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The Energy of Slaves

Oil and the New Servitude

Regular price $29.95 CAD
Details
  • ISBN: 9781553659785
  • Tags: Andrew Nikiforuk, Current Affairs & Politics, Nature & Environment, Science,
  • Dimensions: 6 x 9
  • Published On: 8/17/2012
  • 296 Pages
Description Reviews

" . . . Nikiforuk marshals such an impressive array of data and argument that it becomes increasingly apparent that we are party to a noxious system—one that has made us both slaves and enslavers." -Georgia Straight

" . . . a discomforting critique of the fossil fuel-based economy." -Hill Times

" . . . His award-winning Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent packed a similar punch, and this provocative, if ominous-sounding book is never less than engaging . . . Hope lies in powering down and throwing off the chains binding us to inanimate slaves in our households and places of work. The 'new abolitionists,' in fact, are already among us; they 'eat slowly, travel locally, plant gardens, work ethically . . . eschew bigness in economic and political life.' As visions go, it's the best available." -Nancy Wigston, Toronto Star

"The Energy of Slaves offers a profoundly moral case against the diminishing returns now offered by oil dependency." -Maclean's

"A startling critique that should rouse us from our pipe dream of endless plenty." -Ronald Wright

"Andrew Nikiforuk, Canada’s greatest journalist, has written a stunning book that approaches the coming disaster [of the end of cheap energy] in a startling way. . . . I have never read a better book on the way we live now, on the plain fact that the Industrial Revolution did us in." -Heather Mallick, Toronto Star

"In his new book, The Energy of Slaves, [Nikiforuk] revives some old ideas that remain fresh and takes them to an exhaustively researched new starting point . . . according to Nikiforuk: we have to use less energy and give up some of our slaves." -FastForward Weekly

"In this cogently argued book, Andrew Nikiforuk deploys a powerful metaphor. Oil dependency, he writes, is a modern form of slavery-and it's time for a global abolition movement." -Tara Grescoe

"Nikiforuk makes a compelling case that the cost of our energy slaves is far higher than we imagine." -Winnipeg Free Press

"Nikiforuk makes the case that the cheap and plentiful energy provided by oil, and the luxuries it affords, have deeply altered our society." -Steve Andersen, Vue Weekly

"Our overwhelming societal dependence on oil is usually discussed in economic terms. This book looks at our Promethean petro-prowess through an ethical lens, and the result is both shocking and deeply enlightening. This is required reading for everyone who uses oil (do you know anyone who doesn't?)." -Richard Heinberg

"The legacy of slavery has been carried over into the modern fossil fuel-based economy, contends author Andrew Nikiforuk in his disturbing but always fascinating new book . . . [his] argument is convincing." -The StarPhoenix

"With his new book, Nikiforuk adds a robustly researched and smoothly written overview of the many challenges confronting our devotion to fossil fuels." -Quill & Quire