Energy Crisis

One of a series on ‘Issues in Our World’. Two or three spreads each on world energy use, types of energy, renewable energy, fossil fuels, energy and the environment, saving energy, energy solutions, and energy in the future. There is a timeline, a list of websites, glossary and index.

The book is tendentiously written and carelessly edited. It is claimed that ‘France is currently the only major country to produce more than half its electricity using nuclear power.’ But Belgium, Lithuania and Slovakia also produce more than half their electricity thus. Global warming is first confronted with ‘Many people think that the weather is changing around the world. This may be linked to the fossil fuels that we are using.’ Understatement of the year if you’ve read the IPCC reports. The list of websites includes the British Petroleum website and several websites that take the anti-nuclear position, but not the World Nuclear Association or even the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency. The claims that ‘The attitude of young people could be one of the most important ways to prevent an energy crisis’ and that ‘We are all responsible for our planet’s future’ suggest a view of the way decisions about production and consumption are taken very different from this reviewer’s. Although this book introduces a wide range of interesting topics, it does not in my view handle the material with sufficient rigour.