Robert Newman’s “A History of Oil”
It’s been at least a year since I recommended this fabulous combination of education and entertainment, in which British comedian/historian Robert Newman presents “A History of Oil.
Please do yourself a favor and check it out. Then do us ALL a favor and leave a comment.
I saw this as a lot of smart azz comedy mixed in with a few truths about the dark side of every nation state’s unwritten energy policy. We are importing oil from around the globe because we can not because it is the right thing to do.
In Newman’s simplistic approach to the global problem he just says we need to switch to something else. Most of us that participate in this forum are way beyond this. Yes, oil must be replaced since peak oil is upon us no matter how many gargantuan fields are discovered. The conversation would be more productive if we could get at the nuances necessary to go from here to there. I think we have defined “there” as some bright future of useful, economical, renewable energy generation and we know where we are now. How do we wean ourselves off of petroleum before it runs out or we choke on our effluents? How do we convert to renewables without massive shortages of power during the conversion process? How do we educate the general population to accept the changes that are about to occur?
Newman’s 2005 take on the prevalence of oil as cause and motivation for geopolitical actions since it replaced coal rises to the level of jared Diamond’s insights about the fate of human civilizations. Plus he’s funny and digresses as amusingly as Henry Fielding. The value he brings is that the power of oil over us is so omnipotent and has so much momentum that we may not be able to stop ourselves from sending, as it puts it, our “battleships out to capture the last hours of dwindling ancient sunlight.” But then he’s a Brit and prone to fatalism.
Good insight here; I agree that he’s a terrific thinker. In fact, I tried to get him to write a forward to my last book, but I was unsuccessful.