Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism

The world will not evolve past its current state of
crisis by using the same thinking that created the
situation.—Albert Einstein

If the title of this book makes you a little suspicious of what I’m up to, then all is well. We’ll get along just fine. That’s because the dirty secrets ahead aren’t the kind you can be told (you probably wouldn’t believe me anyway), but rather are the kind you must be shown. But even then, I don’t expect you to accept all of my particular renderings.

Ahead you’ll see that this certainly isn’t a book for alternative energy. Neither is it a book against it. In fact, we won’t be talking in simplistic terms of for and against, left and right, good and evil. I wouldn’t dare bludgeon you with a litany of environmental truths when I suspect you’d rather we consider the far more intriguing questions of how such truths are made. Ultimately, this is a book of shades. This is a book for you and others who like to think.

Ahead, we’ll interrogate the very idea of being for or against energy technologies at all. Many energy debates arise from special interests as

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