In a century, oil has become as essential as air and water. That is why we are willing to make excessive efforts to protect it.

Indeed, oil is such a crucial stronghold of our economy and politics, and it affects our expectations for high living standards to such an extent that even moderate attempts to replace it are thwarted by the most powerful forces in the world: oil companies and governments that depend on oil profits; developing nations that see oil as the only means to achieve industrial growth; and the West, which refuses to curb its energy waste.

In the next thirty years, according to the most conservative estimates, we will have already burned half of the easily accessible oil. How will we free ourselves from this dependence? And what will we use instead of oil to maintain a global economy and a political system that functions with cheap, readily available energy?

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[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]