Feeding the Fire
The Lost History and Uncertain Future of Mankind's Energy Addiction
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
From the first spark created by human hands thousands of years ago, mankind has grown dependent on nature’s vast stores of energy to build, explore, and experiment. Our expanding knowledge and technologies have come from the felling of forests to the harnessing of wind and water, from the burning of coal and oil to tapping the energy of the atom. Energy does more than heat our homes and fill our gas tanks; it fuels our imaginations. Our future is inextricably linked to energy, and in this groundbreaking book, Mark Eberhart examines our historic quest for power and tackles the brutal realization that there are limits to the energy Earth can provide.
In Western society, we treat energy as a given—the background noise of modern life. But as worldwide energy demand grows, supplies are, at best, holding steady—and at worst, shrinking. The implications of our dependence are enormous. And while there is evidence that great cultures of the past—the Maya, Anasazi, Easter Islanders—collapsed when their energy resources were exhausted, Eberhart argues that we have the responsibility and the ability to develop renewable energy sources now.
Eberhart leads us on a tour through the history of energy, how it was formed and how it evolved, and reveals how we became energy-dependent creatures. With an unblinking eye, he takes a close look at the consequences of our energy appetite, and, most important, imagines a secure energy future that we can all play a part in achieving.
Enlightening, bold, and practical, Feeding the Fire weaves together history, science, and current affairs to create an important and compelling thesis about humanity’s energy needs—and draws a hard line on the imperative need to avert the catastrophe that looms if we continue on our present course.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The ancient Mayan city of Tikal died out, and London nearly met the same fate in the Middle Ages, because they exhausted their local energy sources. All humankind faces a similar situation today, says Eberhart (Why Things Break), but perhaps Americans have enough imagination to come up with alternative energy sources in time to save civilization and the planet. Unlike other commentators on the energy crisis, he steps back to consider the basic science all the way back to the laws of thermodynamics and the principle of entropy. This discussion is enlivened by the chemistry professor's friendly tone and his gleeful recounting of early childhood experiments in creating explosives, but some readers may be understandably impatient to learn how all this background can be applied to the contemporary situation. When Eberhart, at the Colorado School of Mines, finally gets to that subject, his solution is admittedly broad. He suggests that the U.S. needs to create an "energy-industrial complex" to fully supply its needs by 2035, but offers little in the way of specific proposals beyond building more electric cars and providing economic incentives for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from factories. The science is fine, but more history and policy would have helped.
