The Quest: Energy Security and the Remaking of the Modern World
A sequel to the 1991 Pulitzer Prize winning The Prize – an epic account of the oil industry from its early days to the modern times – this book’s central premise that peak oil is largely a myth, or at least so far in the future that we don’t need to worry about it just yet.
The difference between the two books is simple. One is a chronicle of the past, and in many ways easier to write; the other a prediction of the future, which requires a different kind of vision to pull it off successfully. Yergin certainly has the writing skill but his vision remain shaky; relying as it does entirely on the belief that technology will save us.
Although less daunting than its 800-plus pages might suggest, The Quest is also fatally flawed inasmuch as it takes a ‘cornucopian’ view of our energy future that acknowledges but fails to join up several important dots.
These include global warming, population growth, the energy return on energy investment for hi tech novel extraction techniques and China and India coming fully on-stream as energy users and stakeholders. It is in fact a curiously Western, or worse American, view of our energy future.
He’s enthusiastic about horizontal drilling and 3D seismic imaging, by the ‘fracking’ of shale gas and the extraction of bitumen from tar sands. His enthusiasm wanes however when it comes to new sources of energy which he believes could divert research, development and investment away from new methods of extracting unconventional sources of petroleum and gas.
All the more worrying then that Yergin has become the ‘go to guy’ for policy makers and journalists in need of a quote.
In the end much of his remaking of the modern world is really more of a rehash based on largely the same old infrastructures, dependencies and addictions.
Don’t avoid this interesting and readable book but don’t accept its conclusions without challenge either.
The Quest: Energy Security and the Remaking of the Modern World
Daniel Yergin
Penguin
Paperback
£12.99
- This review appeared in Geographical magazine circa January 2013.
