[ Energy Situation Books 1 ] [ Energy Situation Books 2 ] [ Energy Situation Books 3 ]
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Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oilby Michael C. Ruppert, Catherine Austin Fitts |
| The attacks of September 11, 2001, were accomplished through an amazing orchestration of logistics and personnel. Crossing the Rubicon discovers and identifies key suspects-finding some of them in the highest echelons of American government-by showing how they acted in concert to guarantee that the attacks produced the desired result. Crossing the Rubicon is unique not only for its case-breaking examination of 9/11, but for the breadth and depth of its world picture-an interdisciplinary analysis of petroleum, geopolitics, narcotraffic, intelligence and militarism-without which 9/11 cannot be understood. The US manufacturing sector has been mostly replaced by speculation on financial data whose underlying economic reality is a dark secret. Hundreds of billions of dollars in laundered drug money flow through Wall Street each year from opium and coca fields maintained by CIA-sponsored warlords and US-backed covert paramilitary violence. America's global dominance depends on a continually turning mill of guns, drugs, oil and money. Oil and natural gas-the fuels that make economic growth possible-are subsidized by American military force and foreign lending. | |
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The Empty Tank : Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Coming Global Financial Catastropheby Jeremy Leggett |
| Just in time to capitalize on the twin disasters of Katrina and high gasoline prices comes this jeremiad on the cataclysmic end of the fossil-fuels era. Geologist and ex-Greenpeace official Leggett, author of The Carbon War, argues incisively that oil production has peaked, with dwindling supplies and soaring prices in the offing. Worse than the possibility that the world cannot cope, he feels, is the threat that it will cope all too well by burning more coal and coal-derived synthetic fuels, thus exacerbating atmospheric carbon dioxide build-up and global warming. This will lead the planet down "the road to horror," illustrated in a sketchy montage of the usual environmental doomsday scenarios: rising sea levels, extreme weather, famine and war. | |
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Kicking the Carbon Habit : Global Warming and the Case for Renewable and Nuclear Energyby William Sweet |
| With glaciers melting, oceans growing more acidic, species dying out, and catastrophic events like Hurricane Katrina ever more probable, strong steps must be taken now to slow global warming. Further warming threatens entire regional economies and the well being of whole populations, and in this century alone, it could create a global cataclysm. Synthesizing information from leading scientists and the most up-to-date research, science journalist William Sweet examines what the United States can do to help prevent climate devastation. Rather than focusing on cutting oil consumption, which Sweet argues is expensive and unrealistic, the United States should concentrate on drastically reducing its use of coal. Coal-fired plants, which currently produce more than half of the electricity in the United States, account for two fifths of the country's greenhouse gas emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Sweet believes a mixture of more environmentally sound technologies-wind turbines, natural gas, and nuclear reactors-can effectively replace coal plants, especially since dramatic improvements in technology have made nuclear power cleaner, safer, and more efficient. |