be able to put it down,
Cutting edge history in the making.......2007-08-21
Cape Wind is a brilliant account of a project that has the potential to revolutionize the energy future of the US. It couldn't be more timely, given the current energy crisis, the need for serious and concrete solutions and the fact that the controversy over the project is happening at this very moment.
The authors provide a powerful experience - the opportunity to gain a thorough understanding of the politics and history of this project as it unfolds every day. The presentation of the facts and players is fascinating; their delivery of the story is incredibly entertaining.
Read it now and stay tuned to the project - History is being made!
Amazing... We need a documentary on this!!!.......2007-08-21
There's too much happening here to not have a well executed and informative documentary on this. It may seem like a small issue to those outside of it, but it's implications reach much further than the Cape.
Read this easy to follow and well written account of this project and engage yourself into todays questions about our planet and our political stratosphere.
Tad over the top- but very valuable for students & voters.......2007-08-20
We used the Cape Wind story in public policy class this winter (b4 this book came out), & students were fascinated. This book does illuminate the major actors, and provides in depth background for why a policy with this many public benefits has been stalled for years. Romney, the Kennedys, Alaskan politicians, and the Cape Cod Times (although they are good about my letters when I go home)should be ashamed of themselves.
Amazon.com
The definitive history of water resources in the American West, and a very illuminating lesson in the political economy of limited resources anywhere. Highly recommended!
Book Description
Part One Of Two Parts
The story of the American West is the story of the relentless quest to control and allocate nature's most common, and the West's most precious, resource: water. CADILLAC DESERT recounts this dramatic saga.
The early settlers were lured by free land. But there was not enough water to sustain them, and they drifted on. Only the Mormons stayed, carefully tending a system of irrigation canals that tempered perpetual drought. Their success gave birth to federal aid programs, principally the Bureau of Reclamation. Without the bureau, without Hoover, Shasta and Grand Coulee, the West as we know it would not exist.
Customer Reviews:
Every American needs to read this book........2007-09-07
Or anyone thinking about moving/living west of the 100th meridian.
One of the best modern non-fiction books ever written, period.
Essential reading for our time.......2007-08-23
AKA...those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. It's essential reading on the mismanagement of arguably our most critical resource: drinking water.
Meticulously researched and quite well written, it's rare to find a non-fiction book that can be classified a page-turner, but this it it.
never dry!.......2007-08-20
The American experiment in democracy has degenerated into a plutocracy, in which wealth and power preempt democracy's ideals of equality and freedom [cf Kevin Phillips' Wealth & Democracy]. While Phillips gives a depressing history of the decline, and its corruption thru the centuries, Cadillac Desert focuses on perhaps the biggest corrupter of all - the sprawling water projects of the American West, in which water is diverted at huge cost to grow crops no one needs, all to support giant corporations that threaten to wipe out the family farms that were the rationale for the projects in the first place. Taken together, these books demonstrate that ideology or the party in power matters little - elections become a charade, masking the control of government by capital and its corporate controllers.
History as entertainment.......2007-07-21
Many people often find history to be a boring subject, whether in school, as a TV show, or as dinner conversation. And within the broad subject of history, few are considered as boring as the topic of public works. Wars, great leaders, sex scandals, spy stories, and scientific revolutions are the common topics of history shows and history best-sellers. Yet so few history books are as entertaining or enjoyable as this tome from the now-deceased Marc Reisner. This book's subject matter is man's attempts to control water flow in the US west of the Appalachias. This includes dams, canals, reservoirs, river diversions, and numerous other public works projects related to water. Some mention is made of irrigation by Native Americans, but most of the text is on public works done in the 20th century by the US federal government, and occasionally some state governments. The book explores the politics (local and national) behind various dams and other projects, and shows how these human constructions affected local economies and ecologies. Names like Hoover Dam, Grand Teton Dam, Central Arizona Project, and San Joaquin Valley are covered here. The author also highlights key individuals involved in dams throughout US history; such as LBJ, Floyd Dominy, Carl Hayden, and John Powell.
The book's chapters flow in a chronological order, with some chapters backtracking in time to cover different regions of the US. The text itself flows quickly and is written very well with the author taking time to include comedy in the form of irony, shortsightedness and outright stupidity on the part of many public servants. Several black and white photos provide the only illustrations. The only drawback of the book is the paucity of maps. Many of the rivers mentioned in the text are not immediately recognizable to the lay reader. But all in all, I consider this one of the best history books of the 1990's.
An essential, action-packed story of water policy (yes, you read that right).......2006-11-27
In "Cadillac Desert," Marc Reisner tells the story of how the American West destroyed its rivers with unnecessary dams. Environmentalists are often accused of opposing economic growth, but Reisner shows that the dam-builders - - and not their opponents - - were the ones ignoring economic criteria. As a result of the "beaver complex" of the Bureau of Reclamation and the US Army Corps of Engineers, we have a bunch of money-losing dams providing subsidized water to grow subsidized crops at high prices.
In other words, the beavers destroy wealth and jobs at the same time they destroy rivers, wetlands, and Indian reservations. Indirectly, they also contribute to the farm crisis in wetter areas such as the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys and the eastern seaboard.
It would be easy to unleash an army of econometricians to document the phenomenal waste of these dams. However, Reisner manages to provide us with an action narrative of these two out-of-control bureaucracies and a demented, pork-addled legislature. Let me repeat this, because it's the most remarkable feature of the book: an action narrative of two bureaucracies. The man can write.
He also gives us capsule biographies of leading figures - - including a full chapter on Floyd Dominy, the high priest of dam building. These people destroyed our rivers, not in the pursuit of growth, but in the pursuit of corporate welfare and back-room deals that move wealth around without creating any new wealth. Every environmentalist and anti-environmentalist needs to read the book.
In short, this is a riveting story, very well told. Not only is it highly recommended, but I join with many other reviewers in saying that this book should be required reading for all American citizens.
Book Description
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring antagonized some of the most powerful interests in the nation--including the farm block and the agricultural chemical industry--and helped launch the modern environmental movement. In The Gentle Subversive, Mark Hamilton Lytle offers a compact life of Carson, illuminating the road that led to this vastly influential book. Lytle explores the evolution of Carson's ideas about nature, her love for the sea, her career as a biologist, and above all her emergence as a writer of extraordinary moral and ecological vision. We follow Carson from her childhood on a farm outside Pittsburgh, where she first developed her love of nature (and where, at age eleven, she published her first piece in a children's magazine), to her graduate work at Johns Hopkins and her career with the Fish and Wildlife Service. Lytle describes the genesis of her first book, Under a Sea Wind, the incredible success of The Sea Around Us (a New York Times Bestseller for over a year), and her determination to risk her fame in order to write her "poison book": Silent Spring. The author contends that despite Carson's demure, lady-like demeanor, she was subversive in her thinking and aggressive in her campaign against pesticides. Carson became the spokeswoman for a network of conservationists, scientists, and concerned citizens who had come to fear the mounting dangers of the human assault on nature. What makes this story particularly compelling is that Carson took up this cause at the very moment when she herself faced a losing battle against cancer. Succinct and engaging, The Gentle Subversive is a story of success, celebrity, controversy, and vindication. It will inspire anyone interested in protecting the natural world or in women's struggle to find a voice in society.
Customer Reviews:
A sensitive subject indeed.......2007-06-25
Rachel Carson's careless criticism of DDT killed millions of people, mostly poor children, a point that deserved better coverage in this book. Even today, decades later, there is still no good alternative to DDT for fighting malaria.
Carson was correct to point out that DDT has very bad side effects, but as it turns out, banning DDT has had much worse side effects. Science eventually determined that very small amounts of DDT would have been effective against malaria-carrying mosquitos and safe for the environment-- but Carson's rush to judgement prevented the scientific facts from being adequately investigated and considered.
She and her followers in the environmentalist movement refused to consider the full consequences of their actions, and millions of people have paid the price for that refusal.
. png
A Beautiful Tribute to the Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson.......2007-03-08
Mark Lytle does fine justice to the legacy of Rachel Carson in this well researched summary of her early life, upbringing, education, professional experiences, evolution of her writing and publishing culminating with the struggles to write and publish her most potent and last book, "Silent Spring", a dire warning of how deadly pesticide and herbicide assaults were damaging the health of ecosystems and non-targeted life forms including humans and which many proffer, launched the modern age of environmentalism.
Lytle continues Carson's beautiful legacy in his "Epilogue" and "Afterword".
Packed with an abundance of notes, citations and bibliography, this little book gives one a huge sense of awe and admiration for Carson's perseverance and dedication to educate the world about the interconnectedness and beauty of Nature and to cultivate a sense of responsibility and good stewardship.
Average customer rating:
- Binding Fell Apart
- Worthy of permanent display on a coffee table
- Clearing Up the Confusion and Getting the Photo Details
- A Tale of Two Books
- Colorado: 1870-2000 vs. Colorado: Yesterday & Today
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Colorado, 1870-2000
William Henry Jackson ,
John Fielder , and
Ed Marston
Manufacturer: Westcliffe Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Jackson, William Henry
| ( J-L )
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Similar Items:
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Colorado 1870-2000 II
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Colorado, Yesterday & Today
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Mountain Ranges of Colorado
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John Fielder's Best of Colorado
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I Never Knew That About Colorado: A Quaint Volume of Forgotton Lore
ASIN: 1565793471 |
Book Description
The images of early west photographer William Henry Jackson capture a Colorado landscape both pristine and already dramatically affected by the onslaught on western civilization. Standing exactly where Jackson stood, and pointing his own camera in precisely the same direction, John Fielder has rephotographed Jackson's Colorado images to capture the often startling change that has occurred over the last century. The result is both breathtaking and stark, hopeful and disquieting. Jackson's and Fielder's photography is accompanied by thoughtful and provocative essays by respected experts in the environmental field: Roderick Nash, America's foremost wilderness historian and author of Wilderness and the American Mind; Ed Marston, journalist and publisher of High Country News; and Eric Paddock, Curator of Photography at the Colorado Historical Society. John Fielder describes the profound experience of traveling the state and seeing the landscape from Jackson's perspective, and reflects upon changes of the last 130 years.
The contrast between Jackson's and Fielder's photographs not only illuminates Colorado's past but will help us determine the course of land management as we move into the next century. Accompanied by an educational program that includes lectures, a traveling exhibit, newspaper serialization, and television series, this book is aimed at encouraging people to appreciate and reflect on nature, history, and photography as we move into the next century. Colorado: 1870-2000 stands not only as an important document of westward exploration, expansion, and urbanization, but helps define our past and future environmental values.
Customer Reviews:
Binding Fell Apart.......2003-05-11
I noticed the review that said this book was worthy of "permanent display on your coffee table." Well, I don't think that will be possible with my book, as the binding fell apart after 6 months. The book has gotten a fair amount of use, but nothing out of the ordinary. I've since seen a similar problem with a couple of the display copies at bookstores (which is why they've been demoted to display copies). So I don't think this is an isolated problem. It seems like the book is so big that they didn't make a strong enough binding for it. So just a warning for this thinking of buying this book. The good news is that, on the advice of one of the reviews, I bought Colorado: Yesterday & Today to replace my copy of Colorado: 1870-2000. I agree that it is the better book and now it will be on permanent display on my coffe-table.
Worthy of permanent display on a coffee table.......2003-02-28
This book is excellent in look, feel, and quality. It is intriguing to see how much landscape has changed in 130 years. Many times for the better and many times for the worse. In every case it is very interesting to see two pictures side by side and compare 1870 with 2000. The photographer was very meticulous to capture every shot as closely as possible to the original perspective and frame, which really enhances the "then and now" feel of the book.
Clearing Up the Confusion and Getting the Photo Details.......2002-11-18
There appears to be some confusion as all of the reviews of the original "Colorado 1870-2000" big book are credited to this, the paperback "Colorado 1870-2000 Revisited: The History Behind the Images". This book is a companion book to the original. It takes each photo set from the big book and goes into detail about the location, changes, and how Fielder acquired each photo. These are the things that, being left out of the original, made several people give the big book negative reviews. While it would have been nice (and certainly less expensive) to have everything in one volume, we now have the information for which those disappointed with the big book were looking. While the big book is a piece of coffee table art, the Revisited book fits neatly on your bookshelf, ready to be taken down to answer those questions posed by your friends perusing the big book. I take a bit of offense at having to have paid for two different books, but they belong together and I feel were money well spent; the big book for the beautiful photos and the revisited book for its entertaining and educational material.
A Tale of Two Books.......2002-09-05
John Fielder is one of America's greatest living photographers, and he brings his love of the Colorado wilderness to this book. His re-shoots of Jacksons 19th century photographs are both beautiful and thought-provoking.... the photographs make it worthwhile.
On the other hand, the text is a different story. Reading a text-only version of this book, one might conclude that the title is a misprint, and that the book should really be called "Colorado 1970 - 2000." Fielder roamed across Colorado capturing the changes in places like Kremmling, Denver, and Ouray, but the text never tells us anything about these places, or why they changed, or why we should care. Instead we get chapters about oil shale and the Forest Service.
Ahem. If I wanted to read about the relationship between Forest Service bureaucrats and small Western towns, I would have bought a book called "The Relationship Between the Forest Service and Small Western Towns." My book is called "Colorado 1870 - 2000." That is what I want to read about.
It's true that oil shale schemes, government agencies, and others have played a role in shaping Colorado in the past 30 years. But before that there were events like the Silver Crash of 1893, the City Beautiful movement, the Depression, World War II, and Urban Renewal. You won't read about those in this book.
The pictures are beautiful, and the text is well-written (if misplaced and unwanted). Just don't expect to learn much about the places you are looking at- except that they are very pretty.
Colorado: 1870-2000 vs. Colorado: Yesterday & Today.......2001-07-20
As people may or may not know, there are now two Colorado "then and now" books out: Colorado: 1870-2000 by John Fielder and Colorado: Yesterday & Today by Grant Collier. I am fascinated by these types of books and therefore bought both books. I have carefully compared the two based on several different aspects and decided that, for the reasons listed below, Colorado: Yesterday & Today is the best overall value.
1) Accuracy of Photo Retakes: While Fielder did a rather competent job of matching the historic photos, Collier did a remarkable job. Unless it was impossible to match them, due to trees blocking the view, etc., most of Collier's photos appear to be taken from nearly the exact location as the historic photos. EDGE: Colorado: Yesterday & Today.
2) Originality: Since both of the books were published within a short time span, it seems possible that one photographer copied the other's idea for the book. Initially, I assumed that Fielder started on his book first. But, after looking into it, I was surprised to find that Collier started working on his book before Fielder even decided to do his book. EDGE: Colorado: Yesterday & Today
3) Reputation: This is Collier's first book, while Fielder has published many other books. EDGE: Colorado: 1870-2000
4) Written Text: Colorado: 1870-2000 has some interesting essays written by leading environmentalists, historians, etc. My one complaint is that the essays do not really provide any information on the photos in the book. Colorado: Yesterday & Today was written entirely by the photographer, Grant Collier. He did a very competent job writing the histories of the towns in the book, and this text provides the reader with additional information on the photographs in the book. EDGE: EVEN
5) Appearance of the book: Colorado: 1870-2000 is a very large book and is perhaps a little bulky. But the large photos in it are quite nice. Colorado: Yesterday & Today is more of a standard size book, and it is easier to sit down and look through this book. But the photos are obviously not quite as large. Also, both books have VERY NICE leather covers. EDGE: EVEN
6) Intangibles: In Colorado: 1870-2000 Fielder reshot the images of pioneer photographer William Henry Jackson. In Colorado: Yesterday & Today Collier reshot the images of his great-great-grandfather, and pioneer photographer, Joseph Collier. This adds a fascinating human-interest aspect to Colorado: Yesterday & Today that is lacking in Colorado: 1870-2000. EDGE: Colorado: Yesterday & Today.
OVERALL VALUE: The SRP of Fielder's book is $95, while the SRP of Collier's book is $39.95. So, given the price and quality of Colorado: Yesterday & Today, I would say that it is certainly the best overall value.
To conclude, if you're only going to buy one Colorado "then and now" book, I'd recommend Colorado: Yesterday & Today. If you're going to buy two, Colorado: 1870-2000 isn't too bad a buy, either.
Book Description
When Europeans first reached the land that would become the United States they were staggered by the breadth and density of the forest they found. The existence of that forest, and the effort either to use or subdue it, have been constant themes in American history, literature, economics, and geography up to the meaning of the forest in American history and culture, he describes and analyzes the clearing and use of the forest from pre-European times to the present, and he traces the subsequent regrowth of the forest since the middle of the twentieth century. Dr Williams begins by exploring the role of the forest in American culture: the symbols, themes, and concepts - for example, pioneer woodsman, lumberjack, wilderness - generated by contact with the vast land of trees. He considers the Indian use of the forest, describing the ways in which native tribes altered it, primarily through fire, to promote a subsistence economy. Early European settlers, he shows, extracted many products from the forest, and also began the extensive clearance of trees that would continue for almost three hundred years. Succeeding chapters, organized by topic and region, cover agricultural and industrial effects upon and uses of the forest. Dr Williams explores the rise (and often fall) of industries based upon forest products: naval stores, timber for building, charcoal and the iron industry, the railroads. Attention is devoted to the forests of the Middle West, the South, and the Pacific Northwest. By the late nineteenth century Americans began to realize that the forest was not boundless and moved to preserve those portions, still extensive, that remained. In the wake of the movement for preservation, Dr Williams describes how the forest began to regrow, especially after 1950, in areas where it had originally been vigorous and healthy, a development that continues today.
Books:
- Pure Sea Glass: Discovering Nature's Vanishing Gems
- Rainforest
- Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering, and Recovery
- Run With the Bulls Without Getting Trampled: The Qualities You Need to Stay Out of Harm's Way and Thrive at Work
- Saving the Planet With Pesticides and Plastic: The Environmental Triumph of High-Yield Farming
- Seeing in the Dark : How Amateur Astronomers Are Discovering the Wonders of the Universe
- Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action
- Silent Spring
- Spectacular Galapagos (Spectacular)
- Statistical Analysis of Geographic Information with ArcView GIS And ArcGIS
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