Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air

Zubrin, an aerospace engineer and president of Pioneer Astronautics, comments on the book,  Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy written by Nobel laureate chemist, George Olah.  His commentary takes a very technical tome and provides a concise summary of the case in language that the average reader can understand.

Read the entire essay, The Methanol Alternative, at New Atlantis.

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