Half Gone
Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis
by Jeremy Leggett

The global marketplace we all inhabit is built on the notion of a solid, growing supply of cheap oil and gas for decades to come. But that bedrock is about to crack and crumble. And the oil companies know it. As geologists, civil servants and industry insiders in this hard-hitting book tell us, the day the oil wells start to run dry is a lot closer than we think.

This book exposes the true status of the world's energy supplies, revealing both the scale of the disaster looming over our planet, and the action each and every one of us must take - right now - to stand a chance of averting it.

No previous book on the oil trade has had such unprecedented access to the boardrooms of the mightiest oil companies, or such insider knowledge of geology and engineering. And none has made such a persuasive and inspiring call for immediate individual action.

Jeremy Leggett, a geologist who spent the 1980s in the service of Big Oil before jumping ship in the 1990s to become Chief Scientist at Greenpeace UK and then launching his own renewable energy initiatives, understands the scale of the impending crisis and the need for us to act now. With watertight knowledge and sobering clarity, he explains how we became addicted to oil and how this habit is dragging us into an increasingly dangerous dependence on the Middle East and toward economic and environmental catastrophe.

When the financial markets finally take their fingers out of their ears and hear what the geologists are saying - that stocks of oil and gas are running out and there are no more to be found - the resulting stampede will so destabilise the world's economy that war will replace trade as the only reliable way for nations to secure enough food, water and energy for themselves. By comparison, 1929 will look like a boom year. That’s if global warming, which will continue to accelerate for as long as stocks last, doesn’t do the job first.

And yet, his outlook is paradoxically positive, for all the technology we need to get off this road to disaster is already at hand. In ringingly clear terms, Half Gone previews the dark place toward which the world is headed, but has the decency to signpost a safe exit.

"I hope this book will not be an obituary for the human species. But the denial and double-think it exposes suggest that, unless we change pretty smartly, we can expect to be overtaken by the catastrophes Leggett documents. His book demands to be read."
George Monbiot

"Jeremy Leggett, former oil geologist and a fine writer, spells out the reality in Half Gone." Colin Tudge, The Guardian.

Format: Paperback
Pages: 312
Size: 150 mm x 230 mm