Yergin’s ‘The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations’ (some quotations)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 23, 2020
“With climate change politics a given, Yergin surveys history with a dose of political economy to see two energy worlds: conventional, consumer-chosen, taxpayer-neutral, dense, reliable minerals vs. government-dependent, politically powerful, dilute, intermittent wind and solar, as well as battery-powered electric vehicles.â€
Daniel Yergin’s tomes are fun reading and great cliff notes to the sweep of energy history. With many hundreds of energy books on my shelf, I find myself pulling down The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (1990), The Commanding Heights (1998), and The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World (2011). I also peruse his edited/coauthored Energy Future (1979) to note Yergin’s incorrect embrace of the soft energy path when it was ‘the thing.’
His latest is The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations (Penguin Press, 2020). In a nutshell, this book is a sturdy nod toward energy realism with some political correctness thrown in. With climate change politics a given, Yergin surveys history with a dose of political economy to see two energy worlds: conventional, consumer-chosen, taxpayer-neutral, dense, reliable minerals vs. government-dependent, politically powerful, dilute, intermittent wind and solar, as well as battery-powered electric vehicles.
https://www.masterresource.org/yergin/yergin-the-new-map-2020/
