Examining Oil And Coal

Read Along or Enhanced eBook: This new series takes young readers through the exciting and often controversial world of energy. Covering different sources of energy, the eight volumes feature fictional student narrators interviewing experts who discuss the pros and cons of each, and the science behind them. Combining facts and balance, Examining Energy provides students with a clear picture of a topic on which the daily headlines and news stories too often flash more heat than light.

By 2010, U.S. oil and coal consumption are projected to rise by almost one-fifth over 1990 levels. The nation's continued heavy reliance on fossil fuels, particularly oil and coal, raises questions about its ability to meet energy security, environmental, and economic objectives. This report examines how other industrialized nations have dealt with the dilemma. GAO discusses the (1) factors that influence the type and the amount of energy that other nations use and, specifically, the trends in energy supply and use in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and South Korea and (2) key policies and programs that these nations have adopted to promote conservation and the efficient use of oil and coal in their transportation and industrial sectors.

“A brilliant, revisionist argument that places oil companies at the heart of 20th century history—and of the political and environmental crises we now face.” —Guardian Oil is a curse, it is often said, that condemns the countries producing it to an existence defined by war, corruption and enormous inequality. Carbon Democracy tells a more complex story, arguing that no nation escapes the political consequences of our collective dependence on oil. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the greatest demand for energy. Timothy Mitchell begins with the history of coal power to tell a radical new story about the rise of democracy. Coal was a source of energy so open to disruption that oligarchies in the West became vulnerable for the first time to mass demands for democracy. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the development of cheap and abundant energy from oil, most notably from the Middle East, offered a means to reduce this vulnerability to democratic pressures. The abundance of oil made it possible for the first time in history to reorganize political life around the management of something now called “the economy” and the promise of its infinite growth. The politics of the West became dependent on an undemocratic Middle East. In the twenty-first century, the oil-based forms of modern democratic politics have become unsustainable. Foreign intervention and military rule are faltering in the Middle East, while governments everywhere appear incapable of addressing the crises that threaten to end the age of carbon democracy—the disappearance of cheap energy and the carbon-fuelled collapse of the ecological order. In making the production of energy the central force shaping the democratic age, Carbon Democracy rethinks the history of energy, the politics of nature, the theory of democracy, and the place of the Middle East in our common world.

The fascinating history of how coal-based energy became entangled with American security. Since the early twentieth century, Americans have associated oil with national security. From World War I to American involvement in the Middle East, this connection has seemed a self-evident truth. But, as Peter A. Shulman argues, Americans had to learn to think about the geopolitics of energy in terms of security, and they did so beginning in the nineteenth century: the age of coal. Coal and Empire insightfully weaves together pivotal moments in the history of science and technology by linking coal and steam to the realms of foreign relations, navy logistics, and American politics. Long before oil, coal allowed Americans to rethink the place of the United States in the world. Shulman explores how the development of coal-fired oceangoing steam power in the 1840s created new questions, opportunities, and problems for U.S. foreign relations and naval strategy. The search for coal, for example, helped take Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan in the 1850s. It facilitated Abraham Lincoln's pursuit of black colonization in 1860s Panama. After the Civil War, it led Americans to debate whether a need for coaling stations required the construction of a global empire. Until 1898, however, Americans preferred to answer the questions posed by coal with new technologies rather than new territories. Afterward, the establishment of America's string of island outposts created an entirely different demand for coal to secure the country's new colonial borders, a process that paved the way for how Americans incorporated oil into their strategic thought. By exploring how the security dimensions of energy were not intrinsically linked to a particular source of power but rather to political choices about America's role in the world, Shulman ultimately suggests that contemporary global struggles over energy will never disappear, even if oil is someday displaced by alternative sources of power.

A thorough look at the arguments around the different forms of energy.

Examined in this American Petroleum Institute (API) publication on energy technology and energy policy, is the future potential of oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear energy, synthetic fuels, and renewable energy resources. Among the related issues emphasized are environmental protection, access to federal lands, government policies, and the national benefits of reducing energy imports. By developing domestic resources more efficiently and consuming energy more wisely, the API contends that the United States can reduce its oil imports by as much as 50% between 1980 and 1990. Analyses of the nation's energy past, present, and future are presented together with future policy choices. (WB)

This second of two volumes on issues surrounding oil and gas examines a succession of fundamental changes in the European energy economy during the last 40 years. Examined are the reasons why imported oil replaced indigenous coal as the primary energy source in the early post–World War II period; the discovery and exploitation of the North Sea basin’s hydrocarbons resources; and the evolution of the continent’s natural gas markets from the early 1960s, when it accounted for less than two percent of total energy used, to the current contribution of more than 25 percent and an expected eventual share of 35 percent of Europe’s energy supply. These powerful and complex dynamics of Europe’s energy sector are then put in the context of the broader political and economic structures and policies that have emerged over the last four decades.