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Planeta Sediento, Recursos Menguantes: La Nueva Geopolitica De La Energia (2008)

by Michael T. Klare(Favorite Author)

3.59 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

8493619450 (ISBN13: 9788493619459)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Tendencias

review 1: Like "Blowback," this is another book that reveals one's ignorance. It's dense in parts but also stuns you at times with its ability to connect the dots. What solidified the United States' oil-thirsting, militaristic empire building in the Middle East? The Carter Doctrine (yep, that's Jimmy Carter, that incorrigible liberal). And before that, it was FDR who set the stage for decades and decades of U.S. policy in the Middle East. As the spoils of WWII were divvied up, FDR met with the king of Saudi Arabia to ensure the flow of oil to America while providing a "security umbrella" to the Saudis in the form of military bases.Klare's knowledge of world geopolitics really is staggering, and perhaps his great accomplishment here is to make you see just about everything - and I me... morean everything - through the lens of energy, with the established powers and the rising powers increasingly agitating to secure more of it.Toward the end of the book, he offers some hope in the idea that major nations could collaborate, rather than compete, to build a renewable energy infrastructure, both in the interests of securing sustainable economic development but also to curb the catastrophic consequences of global warming.Indeed, Klare's book is essential reading - for its penetrating analysis of world geopolitics, including the pending crises of peak fossil fuels (i.e., oil) and global warming.I'm glad I read it. But I can't say I'm reassured about the future of humanity.
review 2: Frustrating and at times infuriating, especially the massive sums of financial and military "aid" to energy supplier nations that play all sides to their own benefit. Out tax $$ go to support second- and third-world leaders with money and weapons used to suppress their own people, just so that American energy companies can get favorable concessions to oil and gas rights in those countries, and then even more of our tax $$ go directly to the energy companies to subsidize their international business with tax breaks and commercial incentives, not to mention outsized and unearned "executive compensation," and people still get fleeced at the gas pump. The US may not be the only country at fault here, but our government holds responsibility for the worst of it, and has been pushing the global economy closer to a hard reckoning on energy issues for more than 30 years, since the "Carter Doctrine" got us stuck in the Persian Gulf in 1980. Though the rest of the economy and much of the globalized business community left the Cold War behind about 20 years ago, the US energy industry is still stuck there, and because of that remains unable to handle the growing rivalries with China, Russia and India in both old and new places like Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caspian Sea. less

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