I recently appeared at the Ammonia Fuel Network to speak about our renewable ammonia project in the Niagara Falls area. Scheduled ahead of me at the conference was Edwin Black, author of The Plan, a well thought out dissertation on what to do the day our national gas gauge hits zero.
Free copies of the book were available for all of us who spoke at the conference and I just finished reading a few days ago, so I thought I'd give a bit of a review.
Black is the editor at The Cutting Edge News, a site that sees 1.4 million visitors a month. His personal site's introduction neatly summarizes his extensive career.
Edwin Black is the award-winning, New York Times and international bestselling investigative author of 60 bestselling editions in 14 languages in 61 countries, as well as scores of newspaper and magazine articles in the leading publications of the United States, Europe and Israel. With a million books in print, his work focuses on genocide and hate, corporate criminality and corruption, governmental misconduct, academic fraud, philanthropy abuse, oil addiction, alternative energy and historical investigation.
The book itself is a tiny thing – a hundred and thirty pages of text in seven chapters, fourteen pages of references to supporting material, and the thesis is simple: How to rescue society when the oil stops – or the day before. Peak oil is a simple problem. Note that I didn't say nor did I mean easy, but it is simple, it's just that policy makers are unwilling to confront the issues. Black is willing and has done so in a clean, concise fashion.
Chapter 1: The Plan
There is no plan. Black conjures an apocalyptic vision of liquid fuel depletion without a strategic plan in place to handle the effects. I concur with his assessment – it's everything I've been seeing at The Oil Drum for the last couple of years.
Chapter 2: Crude Realities
If you're not a follower of The Oil Drum this chapter will bring you up to speed on various aspects of oil production.
Chapter 3: A Thin Alliance
The International Energy Agency has twenty eight members ... and twenty seven have a plan for oil depletion. Guess which Kyoto Protocol avoiding superpower member doesn't have one? Come on, you can do it!
Chapter 4: Week One – The Shcok and the First Restrictions
If your EPA rating is less than 15 mpg your vehicle is grounded. Concrete steps laid out in order and the graduated access to fuel based on mileage was my favorite – my little Versa just made the 36mpg cutoff for unlimited access One thing I've long advocated which Black does not touch is a displacement based tax: two liters are free and $1,000/liter sales tax for both new and used sales would go a long way towards cleaning up our fuel hog inventory.
Chapter 5: Week Three Retrofitting Revolution
We aren't getting away from wheeled transportation based on our housing layout but there will be dramatic changes. Getting off oil in favor of compressed natural gas, ammonia, and other fuels that do not involve wealth transfer to foreign powers are a big part of this.
Chapter 6: Week Five Funding the Fix
"Oil has escaped a true financial accounting." Once we investigate the externalities involved in oil it seems like our true cost is in the vicinity of $15/gallon. If we stop the global security work we do to secure oil we can fund a transition to the alternatives.
Chapter 7: The True Fix
Here is where the book breaks down for me. This chapter is all about alternative fueled autos and I'm already past this and looking at rail electrification. Despite my disagreement here I think this is a good chapter – it would be unwise to try to take people from $4/gallon gas to no cars but for police/fire/ambulance service in a hundred and thirty pages.
I hope this book is as successful as Black's previous efforts. We desperately need a national dialog on this topic before the troubles start ... and I fear trouble is very near.