Published on behalf of The Watt Committee on Energy

This series is dedicated to serving the growing community of scholars and practitioners concerned with the principles and applications of environmental management. Each volume is a thorough treatment of a specific topic of importance for proper management practices. A fundamental objective of these books is to help the reader discern and implement man's stewardship of our environment and the world's renewable resources. For we must strive to understand the relation ship between man and nature, act to bring harmony to it, and nurture an environment that is both stable and productive. These objectives have often eluded us because the pursuit of other individual and societal goals has diverted us from a course of living in balance with the environment. At times, therefore, the environmental manager may have to exert restrictive control, which is usually best applied to man, not nature. Attempts to alter or harness nature have often failed or backfired, as exemplified by the results of imprudent use of herbicides, fertilizers, water, and other agents. Each book in this series will shed light on the fundamental and applied aspects of environmental management. It is hoped that each will help solve a practical and serious environmental problem.

The International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), a nonprofit, public foundation, was established in 1978 to advance the sciences of nutrition, toxicology, and food safety. ILSI promotes the resolution of health and safety issues in these areas by sponsoring research, conferences, publications, and educational programs. Through ILSI's programs, scientists from government, academia, and industry unite their efforts to resolve issues of critical importance to the public. As part of its commitment to understanding and resolving health and safety issues, ILSI is pleased to sponsor this series of monographs that consolidates new scientific knowledge, defines research needs, and provides a background for the effective application of scientific advances in toxicology and food safety. Alex Malaspina President International Life Sciences Institute Preface We live in a changing world. The everyday, ongoing changes in people's habits and the availability of foods in the market lead to continuous changes in food con sumption patterns, changes we need to understand since they play an important role in nutrition as well as toxicology. In nutrition, food intake data provide us with the information needed to exam ine whether, on the one hand, these modifications are still within the limits of nutritional safety and, on the other, whether they offer the possibility of monitor ing the evolution of dietary habits. In toxicology, food intake data are used to calculate the potential intake of sub stances used as additives or substances that enter food as contaminants, such as pesticide residues, packaging materials, and radionuclides.

For 200 years industrial civilization has relied on the combustion of abundant and cheap carbon fuels. But continued reliance has had perilous consequences. On the one hand there is the insecurity of relying on the world's most unstable region - the Middle East - compounded by the imminence of peak oil, growing scarcity and mounting prices. On the other, the potentially cataclysmic consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels, as the evidence of accelerating climate change shows. Yet there is a solution: to make the transition to renewable sources of energy and distributed, decentralized energy generation. It is a model that has been proven, technologically, commercially and politically, as Scheer comprehensively demonstrates here. The alternative of a return to nuclear power - again being widely advocated - he shows to be compromised and illusory. The advantages of renewable energy are so clear and so overwhelming that resistance to them needs diagnosis - which Scheer also provides, showing why and how entrenched interests and one-dimensional structures of thinking oppose the transition, and what must be done to overcome these obstacles. The new book from the award-winning author of THE SOLAR ECONOMY and A SOLAR MANIFESTO demonstrates why the transition to renewable energy is essential and how it can be done.