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Many Australians have doubtless had a gutful of articles on energy and the issues that surround them. After all, as one of the countries that supply the rest of the world with uranium, coal, and soon, coal seam gas, we are necessarily involved in long and complex debates on our internal policies and our global role. But for us Australian public relations practitioners who work in this space it’s engrossing and fascinating – the politics of oil, the politics of energy security, the politics of climate change and global warming.

Most practitioners who follow this closely will have read some of Daniel Yergin’s writing. Recently he fired up passions around the US with an article in the Wall Street Journal: There Will Be Oil – disputing the concept of ‘peak oil’.

“Those sounding the alarm over oil argue that about half the world’s oil resources already have been produced and that the point of decline is nearing. “It’s quite a simple theory and one that any beer-drinker understands,” said the geologist Colin Campbell, one of the leaders of the movement. “The glass starts full and ends empty, and the faster you drink it, the quicker it’s gone.””

Yergin’s point?

“This is actually the fifth time in modern history that we’ve seen widespread fear that the world was running out of oil.”

The point of his book, The Quest – all 700+ pages of it – is that besides being an easy read, it is a wonderful recording of the history of oil, politics, the environmental issues; and it untangles the enormous complexity of this immensely confounding issue. For instance he isolates the three critical questions that impact on governments, energy-dealing companies and environmental organisations:

  • “Will enough energy be available to meet the needs of a growing world and at what cost and with what technologies?
  • How can the security to the energy system on which the world depends be protected?
  • What will be the impact of environmental concerns, including climate change, on the future of energy – and how will energy development affect the environment?”

More on these later, but for now it’s a great read. And for what it’s worth, another globalisation reality check: while it retails in Australia for about $60, we can download it on our kindle in a few seconds for less than $20.

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