Books we're reading

Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America’s Superstate, by Robert Bryce (Public Affairs, 2004).  

By Kevin Potvin  

Bryce almost restrains his disgust till the end, but not quite, and for good reason: this is the tale of modern-day robber barons who have seized control of all government power for the banal and reckless purpose of concentrating extreme wealth in their hands. The book does a good job of getting away from the philosophizing about neocons and Christian fundamentalists and their inscrutable moti-vations, and gets into, instead, personal friendships, mutual back-scratching, private deals, and ordinary graft and cor-ruption. It’s a depressing tale: they are risking the world poli-tically and environmentally for not even any high-minded reasons, insane or otherwise. You almost wish they were religious nuts.

A Thousand Barrels A Second: The coming oil break point and the challenges facing an energy dependent world, by Peter Tertzakian (McGraw Hill, 2006)  

By Kevin Potvin  

There will be no more giant fields of oil discovered, there will only be incremental production gains with technology at existing fields, and rising demand will match falling supply only by the mechanism of price from now on. Not enough is being done by political and business leaders to adjust for this radically altered future that is well on its way toward us. Look at our own City Council, for instance, okay-ing the development of a major automobile-oriented big-box retail zone on the south side of the city. Don’t these people even read the books put out by their own side?