"Steve A. Yetiv, an award-winning expert on the geopolitics of oil, takes stock of our new era of heightened petroleum production and sets out to demolish both the old myths and misconceptions about oil as well as the new ones that are quickly proliferating"--

Imagine fuel without fear. No climate change. No oil spills, no dead coalminers, no dirty air, no devastated lands, no lost wildlife. No energy poverty. No oil-fed wars, tyrannies, or terrorists. No leaking nuclear wastes or spreading nuclear weapons. Nothing to run out. Nothing to cut off. Nothing to worry about. Just energy abundance, benign and affordable, for all, forever. That richer, fairer, cooler, safer world is possible, practical, even profitable-because saving and replacing fossil fuels now works better and costs no more than buying and burning them. Reinventing Fire shows how business-motivated by profit, supported by civil society, sped by smart policy-can get the US completely off oil and coal by 2050, and later beyond natural gas as well. Authored by a world leader on energy and innovation, the book maps a robust path for integrating real, here-and-now, comprehensive energy solutions in four industries-transportation, buildings, electricity, and manufacturing-melding radically efficient energy use with reliable, secure, renewable energy supplies.Popular in tone and rooted in applied hope, Reinventing Fire shows how smart businesses are creating a potent, global, market-driven, and explosively growing movement to defossilize fuels. It points readers to trillions in savings over the next 40 years, and trillions more in new business opportunities.Whether you care most about national security, or jobs and competitive advantage, or climate and environment, this major contribution by world leaders in energy innovation offers startling innovations will support your values, inspire your support, and transform your sense of possibility.Pragmatic citizens today are more interested in outcomes than motives. Reinventing Fire answers this trans-ideological call. Whether you care most about national security, or jobs and competitive advantage, or climate and environment, its startling innovations will support your values, inspire your support, and transform your sense of possibility.

An energy industry insider delivers hard truths about the reality of fracking. Conventional wisdom has North America entering a new era of energy abundance thanks to shale gas. But has industry been honest? Cold, Hungry and in the Dark argues that declining productivity combined with increasing demand will trigger a crisis that will cause prices to skyrocket, damage the economy, and have a profound impact on the lives of nearly every North American. Relying on faulty science, bought-and-paid-for-white papers masquerading as independent research and “industry consultants,” the “shale promoters” have vastly overstated the viable supply of shale gas resources for their own financial gain. This startling exposé, written by an industry insider, suggests that the stakes involved in the Enron scandal might seem like lunch money in comparison to the bursting of the natural gas bubble. Exhaustively researched and rigorously documented, Cold, Hungry and in the Dark: · Puts supply-and-demand trends under a microscope · Provides overwhelming evidence of the absurdity of the one hundred-year supply myth · Suggests numerous ways to mitigate the upcoming natural gas price spike The mainstream media has told us that natural gas will be cheap and plentiful for decades, when nothing could be further from the truth. Forewarned is forearmed. Cold, Hungry and in the Dark is vital reading for anyone concerned about the inevitable economic impact of our uncertain energy future. “Powers’s step-by-step dismantling of the abundance myth ought to alarm policymakers, corporate managers, investors, business owners, and concerned citizens alike.”—Kurt Cobb, author of Prelude and contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

An in-depth look at how politics and economics shape the relationship between Congress and the Federal Reserve Born out of crisis a century ago, the Federal Reserve has become the most powerful macroeconomic policymaker and financial regulator in the world. The Myth of Independence marshals archival sources, interviews, and statistical analyses to trace the Fed’s transformation from a weak, secretive, and decentralized institution in 1913 to a remarkably transparent central bank a century later. Offering a unique account of Congress’s role in steering this evolution, Sarah Binder and Mark Spindel explore the Fed’s past, present, and future and challenge the myth of its independence.

This proceedings volume brings together selected peer-reviewed papers presented at the 2015 International Conference on Architectural, Energy and Information Engineering (AEIE 2015), held July 15-16, 2015 in Hong Kong, China. The proceedings are divided into two parts, Architectural, Energy and Environmental Engineering and Information Enginee

“A brilliant, revisionist argument that places oil companies at the heart of 20th century history—and of the political and environmental crises we now face.” —Guardian Oil is a curse, it is often said, that condemns the countries producing it to an existence defined by war, corruption and enormous inequality. Carbon Democracy tells a more complex story, arguing that no nation escapes the political consequences of our collective dependence on oil. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the greatest demand for energy. Timothy Mitchell begins with the history of coal power to tell a radical new story about the rise of democracy. Coal was a source of energy so open to disruption that oligarchies in the West became vulnerable for the first time to mass demands for democracy. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the development of cheap and abundant energy from oil, most notably from the Middle East, offered a means to reduce this vulnerability to democratic pressures. The abundance of oil made it possible for the first time in history to reorganize political life around the management of something now called “the economy” and the promise of its infinite growth. The politics of the West became dependent on an undemocratic Middle East. In the twenty-first century, the oil-based forms of modern democratic politics have become unsustainable. Foreign intervention and military rule are faltering in the Middle East, while governments everywhere appear incapable of addressing the crises that threaten to end the age of carbon democracy—the disappearance of cheap energy and the carbon-fuelled collapse of the ecological order. In making the production of energy the central force shaping the democratic age, Carbon Democracy rethinks the history of energy, the politics of nature, the theory of democracy, and the place of the Middle East in our common world.

This is not another alternative energy study. Rather, The Prologue identifies and charts the security-related trajectory of a relatively new global phenomenon: the ascent of alternative energy as a 21st century megatrend. Why and how have contemporary alternative energy developments evolved into a 21st century global socio-political and techno-economic megatrend? What are the security implications of this megatrend? And what does the megatrend’s evolution reveal about upcoming geopolitical, energy, defense, environmental, and economic security challenges? This book endeavors to answer these questions by establishing the conceptual framework of a universally securitized world in which mutually interacting threats have expanded the needs and security considerations of today’s globalized and interdependent actors, including states, international organizations, multinational corporations, and political and social movements. “Alexander Mirtchev’s sweeping exploration of the changing energy landscape looks far into the future and outlines issues that will occupy scholars and policymakers for decades to come.”—The Hon. Henry Kissinger, Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor “With the advancements in alternative energy technology at the beginning of the 21st century, energy security thinking and planning will never be the same—Alexander Mirtchev’s profoundly original book reveals these new dilemmas that will challenge policymakers in all major economies and provides for dealing with the new realities in a smart way.”—The Hon. Judge William H. Webster, Chairman, Homeland Security Advisory Council, Former Director of the CIA and FBI