Plug-in HybridsReview of: Plug-in Hybrids: The cars that will recharge America
By: Sherry Boschert
New Society Publishers, 2006, 230 pages

Review by: Jason Hayes, M.E.Des., Communications Director, American Coal Council

With gas prices hovering somewhere between $3.50 and $4.50 a gallon over the past several months, strained budgets are making for strange bedfellows.

Gas, electricity, energy security, our automobiles, and the environment; in both our world and this book, they're all linked. In Plug-in Hybrids Boschert follows a few of the people who are working to address energy shortages and rising fuel prices through the early adoption of electric vehicles (EV), hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV).

The book opens with Chelsea Sexton weeping over the untimely “death” of her friend. It was through her connection with this friend that Sexton had found employment, met her husband, and now had a young son. More than that, we learn as we read that Sexton's contact with this friend had set the tone for much of her life interest. Now Sexton, an “automotive insider,” was responsible for giving the eulogy at her friend's funeral service. But this was no ordinary funeral service, and Sexton's friend wasn't flesh and blood. Her friend was her car and the movement that it represented.

Sexton had worked as part of the General Motors (GM) engineering and marketing teams that created the EV1 – GM's first foray into the electric vehicle world and their initial answer to the issue of improving automotive efficiency and decreasing emissions. It was a full, battery only, EV and managed to gain the respect of many across the nation. In the end, however, GM canceled (or at least delayed) their EV car program and demanded that the cars be returned. Thus the funeral service as Sexton and others said goodbye to their work and their friend.

Through this personal look into the lives of the people in the hybrid and EV movement, Boschert has created an effective medium to promote interest in EVs and PHEVs. Throughout the book, she takes a look at the lives and work of others in the hybrid community, including:

Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years

Review of: Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 years (updated & expanded edition)
By: S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery
Rowman & Littlefield, 2008

Review by: Jason Hayes, M.E.Des., Communications Director, American Coal Council

A few years back, I was asked to give a few presentations on the science of climate change. So I discussed the claims that a broad scientific consensus existed on the causes of global climate change. Proponents of that theory argued that science had determined human use of fossil fuels was releasing CO2 into the atmosphere and thereby causing unprecedented and potentially dangerous warming. This theory is often called anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

I suggested that the average person could be excused for thinking that AGW was the cause for our changing climate. Governments, media, and NGOs all swore that was the case and since that time their rhetoric has become even more pervasive. They also informed us that so-called skeptics who question their theory were isolated loners, resident on the outermost fringes of the discussion. They have also created and presented expensive and prestigious awards for their frightening epics on AGW that depict the dangerous outcomes of using of fossil fuels. Some have even charged skeptics as being morally akin to holocaust deniers, actually borrowing and reworking the term into “climate denier.” It is their influence that has brought on a call for the immediate enacting of carbon-control legislation that is making its way through governments around the world.

Given those circumstances, no one could still seriously consider questioning the science. What would be the point? Even if the science wasn't settled when I gave my presentations a few years ago, it has to be now so raising the question again would be a waste of time, right?

The authors of a newly released book would tell you that thought is wrong.

Wood Mackenzie ~ Coal Plant Cancellations: Time to Panic?
Reviewed by Jason Hayes, Communications Director, American Coal Council

In a short, but concise review of our dynamic coal and gas markets, the Wood Mackenzie Gas and Power Service Insight team provides some answers to the question of whether the recent coal plant cancellations and postponements are sufficient reason to cause panic in the coal industry, or in the broader energy industry.

Recognizing that increased environmental and social pressures are pushing regulators and businesses to reconsider their plans to build coal-fueled generation stations, the authors of “Coal Plant Cancellations” look at the longer-term implications for this surge in permit denials.

Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming

By: Bjorn Lomborg
Knopf, 253 pages USD $21 ~ CDN $27

Bjorn Lomborg, the Skeptical Environmentalist, has returned, and with his new book, he is once again raising hackles on all sides of the political and environmental spectrum.

In his first book, Lomborg attempted to “measure the real state of the world.” However, policy suggestions from a self admitted “old left-wing Greenpeace member,” who was upbeat about humanity's prospects and unafraid of their impact on the environment proved to be a conundrum to many.

Conservatives were often rankled by his liberal political leanings and environmentalist connections, as well as his calls for government management of the environment and public funding for research and development. He was, at the same time, profoundly unpopular with the left-of-center environmental movement as he refused to buy into the pessimistic, Malthusian narrative that the natural world and human populations were teetering on the brink of collapse. (In fact, in his first, massively footnoted tome, he actually demonstrated that the world was in good shape and that many human activities were actually helping to make things better.)

In his latest book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, Lomborg maintains the same confounding belief in the need for government-driven research and environmental management, coupled with a stubbornly optimistic outlook on humanity's future. In Cool It, he argues that while climate change will have negative impacts on humans and the environment, restrained and measured policy approaches will mitigate those impacts and end up producing far more beneficial outcomes than rushed attempts to “stop” climate change at all costs.

Future Energy: How the New Oil Industry Will Change People, Politics, and Portfolios
Author: Bill Paul
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2007)
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0-470-0642-0

Reviewed By: Jason Hayes, Communications Director, American Coal Council

Energy supplies are tightening and prices are skyrocketing. Civil unrest, conflict, and acts of terror – often related to the free flow of energy – are spreading around the world. Environmental concerns and our ability to produce and use energy efficiently only serve to compound the challenges. As greening markets and environmental regulation make energy development, generation, and transmission more expensive and more difficult, pressures increase. Sitting atop of it all are the fears of climate change; rising sea levels, famine, drought, pestilence, and the list goes on.

If you have turned on the news or opened a newspaper in the past several years, that opening paragraph should outline much of what you will have read or heard. If one concentrated solely on the media headlines and sound bites, they might be tempted to throw up their hands, move to the hinterlands, and become a hermit.

However, there are a few remaining optimists out there. Despite the challenges our society faces in providing affordable, abundant, and clean energy sources to meet our meteoric growth in demand, there is still hope. Bill Paul's Future Energy provides one starting point in the search for new, abundant, and affordable energy sources (or information about those sources).