Review – How the Oil Addiction Started.
I think it’s fitting that I start out the first of my blog entries with a reading recommendation. In order to understand how to begin weaning yourself off of petroleum,it’s important to understand how it all started. Internal Combustion by Edwin Black chronicles our use of energy from the beginning of time. Most importantly, he accurately portrays from historical documents how we began our addiction to petroleum.
This book begins in the forests of Cyprus, whose trees and wood provided fuel for the ancient Mediterranean. Black carries the reader through to the Elizabethan era, in which the Hostmen guild of Newcastle exerted political influence by monopolizing the British coal supply. The central thread of this well-researched book, which draws upon a vast array of archival sources and an extensive list of secondary texts, picks up centuries later with the competition in the American automotive market between electric power and oil-fueled internal combustion.
The definitive blow in favor of oil comes with WWI, which prompted increased demand for gas-powered vehicles at the very moment Thomas Edison and Henry Ford aborted plans to develop an affordable electric car. The decades-long “General Motors conspiracy” solidifies the demise of electrically powered mass transit in American cities.
- Publisher’s Weekly
I recommend this book highly for the person who wants to begin their journey in ridding themselves of petroleum by learning how it all started. We learn much from studying the past.
Just say “NO” to petroleum,
– Veggie Ranger
