The Forever War: America's Unending War With Itself, by Nick Bryant

Nick Bryant explains how America has always been a deeply divided country, and has little prospect of changing. 

​British journalist Nick Bryant has long had a love affair with the United States, a fascination that began when he was a teenager. He first visited the country in the late 1980s, armed with a student visa. He would later spend years living in New York covering the Trump presidency. Over his many decades as a journalist he has not only lived in the US, but studied its history. The Forever War mixes the personal experience of the outsider with impressive historical research. He argues that America’s current toxic political divide - a cold civil war threatening to turn hot - has strong historical antecedents. Moreover, America, Bryant argues, has never reconciled itself to its racist, fractured past. The culture war over critical race theory, he argues, is excessive. The reality is the country was built on a racist scaffolding. From enslavement, to Jim Crow, and in our own day, voter suppression. 

The picture Nick Bryant paints of America, past and present, is a carnival of violence and mayhem. Political assasinations, lynchings, mass shootings, children murdered at school, children unwitting killers themselves, handling guns they shouldn’t, in any rational world, have access to. And yet gun laws are deeply entrenched, in part due to a selective reading of the constitution.

We often think of America as a premier global democracy, but this is a myth. In an exhaustive dissection of the electoral system, we are exposed to a deeply flawed democracy that aims more to stop people voting than encourage it. The vagaries of the electoral college system means American democracy is unrepresentative. This is a country where everything is politicised, especially cultural issues. The courts - even the supreme court - which should be impartial, are openly politicised as well.  

There is not much cheery news in The Forever War. Nick Bryant, a one time fan, describes leaving his New York apartment and travelling to JFK airport, but not looking back nostalgically to the Manhatten skyline, which he once thought was studded with diamonds. As the title suggests, America’s war with itself will continue on, its many historical issues unresolved. If violence does break out, Bryant suggests it won’t be a full blown civil war, but more like violent spot fires. The one half of liberal voters who believe in the evidence based law will keep the country from going off the rails. 

A sobering portrait of the real America so often obscured by its glossy, rich, wonderland-like side.

The Forever War: America's Unending War With Itself, by Nick Bryant. Published by Viking. $36.99

JUN24

A Message from Ukraine, by Volodymyr Zelensky

A short collection of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speeches.

A Message From Ukraine is a selection of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speeches, from 2019 to 2023. The speeches were chosen by Zelensky himself and he also wrote the introduction. The book first appeared in 2022 and this new edition features an additional speech, from 2023. 

Having watched on our television screens the horrible destruction and humanitarian disaster of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the last two years, one might expect A Message From Ukraine to be full of grim stories from the front, unbearable tales of death and destruction. In fact, Zelensky’s speeches are warm and humane. While they may have been written to bolster morale and help Ukrainians endure the unendurable, their message has a universal appeal. Zelensky stresses that truth and dignity will be the victor in the end. There is a tone of deep empathy in Zelensky’s words - this is the voice of someone who has seen much suffering. 

A Message From Ukraine is more than a collection of political speeches of the day; it is a timeless book dealing with the deepest of existential themes. It shows that truth and honour can give untold strength, despite the confronting horror of war.  

A Message from Ukraine, by Volodymyr Zelensky. Published by Penguin. $19.99

MAY24

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, by Nathan Thrall

A tragic accident is told in harrowing, intimate detail.

In 2012, five-year-old Palestinian boy Milad Salama was scheduled to go on a school trip. His family lived in the impoverished town of Anata on the West Bank, where infrastructure such as roads and housing were of a poor quality. The bus traveled along the Jaba road - a road notorious for its safety issues. Conditions were bad on the day of travel, with an approaching storm making visibility difficult. An oncoming truck collided with the bus and seven children died. Help was late to arrive, which if it had come earlier could perhaps have saved lives.

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama describes the events of that awful day. Through a brief biographical sketch of Abed Salama, Milad’s father, the reader also gets a short history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how occupation directly affects the lives of Palestinians. The genius of Nathan Thrall’s book is how it shows personal lives caught up in larger historical forces. With its focus on people and their relationships to each other, the book reads very much like a novel. A humbling book that concentrates on the pain and suffering of many Palestinian lives. 

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, by Nathan Thrall. Published by Allen Lane. $36.99

MAR24

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World,

 

Naomi Klein explores how the internet has upended the way we think.

Canadian writer Naomi Klein has spent much of her career investigating capitalism and its effects on society and culture, with a focus on the inequities it creates. Klein felt her work was distinct; readers knew what she stood for. Imagine her surprise when she started noticing online that she was being mixed up with Naomi Wolf, a writer who shot to fame with her feminist treatise The Beauty Myth in 1990. Since then Wolf has had a stellar career, but in recent years has lurched to the far right as a conspiracy theorist.

Doppelganger is Naomi Klein's attempt to come to grips with this new age of online extremism. The book explores through literature, history and politics how individuals and even societies have a dark side, an almost evil twin. (Australia often gets a mention, the doctrine of terra nullius seen as a way of denying the existence of First Nations.) If we are honest, according to Klein, we are all vulnerable to this doubling and need only look in the mirror. Doppelganger starts from a flimsy premise, but spins into a fascinating and absorbing book, full of superb analysis and surprising paradoxes.

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, by Naomi Klein. Published by Allen Lane. $36.99

DEC23

Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil, by Peter Maass

‘It’s the devil’s excrement’, according to former Venezuelan oil minister Perez Alfonzo. Why? Oil acted like a dangerous, addictive drug on the Venezuelan economy. It gave a fantastic rush of money when oil prices were high, prompting profligate spending. Yet when prices dipped, there would always be the morning after.

In this wide ranging book journalist Peter Maass (he contributes regularly to The New York Times Magazine and New Yorker) looks at all the ill effects oil has on individuals and countries alike. As you’d expect, Crude World is a depressing tale of extreme fear and greed.

The main thesis of the book is that oil creates volatility and havoc at all levels. For poor African nations like Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea, plundering US oil concerns are happy to work with dictators and strongmen. The money that should go to the impoverished people of these countries is funnelled back to corrupt leaders who lead the sort of lavish lifestyles that would make Marie Antoinette blush.

Other countries, like Ecuador, find their environment despoiled by marauding oil companies. The unhappy histories of the Middle East are well known. War in Iraq and Kuwait, US meddling in Iran. Saudi Arabia is an unusual case all of its own. Its massive oil endowment has created a lopsided economy, completely captive to the vicissitudes of the global oil market. (90 per cent of the country's exports are oil, bringing in 75 per cent of the country’s revenues.)

Saudi Arabia has high unemployment, a large foreign workforce of professionals and an indolent class of royalty who all live on a stipend. Oil has allowed the population to explode, but reduced the pay checks of royal princes. A lot of young people (the Kingdom has a high youth population) have nothing to do, living off a virtual mono-economy that doesn't provide career paths.

Maass summarises nicely the ill effects oil can have on an economy (The Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher made a similar argument recently, with regards to Australia’s export of coal):

"We’ve seen this before: as the oil sector grows, farming and manufacturing contract, unemployment expands, inflation rises due to the influx of revenues from oil sales, and the gap between rich and poor widens."

While we in the West can hold our nose when we read about these terrible troubles in the rest of the world, the reality is that our oil dependence means we help contribute to this ugly reality. Our leaders cheerfully extol the virtues of globalisation, but don't like to talk about the money that Saudi Arabia funnels into supporting fundamentalist causes.

Maass also gives an eye opening look from the business end of oil. How ironic, he notes, that we easily recall the names of superstar CEOs from the world of business. Yet the oil industry’s superstar CEO, Lee Raymond of ExxonMobil, is a complete unknown to us. The author gives an almost Dickensian description of the corpulent Lee Raymond. He is more medieval king that CEO.

"Raymond fascinated me. Despite his stature and power, he was nearly unknown outside the environmental lobby, which despised him, the financial industry, which swooned over him; and the oil industry, which feared him. (Exxon’s executive suite was known as "the God Pod".) Think of the tycoons who are part of the contemporary lexicon – Gates, Murdoch, Buffett, Jobs, Branson – and realise that absent from their ranks is the long time leader of one of the most profitable multinationals of the twentieth century. Raymond was smart enough and secure enough to neither crave nor need publicity, which he knew would invite unfriendly questions. He did what he had to do, meeting financial journalists to announce earnings, but little more. He turned down my requests to interview him."

A lot of the territory that Peter Maass covers in Crude Oil has been well documented elsewhere. What makes this book attractive is the extensive first hand reportage. Maass has access to a lot of good interview subjects, both high level political and business players, down to activists and the ordinary people affected by oil. This he mixes with an engaging and cheerful style. Maass has the novelist's gift for drawing lively portraits and is never at a loss for an evocative metaphor. It's these qualities that really made Crude Oil a very enjoyable book.

So often we are immersed in 'facts' on these economic and political questions. How refreshing it is to get a first hand description of real people rather than just the general sweep of events.

Crude Oil, despite its gloomy and depressing subject matter, ends in a rather upbeat tone. The problems of our oil dependence can be fixed by enthusiastically taking up the existing renewable technologies, we are assured. All we need is the will. This optimistic ending didn't work for me though, especially after wading through so much depressing reality. Peter Maass makes for a brilliant observer, but it seems obvious he hasn’t thought through very deeply the question of how we will segue from the oil economy to the new renewable economy.

And that day is coming sooner than later. In all likelihood we have used up half the world’s oil endowment. We’re quickly on our way to consuming the last half.

Crude Oil opens with an interview with Matthew Simmons, author of the influential Twilight in the Desert. Simmons is an investment banker, and a former energy advisor to George W. Bush. He has studied in depth the technical papers of the Society of Petroleum Engineers on Saudi Oil. What he found was that the Saudi authorities have vastly overstated the capacity of their reserves. He also found serious mismanagement resulting in damaged oil fields: all of the remaining oil may not be recoverable. He believes we could be in for serious trouble unless we can come up with an alternative energy source.

Even more pessimistic is James Howard Kunstler. In his book The Long Emergency Kunstler provides some unpalatable statistics for the reader to digest. The world's total oil endowment is some 2 trillion barrels. We have made our way through 1 trillion barrels so far, most in the last 50 years. At our current rate of consumption, we will empty out every last drop in 37 years.

That does not take into account any growth in the Chinese and Indian economies - or any other economy for that matter. Nor does it factor in the difficulties in extracting the last half of our global oil endowment. All of the remaining oil will not be recovered. (There is a range of technologies used currently to extract oil out of the ground, like injecting water into oil fields. They all use rising levels of energy, thus diminishing the value of the oil recovered.)

Babies born today will not be driving cars run on petrol when they hit their thirties. How will they drive their cars? How will food be transported? What will happen to all the new outer suburbs that are currently totally dependent on cars? Why aren’t governments planning for this?

Kunstler says the economy built by oil has been nothing more than a 100 year bubble – and it’s about to burst.

Can a new energy source ‘come online’ that has the value of the one trillion barrels of oil we’ve used so far, keeping us living a lifestyle we see as normal? Peter Maass thinks that if we work for it such a reality will come, yet the bulk of his book – the ugly politics, violence and money – speak of a troubling future.

The Long Emergency: surviving the converging catastrophes of the twenty-first century, by James Howard Kunstler.

Consider this: In the beginning, there were 2 trillion barrels of oil. We’ve now made our way through half of our oil endowment. That means there are 1 trillion barrels of oil left in the ground.

That’s still a lot of oil. Although remember, it took us roughly the last 50 years to gobble that amount up. According to James Kunstler, if we were to continue consuming at our current levels, every single last drop of oil will be gone within 37 years.

But even that is an optimistic figure. You see, the top half of the oil is the easiest to get. The bottom of the barrel, as it were, is much harder to extract. Even Saudi Arabia now has to pump massive amounts of sea water into the ground in order to push the oil up.

Here’s another thing to consider. At the dawn of oil discovery, the energy requirements to get oil out of the ground were small. But now as the oil is much harder to get out, a lot more energy is used. Eventually it will reach a point where it simply takes too much energy to get the oil out of the ground. For example, if you were to use one barrel of oil in energy to get one barrel of oil out of the ground. Obviously this wouldn’t be worth doing.

To cap it all off, there are emerging economies like China and India. All of their people are going to want to drive cars and live lush Western lifestyles in the near future. So their populations will put more pressure on oil.

In short, we have 37 years to find a new energy source to replace oil. That’s a best case scenario. In reality it could be 20 years. Or we could see real changes within the decade, as it becomes clear that we have reached what’s known as ‘peak oil’.

Peak oil is not some left wing, greenie spoiler theory. It was developed by geoligist M. King Hubbert. He correctly predicted American oil would peak in 1970. He was spot on. He predicted global oil would peak around 2000. On this he has been wrong. No matter, a lot of eminent geololigsts and people who work within the oil industry know that we are close to that peak.

This peak in global oil will be confirmed a few years after the fact. That is, when we see supplies tapering off. When this time comes, it will obviously cause great alarm and a seismatic political shift. For our rich way of life, our very economy, is based on cheap oil.

The Long Emergency basically tries to look at this post-oil world, describing a rather bleak, reduced world where we will have to go back to a much more basic, some may say medieval, lifestyle. We will live in more tightknit communities, and we will spend a lot of our time in farming and producing food closer to where we live. Our current lifestyles, which are so devoid from reality, will be a thing of the past.

The Long Emergency, however, isn’t a kind of peer-into-the-future kind of book. It’s really a sustained cultural, economic and political critique. Kunstler really knows his stuff, and he writes in a no-nonsense, off-with-the-gloves style. The politics of the environmnt are very much divided along left / right lines. Kunstler is refreshing in that he has not time for all of this cant and just delivers his opinions straight. Frankly, I’m jealous of his assured and erudite writing style.

Here’s a sample:

"The free-market part of the equation referred to the putative benefit of unrestrained economic competition between individuals, and because corporations enjoyed the legal staus of persons, they were assumed to be on an equal foodting with other persons in a given locality. Thus Wal-Mart was considered the theoretical equal of Bob the appliance store owner, and if Bob happened to lose in the retail competition because he couldn’t order 50,000 coffee –makers at a crack from a factory 12,000 mmiles away in Hangzhou, and receive a deep discount for being such an important customer, well, it wasn’t as though he hadn’t been given the chance."

Or here’s another favourite:

"The industrial experiment took the idea of currency (money) to the next level of abstraction – as hard currency can represent actual goods, so paper currency can represent hard currency and actual goods. As trade increased and took place over ever-greater distances, paper promises to pay hard currency began to steadily take the place of the hard stuff itself, which was cumbersome, hard to to lug around in large quantities, and subject to theft in transit. So to steamline these trades, all kinds of certificates were used as equivalents to hard currency: individual IOUs, bills of lading, letters of credit from rich people, promissory notes issued by guilds. In time, the use of paper certificates became more and more normative and conventionalised. Protocols of exchange were established. Institutions were created to process them. This process of managing monetary affairs – of wealth abstracted in paper – was called finance. "

The Long Emergency has 300 pages of this kind of dense analysis. I found it utterly stunning.
As you can tell, I was a big fan of this book. Kunstler has written two other books about suburbia, The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere. He’s also written a swag of novels.

You may disagree with a lot in this book. Perhaps this is all doomsayers stuff. Maybe a new super energy source is just around the corner. Kunstler could be all wrong about the modern market economy not being able to come up with some nifty ideas. I mean, I even read a recent release by my own party, the Greens, claiming that a rigorous emissions trading system would unleash the creativity of the market to solve our energy problems.

One thing is for sure, Kunstler is no bullshit artist. He most certainly believes what he writes about. I hope things don’t turn out as bad as he says. Although I think we would all do well to start thinking seriously, now, about what we’re going to do when the oil runs out. How will we make things, travel, conduct our current economic life, and most importantly, grow and transport food?

The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty, by Peter Singer

In this book Peter Singer argues that we should all as a minimum give 5% of our income to charities that assist people suffering dire poverty in developing countries.

Quite reasonably, Peter Singer goes through the psychological reasons that bar us from assisting people who are for the most part out of sight and out of mind. Because we don't rub shoulders with starving children on our streets everyday, it means we can neatly compartmentalise this poverty as an abstraction. We are more likely to help people who are in our vicinity, people with whom we are sympathetic.

To try and overcome this inbuilt aversion to giving away money to people a half world away, Singer appeals to the more rational side of our nature. With an array of ethical examples, he shows how spending money on useless Western frivolities could be money employed to actually save lives, or greatly increase quality of life for many.

A tragic example is the women who suffer fistulas due to becoming pregnant too young, or having bodies not well enough developed due to poor nutrition. They leak urine or faeces and no matter how much they wash themselves they cannot get rid of the smell. They become ostracised from their communities, until they can get an operation for the fistula. Reading about this sort of terrible misfortune really is heartbreaking.

The offputting thing about this book is that Singer does seem to frame most of his ethical arguments around numbers. This amount of money could save this many lives or perform this many operations. Even those who give huge amounts of money, like Bill Gates, still get some criticism. Singer goes over the value of Gates' property and some of his expensive toys. Is it right, Singer asks, for Gates to have these expensive toys when he could save so many more lives by selling his luxury goods and donating the money. It leaves you with the feeling that no matter how much you give away, there's still more you could give, still more economies you could make in your life to make way for giving to others.

Also, Singer seems to be saying that the economies of these poor countries can be fixed purely through charity. Would we almost be turning them into welfare dependencies? Singer looks at the argument from a rather narrow perspective. Issues like how developing countries feel about receiving so much welfare come to mind.

But these are small points. I'm a fan of Singer, and some of these examples of Western waste juxtaposed against the suffering of poor countries are startling.

For me, the most engaging parts of the book highlighted the creativity people used to solve the problems of poverty. I think this is a way where people can really become engaged in a problem and feel a part of the solution. Like the two people who started up the GiveWell website, that does assessments on how well charities use their money.

If I’d been writing this book, I’d have taken it from that point of view. Show people things they can help to build and make which would improve lives and then I think you’d get more people involved. Giving money on a regular basis reminds me of my Catholic upbringing, where the collection plate was passed around.

But then again, I don’t know much about this topic. There are billions of people around the world in desperate want. Locating a charity that you know does good, and then giving them money, will obviously help poorer people. The task is how to make this an activity that people can genuinely feel an integral part of, rather than as someone who merely holds a pen that writes a cheque.

Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal, by Tristram Stuart.

British author Tristram Stuart raised pigs as a teenager. Like humans, pigs are single stomached omnivores. To feed his unfussy charges, Stuart asked his school canteen for leftovers. Food soon started coming in by the sack load from local bakers, markets and farmers. Further investigation found supermarkets and retailers tossing out great mountains of perfectly good food. His pigs thrived, and soon grew big enough to eat. Here was an economic lesson: rubbish could be turned into bacon.

Soon Stuart found that if the food was good enough for his omnivorous pigs, then it was good enough for him. Yet amazement at all this free food soon turned to disgust at its waste, and eating discarded food became a protest at the obscene levels of waste in our food system.

Today’s urban hunter-gatherers who forage in supermarket dumpsters call themselves ‘freegans’, and you’ll be quite amazed at what they can haul out of a bin. Stuart once found boxes of fresh mangoes in a supermarket skip and made them into lassi drinks for a friend’s wedding.

Waste, however, is no alternative lifestyle guide. Nor is it some mad Greenie’s recycling manifesto. Stuart pulls his focus back from the dumpster to give a big picture view of the shocking inefficiencies in the way we make and market food. When the veil is lifted on how food is farmed, processed, marketed, sold and often thrown away your jaw will hit the ground.

Perfectly good vegetables get chucked because they’re not of an elegant enough shape; inaccurate and overly cautious ‘use-by’ and ‘best-before dates’ cause perfectly edible food to be binned; gourmet food outlets throw out enormous amounts of dainty delectables rather than give them away. In Australia, dumpsters groan with food that could be given to the poor.

Recently on SBS's Insight Program, Woolworths' Environmental Manager Kane Hardingham confessed to throwing out 65,000 tonnes of food a year. "We know that's a waste," he admitted. You can say that again.

The West’s high meat diet is another area that involves much waste. For every 10 kilograms of cereals fed to cattle, one kilogram comes back in beef. Huge resources are put into creating meat: some 40 per cent of the world’s cereals are fed to farm animals. The world's poor are in stiff competition with Western farm animals for food. One third to a half of the carcase is simply thrown away, and Stuart urges meat eaters to start eating offal: livers, kidneys, lungs, hearts, tongue, brains and so on.

It’s not just the food, either. Every wasted mouthful has many unthought of knock on effects: water usage, greenhouse gas emissions, increasing pressure on cereal prices.

The good news about food waste is that this is an environmental and waste problem that would be painless to fix. Convincing people of the savings involved in eating rather than binning food would provide a windfall to individuals, nations, and ultimately the globe’s environment.

Stuart quotes the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation economist W. H. Bender who says global food demand could decrease by 20 per cent if rich countries reduced waste and poorer countries reduced post-harvest losses. This alone would liberate 294 million hectares of cropland and 659 hectares of pasture land. That's a lot of pressure taken off the environment.

‘If there were a global democracy’, says Stuart, ‘among the first measures proposed by poorer people would probably be a cull of livestock fattened on cereals and a proscription of the unnecessary waste of food.’

While we can’t very well stick that uneaten sandwich in an envelope and mail it to Africa, there are always poor people struggling in rich societies. Why can’t businesses donate more of the food they throw away, freeing up the pay packets of the poor? The complexities of this problem are highlighted in the case of US behemoth Wal-Mart sacking employee Jeffrey Janes for taking meat out of the companies waste bins and cooking it for his workmates. Janes was awarded $167,000 for wrongful termination.

How many calories does the Western body need? Due to our sedentary lifestyle, only about 1900-2000 calories per day according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation. Stuart suggests we should provide about 30% slack in the food system to account for fluctuations in production. Currently Europe and the US makes around 3500-3900 calories available to each of its citizens. Australians can’t be far off this figure.

With so many health, environmental and equity issues surrounding our over consumption of food, perhaps public health policy makers should be focusing on a guideline calorie consumption figure for its citizens. Eating only 2000 calories per day would be a simple concept that people could easily remember.

With the global financial crisis still unfolding, and finance Ministers and Treasurers the world over looking under the cushions for extra money, here is a book that can identify a wealth of savings. Perhaps Treasurer Swan should be urging more Australians to lick their plates clean.

The Limits of Power, by Andrew J. Bacevich

This is kind of embarrassing to admit, but here goes. I was just doodling on the Internet at work, and brought up the Amazon website. You know how Amazon ‘remembers’ what items you’ve looked at recently. Well, it had this list of ‘recommended’ books that I read, and The Limits of Power, by Andrew J. Bacevich was one of them.

Anyhoo, I read briefly one of the Amazon reviews, and it talked about how the author layed a lot of blame for America’s current situation at the feet of the electorate. Myself, I’ve often had a theory that the quality of the vote equals the quality of the politician. When people whinge about how bad their politicians are I often think, well, that’s easily solved. Stop voting for them, and actively demand better ones.

I totally loved The Limits of Power. Bacevich is a professor of history and ex-army man. Tragically, he lost his only son, Andrew John Bacevich, First Lieutenant U.S. Army to the Iraq war in 2007.

Bacevich puts forth his argument under three main themes: the profligacy that is built into America’s consumer economy (which even affects political decision making); the overreach of American foreign policy and its snake oil merchant leaders (most notably Ronald Reagan); and its military crisis, over run by civilian ‘experts’ obsessed with technocratic solutions (prime example here is Donald Rumsfeld.)

There’s no beating around the bush in this pithy 182 page book. Bacevich doesn’t waste the reader’s time. It’s a relief when you read these books and know that the author has spent a long time figuring out in his or head what they are on about before committing it to paper. Bacevich has obviously thought deeply and at length on what he writes about. This is someone who writes out of genuine conviction and concern.

For all of that, Bacevich’s program is a pretty simple one. The Limits of Power is a book that really begs for the reinstatement of common sense in politics and policy making. In economics, he calls for nothing less than the nation to live within its means. America is in a state of chronic over-reach, thinking that controlling Middle Eastern oil, and global geo-politics in general, will make the country happy and prosperous. Bacevich points out that this is in fact having the opposite effect.

My favourite part of the book was where he held up as an example of useful common sense President Jimmy Carter’s exhortation to the country to use less oil and start thinking about conservation. This was during the oil shocks of the 1970s, when OPEC raised prices sky high. (Please note, Bacevich is also critical of Carter’s performance as president.)

This policy of conserving energy was unpopular. Then comes along Ronald Reagan who says Americans deserve to be able to consume as much energy as they want, whatever the cost. (Didn't Reagan remove the solar panels Carter had installed at the White House as soon as he got in?)

This is what allows Bacevich to be so critical of the American public. They embraced Reaganomic with all of its fake, glitzy glamour.

Once again, the overall tone of this book is common sense. It’s not making the US any happier a country by being so over extended – Americans consume too much and try to control too much of the world in the deluded belief that this will make them happy. It’s not.

This is a good book for anyone living in a decadent democracy living beyond its means. For anyone fed up with the West’s empty consumer culture. For anyone sick of smooth talking technocratic politicians who don't speak in plain English.

The ABC’s Background Briefing program recently ran a podcast of a talk by Bacevich on the Afghanistan war. It’s worth a listen here.

The Next 100 Years, by George Friedman

The title and blurb for this book was interesting enough for me to want to give it a go. Friedman is an American political scientist and founder of his own private intelligence business.

Friedman sees the United States as the dominant global power for the next hundred years. He says that nations go through three stages in their rise and decline: barbarism, civilisation and finally, decadence.

Gore Vidal once joked that the United states went from barbarism to decadence without stopping for civilisation. Friedman has the opposite view. He believes that the US is not in decline, as many on the left like to think, or dream, but rather in an early barbaric, immature period. Europe, he says, or more pointedly, countries like France and Germany, are in a state of decadence. They don't believe in anything. (Sounds like Donald Rumsfeld's derisive line about France being old Europe.)

The basic idea of this book is, by using the intellectual discipline of geopolitics you can basically map the broad outlines of what the future will be like. The discipline of geopolitics considers the many physical factors that make up the characters, and hence destinations, of nation states. Things like where a country is situated, closeness to other nation states, resources etc. etc., all determine the character of a country.

More interestingly, Friedman implies these factors over ride the democratic determination of the voters themselves. No matter who the US votes in as president, they will be unable to change the country's 'destiny'. In this case, the US pursuing its role as a global hegemon.

This raises rather curious questions. Friedman paints a picture of a militarily and technologically dominant US, controlling everything on the earth’s surface from space. The way it’s painted here, you get the impression of this militaristic behemoth, connected in some way to a democratically elected polity.

Democracies, you would think, were supposed to work like this: the people elect governments to do what they want. It turns out democratic processes in the end don't count for much. What really drives democracies like the United States is a mixture of things like destiny, the military and technolgy.

I don't mean to sound cynical about Friedman's theory, because it's an interesting one, and one that has been discussed by other people, even the likes of John Pilger. That author has long said that no matter how liberal the president elected, the US always pursues its program of global power. Nonetheless, it's an interesting problem to contemplate.

Anyway, that all aside, what's the book like? Well, the first half I found interesting and absorbing. Friedman is a smart and learned guy about international affairs. He makes lots of interesting points. Because my knowledge of international politics is limited, I can't say whether what Friedman says is right or wrong, but it seemed he made a strong case for his opinion on global history and contemporary events.

That's the good part.

Then you get deep into the second part of the book, and whoa! Things just seem to enter the realm of science fiction. In one chapter on the future of war technology Friedman calls a space centre a 'Battle Station', then informs us he's called it that simply because he thinks it's a 'cool name'. Bad move. It makes the author look like a teenage kid getting excited about a new toy. Then again, he is describing the US as being in an adolescent phase. Maybe Friedman is a part of that adolescence.

The trouble with The Next 100 Years is, the further the book predicts out, the more you wonder how on earth can we know what major wars will happen in 2080? It just seems utterly ridiculous.

Friedman says at the beginning of the book that if you'd told people in 1950 what life would be like in 2000, they would have thought you mad. In the author’s words, 'common sense' cannot be used to predict the future. But if we as people cannot employ common sense, then what do we have? Friedman gives us his science fiction fantasy.

It then comes down to this. You can only take the second part of the book as a kind of subconscious dream of the author. Indeed. the second part of the book reads like a Donald Rumsfeld wet dream. It's hard not to think that the author simply believes in America's right to rule the world, unquestioned, which is pretty scary.

I must admit, I did find some of the sections describing future technological innovation as utterly enticing. No wonder the author gets so intoxicated. How will we get our energy in the future, once the oil runs out and cuts in carbon emissions are agreed upon by all countries? Answer: massive solar panels in space that will suck up massive amounts of energy and then shoot it back to earth. The bad news for greenies like me is that this energy will be used for war. Bummer!

George Friedman has written other books on the future of war technology. These parts of The Next 100 Years I found fascinating, and would certainly look at pursuing some of his other writings.

This book to me reads like a visceral fantasy of unrivalled American power into the next 100 years.

The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers and the Great Credit Crash, by Charles R. Morris

This is a snappy short book written just before the financial crisis and updated post the meltdown. Of all I've read so far, this is the most illuminating essay on the subject (forget the Australian PM's dull, self serving essay). Yes, Morris does go into a lot of the complex financial instruments that created this tottering tower of fake money, but that didn't put me off too much.
Morris builds up a clear overall picture of the changes that took place to create the current mess, allowing the reader to grasp what has actually happened to America's financial system. Added to this are many tart lines in very frank English that sum up the amazing irresponsibility and stupidity of those that brought about the mess. Morris says outright how egregious the behaviour of the main players has been.

You always think of the world of finance as one being ruled by rational thinking, of mathematical rules and regulations. This is not so. The world of complex financial instruments is an abstract one. They try to make money grow on trees. The money does grow for a while, until it's realised that the tree is being watered with toxic waste. Morris puts it better, saying that the people who created this mess 'built nothing and created nothing'.

In fact, much of the US economy has been fuelled on debt. Morris's prognosis for the future is not a happy one: lower living standards and more work for his fellow Americans. Pumping up the economy with more credit is simply unsustainable.

This all looks like something you read in the history books. Charles MacKay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds comes to mind. This is our own tulip mania.

Recommended!

My Story, The Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn’t, by Mamdouh Habib

Like most people, my impressions of Mamdouh Habib’s character have been formed by media and government commentary. One likes to think one has an open and independent mind, but unfortunately it’s not true. The question always arises, why did Mr Habib end up Guantanamo Bay? Surely, he must be bad. Or worse still, he must be a terrorist, and deserves all he got.

In many respects, I don’t think I’ve ever read a book like this. It’s completely surreal. Eerily, it has the ring of truth, like you’re reading the pages of Orwell, or Kafka or Dostoyevsky. For us regular citizens we’ve always seen these events through the prism of media and political spin. Mamdouh Habib takes us through that prism and to the other side. Many, many of the things described in this book are extraordinary.

The way Mr Habib describes it here, he was travelling in Pakistan and Afghanistan exploring business opportunities. He was having difficult times financially in Australia, and wanted to move his family out of the country if he could only find success else where. In Australia, he was being constantly approached by ASIO to work as a spy on the Muslim community. Because of this, many in the Muslim community suspected that Habib was in fact a spy, and this led to many problems.

Travelling around Pakistan and Afghanistan, Mr Habib was picked up by the notorious Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). He claims that agents from ASIO were present at certain interrogations, and that ASIO had known about his whereabouts in those countries. From then on it was all downhill. Habib claims that he was sold by the Pakistanis to the Americans (a common occurrence), and then taken to Egypt where he was tortured. Through Freedom of Information requests, Habib could later prove that DFAT and the PM’s office had known that he was taken to Egypt, even though this was at the time denied by the Howard government.

Much of the descriptions of torture in the book are like something straight out of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and make for nightmare reading. The descriptions of ASIO, American intelligence agents and the Pakistani ISI are like a mixture of Gogol, Dostoyevsky and Kafka. They are frequently portrayed as being simply ridiculous, and living in a strange, degraded and deranged world of prejudice, stupidity and cruelty.

It is due to this that Habib’s memoir has the ring of truth. How could he create such an original, Orwellian world of torture? He even admits that all of his recollections may not be 100% accurate, but that he has never anywhere intentionally made anything up. Only a person struggling for the complete truth can make such an admission.

Mamdouh Habib:

‘Some people don’t seem to understand that, if you have been tortured continually for six months – and I don’t mean just being hit about a bit, but being severely tortured with electric shocks, burnt with cigarettes, threatened with drowning, hung from hooks and beaten, being deprived of sleep, suffering continual abuse and having a rod put in your rectum, as well as being drugged – it takes time for your mind to heal afterwards. '

He goes on to say that after such experiences that, ‘For a long while after, there is no firm reality.’

Also, he describes in detail tortures that are deeply humiliating, something that is extremely painful for him to do. It was these passages in the book that really made me feel for him, and think he is a brave and honourable fellow indeed for wanting to share this. To be so fundamentally reduced and humiliated, and then to describe it in the hope that it will stop it happening to others, shows courage.

Full marks must go to Julia Collingwood, Habib’s collaborator. She has done a wonderful job in providing a clear and lucid text. It’s a masterpiece of simplicity and good writing. Mr Habib should be very happy that he could bring out a book of such high literary quality.

It is early days for this case, and I’m sure more and more will come out as the years go by. The truth will certainly out, and we will one day know much more detail about what happened to Mamdouh Habib.

Last quote to Mamdouh Habib.

‘The world is full of terrors, and life is a nightmare.’

This is a nightmare book. It’s unbelievable that such things happen.

The Three Trillion Dollar War, by Linda Blimes and Joseph Stiglitz

The title of this book sounds a bit callous or sensationalist but it’s actually a very humane and sympathetic look at all the costs – human, social and economic – that the war in Iraq has cost the United States and the world.

Surprising, the authors Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Blimes say that the three trillion dollar price tag they give to the Iraq war is a conservative estimate, and that in the long run the war will very likely cost many more trillions of dollars.

Perhaps the most heart wrenching part of this book is the description of the poor treatment Iraq war veterans get on their return home. They are made to jump through hoops to get their rightful entitlements, endure a slack attitude to their health problems, and are just generally not well looked after.

It is these future costs, health and medical for returned soldiers, that are so overlooked in the price tag for the Iraq war. As the book states, the US is still paying entitlements to returned soldiers from the First World War (there are three of them). So you can see how far these war costs can stretch into the future.

Critics of Blimes and Stiglitz could argue that the authors were against the war from the beginning, and so of course they would write a book like this. While they do admit being against the war, and seeing it as a terrible waste, this book is a good eye opener on all of the unthought of costs that war brings. They just spread out and seep into everything. Blimes and Stiglitz even take into account the extra administrative costs involved in paying veterans' claims.

Then there are the costs to the other economies of the world. The jump in the price of oil due to the Iraq war has cost the world trillions.

This is a humane book that takes a unique look at the hidden and overlooked human and financial costs involved in running a long, unpopular and unsuccesful war. It will sadden you deeply.

What Happened, by Scott McClellan

Despite Scott McClellan being a Christian, a conservative Republican and, after all he'd experienced in the White House, someone who was still convinced of George W. Bush’s basic decency, I was in very broad agreement with most of the views expressed in What Happened.

McClellan describes the major woes of the current US political system as ‘the permanent campaign’. All political leaders conduct themselves as though they were in a state of permanent media, cultural and political warfare. Media cycles must be managed, everyone must stay on message, and leaders become so insulated that they actually start to believe as true their own spin. All politics becomes destructively partisan, with everything reduced to petty point scoring, when larger and more important issues loom, demanding serious attention.

The author sees this type of politics having reached its zenith under the eight years of the Clinton administration. McClellan supported George W. Bush because of his stated objective to move American politics away from this toxic style of politics. Bush had previously been Governor of Texas, and had proved in that position that he could be bi-partisan and work constructively with the Democrats to get good outcomes for the citizenry. (McClellan also notes that it was pretty much a part-time position, and this appealed to Bush.)

Yet to McClellan’s dismay, the more he experienced of the Bush administration, the more he realised they were merely solidifying the ‘permanent campaign’ – secrecy, culture wars, media manipulation became worse under Bush.

McClellan ends his book by calling for an end to this sort of politics, urging people to be more open minded and to at least talk to people with different views.

Beyond that, the book is filled with fascinating portraits of all the major players in the White House, the good, the bad and the ugly. McClellan strikes me as a reasonable and even tempered observer of events, and so I trust what he has written.

People viewing George W. Bush’s administration from the outside are always tempted to view all the participants to be absolute rogues, but McClellan refreshingly insists most are very decent people trying to do what is right.

What McClellan writes about Bush will not be what most want to hear, but to me his observations ring true. He says that the real reason Bush invaded Iraq was because he genuinely believed he could create a democratic Middle East. The phony reason, the author admits in hindsight, was weapons of mass destruction and talk of Saddam Hussein being a threat to world peace. Bush is in effect a fantasist, someone not living in the real world. He confuses imagination with reality.

Condi Rice is described as an expert PR practitioner, and not much more. Karl Rove is an out and out liar. And Dick Cheney is described as ‘the magic man’, someone who ‘never showed his cards and never disclosed how he made things happen’.

I also agreed wholeheartedly with McClellan’s disdain for our ‘gotcha’, point-scoring media culture. Everything is reduced down to petty points. Tiny things are blown up into scandals whereas the bigger issues should be what is covered.

The Bush administration on the other hand tried to control the media too much and was not open and honest with the American people. One of the great lessons of What Happened is that lies and deception are in end completely self-defeating. The truth will always out. It’s just a matter of time.

Witness all the shenanigans around the Valerie Plame affair, the secret agent whose name was leaked. How much media time and energy was taken up and wasted in trying to get to the bottom of the whole affair. If only the White House had been up front at the beginning.

McClellan must in essence be an optimist when it comes to people’s personalities. He doesn’t really lay the faults of the Bush administration at Bush’s feet directly, but lays the blame also with the whole ‘permanent campaign’ culture that has arisen. Bush and company probably simply could not think outside of those parameters.

Laying all blame with George W. Bush could create problems of its own. If we continue to think all these problems are the result of one person, and expect they will all disappear when Bush leaves office, then we’re somewhat deluded again. The man may go, but the culture will remain. Look at how much money Barack Obama spent on advertising for his campaign.

I think this is a really important book for those who want to see the tone and quality of politics improve, for those also who want to see it become more democratic.

McClellan comes across as a bookish, intellectual, conservative gentleman who doesn’t succumb to hyperbole and the ingrained hate campaigns of politics. He continues to see those who enter politics doing so with honourable intentions. He points out a myriad of problems that need fixing, urges us to purge the anger out of politics, and insists the system can’t run effectively without honesty and transparency.

What Happened is a pleasant surprise and essential reading for any citizen interested in a politics we should all strive for, no matter what your political views are.

Climate Wars, by Gwynne Dyer

Another book with a title that is a bit of a misnomer. Gwynne Dyer is a world renowned war historian and geo-political analyst. I’m a big fan of his books. He can write about controversial contemporary wars from a perspective that is refreshingly free of a left or right wing political bias. He has a good, muscular common sense that informs his work and enjoys a jolly sense of humour too. This always helps to make his writings a breath of fresh air in an area of endeavour that frequently takes itself very seriously.

I wasn’t as crazy though about Climate Wars as I have been about his other books. This one is really more of a look at the science of global warming, with which the author broadly agrees.

Dyer approaches this material as he would his political subjects. This is all good, as we are told the important and must-know information in a clear, lucid and intelligent way.

The bit I didn’t like about the book is how Dyer has tried to weave this into a war theme. What will the wars of the future look like? Will they be over food, or water, or oil? Of course this is all hypothesis. Dyer gives us many future ‘scenarios’ that are like something out of an American blockbuster movie.

I think if the author had shrunk back from this dire and pessimistic approach, the book would have been better. He could have pointed to future possible tensions over vital resources, and used his excellent knowledge and analytical skills to fully explore the ramifications of the subject, rather than fully fleshing out nightmare visions for the future.

I hate to write in this vein about a Gwynne Dyer book, because I really think he’s a brilliant author. If he’d scrubbed the future scenarios bits of the book and just concentrated on the science of climate change, and where it could be leading the world politically, then it would have been a more enjoyable book.

The reality is many an author has covered this subject. You get the impression that global warming has long been a ‘hobby subject’ for Gwynne Dyer, and he’s tried to weave it into his work as a war historian. The book has an unnaturally ‘welded together’ feel.

Make sure you read some of his other books first, for I think he's a very important writer, and save this one for last.

The Family: Power, Politics and Fundamentalism's Shadow Elite, by Jeff Sharlet

With thanks to Phillip Adams’ little wireless program, Late Night Live, I found out about this rather depressing book by journalist and author Jeff Sharlet. (Listen to the interview here.)

Journalist and academic Jeff Sharlet was invited by a friend of a friend (the brother of an old girlfriend, if my memory of the book is correct), to stay at the house of a fundamentalist group. It sounds weird I know, but I guess this is America.

As a writer on religious subjects, Sharlet was not one to pass up an opportunity to take notes on this secretive fundamentalist group.

The Family, or The Fellowship, is an elite fundamentalist group started up in 1935 by Abram Vereide. Today this shady, unseen group’s leader is Doug Coe.

The key to the Fellowship’s influence is the fact that they work behind the scenes and are little known. Power, according to them, should always be quiet and unseen.

They network with some key people; even ‘liberals’ like Al Gore and Hilary Clinton claim Doug Coe’s friendship.

As the author states, American democracy is not in any real danger any time soon from American fundamentalism, but the size of its size has shrunk so much. So has the nature of debate, when people like Gore and Clinton must frame all their rhetoric with such a religious tinge.

The Family is a complex book that goes into a lot of historical detail, discussing well known politicians and the shady power elites with ties to this fundamentalist, anti-democratic, pro-power group.

Sharlet divides American fundamentalism up into two camps: populist and elite. The populist we all know about. The elite Sharlet tries to elucidate for us in this mixture of expose and exploratory essay.

As I mentioned above, I found this book quite depressing. American fundamentalism is full of many paradoxes, but most distressing, it is so nihilistic. These people frequently hope for another 9/11 attack as a way of purging the evil out of American culture, or what they see as evil.

This is a tricky topic that Sharlet tackles, and he comes from a liberal perspective. So he must not be condescending whilst unpacking what he sees as the contradictions and plain nuttiness of the American Jesus, with its belief in free market economics and an aggressive foreign policy.

To a foreigner, American Christians with their absolute belief that Christianity and free market economics go hand in hand seems like nothing but out and out egotism. Can’t they see the light?
Alas, being rational doesn’t work, because these are truths that American fundamentalists ‘know in their hearts’. Religious feeling can’t be taught or learnt or proved, it must be experienced emotionally, outside of logic.

Jeff Sharlet muses these subjects in an intelligent and engaging manner. For students of American religion, this book is essential reading.

Check out Jeff's blog at http://jeffsharlet.blogspot.com/

The End Of Food, by Paul Roberts

Again, the title of this book is a misnomer. Instead it should really be called The Future of Food. If you were to be critical, you could say that it doesn't follow a straight narrative but is rather a patchwork of topics sewn together as a book. After some 300 pages the book does not really come up with a conclusion on the future of food, or how we should really live.

For this reader, however, I found it a fascinating look at current global food production dilemmas. Paul Roberts is an intelligent writer who is good at picking apart subjects and taking out what's of real interest and leaving the unimportant behind. I also like how he can weave together environmental, political and economic subjects to give a clear picture of how our food system works.

Roberts comes come up with some interesting facts and figures you don't usually think of. For example, he cites how the US imports around 50% of its synthetic fertilizer. This had me reeling. If true, surely its as bad as US dependence on foreign oil. Fascinating that we never hear of this.

In short, I agree 100% with Roberts' opinions and the way he looks at the world. Less and less do we know about how our food is produced these days, simply taking it for granted that food will continue to grow on supermarket shelves. But there are costs, costs, costs behind the scenes that don't involve the dollars we pay for food at the supermarket.

Also of note: one of the main thrusts of the book is the question of whether the world can continue to eat such huge amounts of meat, and whether the world has the water required to grow the grain to feed to the animals. My theory is exactly the same as Roberts': we may think that we can outfox nature with new and improved technology, but nature may well put up its own limits and simply stop continued growth due to its not being sustainable.

An intelligent book that looks at all the right angles.

By the same author:

The End Of Oil

Bottlemania, by Elizabeth Royte

You get the impression that the title, Bottlemania, was something dreamt up by the publishers rather than the author. I say that because this is a rather earnest little book about the politics of water.

This reader was expecting something different, say a book which took a more economic outlook.

Most of Bottlemania, however, looks at how the incursion of a major corporate bottler impacts on a small community. In that respect, this is quite a scary story, for it tells of how water has in effect become privatised, and how the public has supported that privatisation.

Other aspects that the book explores are the safety of the US water supply. Too much information! It makes you realise that water is never one hundred percent clear, but full of tiny little bugs and chemicals and god knows what else. Sometimes it’s better simply not to know.

The bits that I was looking for in this book came on page 139. Did you know that in the US it takes 17 million barrels of oil per annum to make the bottles that carry so much bottled water?

Also:

‘Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute estimates that the total energy required for every bottle’s production, transport, and disposal is equivalent, on average, to filling that bottle a quarter of the way with oil. His finding, undisputed by the water-bottling industry, shocks me.’

This is not a very exciting book, but one feels necessary reading. It’s more about the politics of water. Who has priority over this resource, business or communities?

The End of Oil, by Paul Roberts

The title of this book, The End of Oil, is really a misnomer. The book is more about the future of energy, its viability and the challenges the world faces in the future. So a little surprisingly, you’ll find in equal measure a discussion of gas, hydrogen power, green power etc. etc. You’ll also find plenty on sustainability, politics and the possibility of future energy wars.

All in all this is a pretty nifty book that gives an all round picture. Nor did I find it to be ideologically driven in any way. Common sense rules Paul Roberts’ arguments. He says the over consumption of oil by US citizens is plain stupid, but also criticises green groups.

Roberts is also a good writer. Many of the themes and topics I’ve read about in other books but could not get my head around are well explained here. Roberts has a lucid style that clarified what a cap-and-trade system is, and how a hydrogen fuelled car would work.

I’d call The End of Oil a non-alarmist book, unlike others on the same subject. He says we should not go too fast with Kyoto, which would keep those on the right happy. But balances this by saying that it is of the utmost importance that we get cracking with a range of measures to ensure a smooth as possible transition to a new energy future.

Roberts says we are all far too ignorant of where our energy comes from. We take things for granted and have a vague idea that magic technologies are just waiting in the wings to make things all right. This is not so. A safe energy future is something that will have to be worked towards, and it will not be achieved by individual volunteers switching off that light in the hallway.

It will happen by government setting in place incentives in the market, and by taxing polluters. Roberts makes a perfectly good argument that it was the market that made twentieth century technologies so successful (cars and electricity gobbling gadgets). It is only by putting the right signals into the market that there will be an incentive to create a new energy future. This means government policies.

Paul Roberts has written another book called The End of Food, which is no wonder, as he says that the first energy source was calories for humans to hunt and gather with.

From page seventy:

‘Photosynthesis begins when solar energy falls on a leaf and causes a water molecule inside to split into oxygen and hydrogen. This sundering is not easily accomplished; water is a very stable compound: its oxygen and hydrogen atoms are tightly bound. Splitting them apart required a great deal of energy – in this case, a burst of solar energy, which, in essence, attaches itself to the hydrogen atom. The cargo of solar energy makes the newly liberated hydrogen atom highly unstable. To regain stability, the hydrogen must now share its extra energy by binding with a new partner – in this case, an atom of carbon, to create a new compound, a carbohydrate, or sugar. This is why sugars are high-energy compounds: their bonds contain the solar energy brought over by the hydrogen. Sugars, in other words, are chemical storage for energy from the sun. and hydrogen is the energy carrier.’

Very much recommended.

The Party's Over, by Richard Heinberg

I enjoyed the early parts of this book, which explained for lay readers like me the basic scientific elements of energy, where it comes from and how it is harnessed. I read slowly and felt that I had learnt something new.

Section two, which describes the rise of our energy culture, I also found quite absorbing.

Alas, thereafter the book sort of petered out, in my humble opinion. Anyone who’s had a brief look into the theory of Peak Oil will no doubt know all about Hubbert’s theory of oil depletion. So maybe if this is entirely new to you, you may find this section of interest.

By the end of the book I found my eyes skimming over the pages, straining to concentrate. I hate it when left leaning authors describe cataclysmic forthcoming events, then offer their semi-utopian alternative.

Like suggesting we’ll be leading more co-operative lives with more time for heightened intellectual and cultural activities. My instinct is to cringe when I read things like this.

If history is any thing to go by, when vital resources run out, people turn to fear and greed. Look at the oil wars of the last decade, the first and second Iraq wars. I wish it weren’t so, but all I can think of are wars in the future and irrational panics.

I must admit, I sometimes have this utopian thinking myself. Wouldn’t everything be better if we didn’t drive cars and spent more time on sensible pursuits, rather than shopping etc.

Hence I’m in broad agreement with what Richard Heinberg writes in The Party’s Over (lousy title by the way, with its petty moralising). I too think we are dreaming if we think we can keep on thoughtlessly using the earth’s resources. Nature will surely have a way of presenting us with a bill for goods and services rendered.

I haven’t read much on this subject, so can’t give much good advice, but I sense there are probably better books than this on Peak Oil and its related environmental subjects. You could probably find a lot of the info you’re after on peak oil by googling the subject.

Here are some interesting points from page 175, on food production. As I am studying this subject (after my own fashion), I’m noting them down here:

‘Overall, global food production has approximately tripled during the twentieth century, just keeping pace with population growth.’

‘If food production efficiency is measured by the ratio between the amount of energy input required to produce a given amount of food and the energy contained in that food, then industrial agriculture is by far the least efficient form of food production even practiced.’

‘Modern industrial agriculture has become energy-intensive in every respect. Tractors and other farm machinery burn diesel fuel or gasoline; nitrogen fertilisers are produced from natural gas; pesticides and herbicides are synthesized from oil, seeds, chemicals, and crops are transported long distances by truck; and foods are often cooked with natural gas and packaged in oil-derived plastics before reaching the consumer.’

Richard Heinberg has a blog at http://www.richardheinberg.com/