Wow! The book release has been a whirlwind of media -- radio, TV, and magazine interviews. It's safe to say that publicizing this Power Trip would go nowhere without fossil fuels -- the cars that propelled me from meeting to meeting, the television and radio shows broadcast thanks to electricity, and the tweets and emails sent to promote them. Yesterday I did a cursory audit on twitter of my fossil fuel use for 24 hours. It involved dozens of cab trips and elevator rides, plastic products galore, clothing spun from petro-chemicals, meal after meal of imported food, electric pumped toilet flushes, hot showers, steaming cups of coffee, and chilled glasses of wine to toast a big day. As I try to examine the subject of energy addiction, I'm participating zealously in it. I'm new to this world of blogging and twittering and I'm dumbstruck by its efficacy in connecting communities, ...

A series just went up on Grist with six excerpts from Power Trip. My next few posts will offer some photos and snippets from this series: From the Power Trip Intro “One morning I took a small, quiet, but personally momentous tour around my office. My aim was to count the things in my midst that were, in one way or another, tied to fossil fuels. Since nearly all plastics, polymers, inks, paints, fertilizers, and pesticides are made from petrochemicals, and all products are delivered to market by trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes, there was virtually nothing in my office—my body included—that wasn’t there because of fossil fuels. There I sat at a desk made of Formica (a plastic), wearing a sweatshirt made of fleece (a polymer) over yoga pants made from Lycra (ditto), sipping coffee shipped from Zimbabwe, eating an apple trucked from Washington, surrounded by walls covered with ...

Next week I release my book Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells--Our Ride to the Renewable Future. When I tell people I wrote a book on energy, their first response, understandably, is a yawn. The public debate on energy is wonky, its preachy, it's bogged down in partisan bickering. Power Trip is a non-drowsy version of the story--a romance novel, of sorts, about America's love-affair with fossil fuels and our search for a renewable future. Think of it as Eat, Pray, Love meets Guns Germs and Steel – a personal search-for-enlightenment travel story entwined with a serious historical look at the energy sources that built and threaten the American superpower. I’ve been covering the energy and environment beat for nearly a decade. During most of that time I was a quintessential greenie – I shunned plastic bags, I went vegetarian (albeit briefly), I flipped off Hummer drivers, I ...