Global Warming and the End of the Oil Era
My account (1997 – 2005) of the peak oil threat: how the global oil industry is overblowing both its reserves and resources assessment and its ability to deliver oil to market in a timely manner, how the growing numbers of whistleblowers in an around the oil industry are faring with their warnings about the great global energy crisis that looms as a consequence, and how peak oil conflates with climate change.
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Comments on Half Gone:
Daily Mail
Oil depletion is now meeting global warming …it’s scary….a mix of a textbook and a call to arms ….Few people could make the transition from geologist to oil consultant to chief scientist for Greenpeace and then to boss of Britain’s largest solar energy company ….his personal insights are fascinating ….the writing is always clear and conveys complicated but important technicalities in very accessible terms.
Guardian
Jeremy Leggett, former oil geologist and a fine writer, spells out the reality in Half Gone – and very different it is from the official blandishments from on high, in which the incompetence seems beyond belief and deception is a way of life.
Sunday Times
Leggett knows what he is talking about. ….The resulting book is a fast-moving, easily readable polemic whose unashamed populism doesn’t obscure the weight of it arguments.
Independent
His arguments are so powerfully and persuasively drawn that his statements begin to seem obvious. ….a compelling must-read for politicians, pundits and punters alike.
If you want one book that … really deals with this and attempts to explain the complications of it, I recommend it to you.
Jonathon Porritt, Commission on Sustainable Development
Really excellent. Personal and passionate, but strong on the science and eminently reasonable. Certainly the best account of the Peak Oil debate that I have come across so far, and I really hope that it is having the impact on key people that it deserves.
Lester Brown, President, Earth Policy Institute
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.
Sydney Morning Herald
What makes Half Gone important is that it goes beyond the conventional clarion call about “peak oil” to consider also the other great fossil-fuel-related crisis we face – global warming. Despite its gloomy topic, (it) is an impressive and jaunty read and should be mandatory for politicians and planners ….a detailed, finely poised, buoyantly optimistic and ultimately plausible vision of how increased energy efficiency and renewable energy sources can lead to an ecologically viable and soft, rather than hard, landing.
Internationalist: Journal of Culture and Currents, Winter 2005 (US)
Leggett’s case is equally convincing and frightening … gives a fresh, keen understanding of the imminent need to alleviate our economic dependency on oil.
Gilbert Taylor, Booklist (US)
Leggett summarizes data… that convincingly indicate that world oil production is in irreversible decline.
Book of the year: Ian Irvine, Independent-on-Sunday
Bookseller magazine votes Half Gone one of the top 50 environmental books ever (November 2009).