Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis [Paperback]

Jeremy Leggett is ideally placed to tell this story, having worked at the heart of the oil industry, and then jumped tanker, to work as chief scientific advisor to Greenpeace. Once you have read this book it is unlikely you will ever view our profligate energy consumption the same again. It will probably scare you into urgent action. It did me!

“Half Gone” is a story of two halves, firstly about global oil reserves, and secondly about the climate disaster that is looming from our addiction to oil. Reserves have been exaggerated by the oil producing nations and the oil companies, because for a variety of reasons it has been in their short term financial interest to do so. The same nations and industry have been among the fiercest opponents of action to limit damage to the world’s climate, which Leggett also documents in convincing detail.

“Half Gone” contains some remarkable facts. Did you know for example that in the 1930s, the American oil company Chevron joined forces with General Motors to buy up the suburban electric railway around Los Angeles, and then closed it down to create dependency upon their products? Plenty of fuel there for the conspiracy theorists!

Leggett highlights the fact that one of the biggest players in deciding when we wake up to climate catastrophe is going to be the trillion dollar insurance industry, which uses risk analysis as a basis for its calculations. A threat to the insurance industry would undermine the whole global economy, which is a bit sad for those of us hoping to find a pension left for us at the end of our working lives. When the oil runs out and climate catastrophe strikes, all the assumptions on which we have based our daily lives for decades, will come tumbling down.

Having scared the life out of the reader, the book tries to end on an optimistic note, suggesting what needs to be done. However by this stage, the reader is likely to conclude that it will be too little, too late. Visitors to the online green newspaper "Eco" http://www.ecozine.co.uk will find ideas about some of the action that can be taken to avoid the worst case scenarios. “Half Gone” is a major contribution to the debate about Peak Oil and Global Warming, with over 300 references and notes, and is recommended reading.

Ms Phillips is not alone in suffering from a delusional state on this issue, as you learn from this book.

Geologist Jeremy Leggett recounts that Colin Campbell and Chris Skrebowski - both with oil industry backgrounds - organised a seminar in July 2004 to warn members of the UK Parliament about the coming depletion of oil. In 2004 there were 659 MPs in the House of Commons, of whom a mere three attended.

In Part One he details the run-up to what he calls "the topping point". Like other writers on this issue, he argues that it lies somewhere between 2005 and 2015.

He is pessimistic about the discovery of new oil fields - the peak year for oil discovery was, he claims, 1965 - and he is also pessimistic about what he calls "unconventional" oil, such as shale and tar sands.

Like other writers he believes they will demand at least as much energy in recovery as they will offer.

The second part of the book is a detailed examination of global warming. He cites the view of Sir David King, the UK government's Chief Scientific Adviser, that global warming is a greater threat than any weapons of mass destruction.

He poses the question: how much warming, how much danger? and forecasts that, at current rates, CO2 concentrations will reach 700 parts per million, as opposed to the 300 ppm in the 400,000 years up to the beginning of the last century.

By this scenario global temperatures are set to rise by the so-called "hockey stick" curve.

He again quotes Sir David King as believing that 550 ppm is way above the danger threshold.

The author then goes on to list the "sleeping giants" which will be triggered by these rising temperatures: methane-hydrate destabilization - launching billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere - the shut-down of the Gulf Stream; the melting of the Greenland ice cap, and other dire news.

The catalogue is exhaustive (and depressing!) before then going on to examine "How we got into this mess", and he concludes that, after 1990, there was no excuse for inaction.

Finally, in "What can we do about it?" we get the do's and don’ts.

First he argues we CAN get plentiful renewable energy - that’s the good news, but the bad news is one of time: we've left it too late!

Among the guilty, who seemed as if they knew what was happening, our friend in Downing Street. The man who outlined what needed to be done in 2003; the man who seemed to realise that nuclear power wasn't an option.

Jeremy Leggett was at the 2003 meeting when Blair launched the results of the last UK energy review.

He is not impressed with the follow-up, or lack of it!

Second, he warns against the trap of going for the nuclear option, which he dismisses comprehensively.

Like other, he wishes to see “selfless collective thinking” from the international community. You will be unsurprised by his pessimism on this score.

“The most probably outcome,” he writes, “is that the world will drift on in overall collective denial.”

But he ends by reminding us of the case of Woking, in Surrey. It cut its carbon emissions by 77 per cent!

There will need to be a lot of Wokings before too long, if we are to pull through.

Johan Hari, columnist for the London paper The Independent, concluded a typically trenchant piece on climate change by asking the $64,000 question:

“What we choose to do about these scientific warnings will answer a fundamental question about human beings.

“Are we a rational species, capable of understanding the damage we are doing and acting in our own self-defence - or are we addled hedonists, too high on our fumes to see the truth?”

If you read one book this year on what James Lovelock has called the world’s “morbid fever”, try this one. It is truly comprehensive.