An Ecumenical Approach: The Never-Ending Quest for Energy

• Author: G. Tracy Mehan III
• Pages: 186-189

186 Best of the Books: Ref‌lections on Recent Literature

An Ecumenical Approach:

The Never-Ending

Quest for Energy

By G. Tracy Mehan III (Jan./Feb. 2013)

The Quest : Energy, Securit y, and the Remaking of the Mode rn

World, by Daniel Yergin. Penguin Books. 832 pages.

The End of Energy : The Unmaking of Am erica’s Environment ,

Security, and Independence, by Michael J. Graet z. The MIT Press.

384 pages.

From the January/ February 2013 issue of The Environmental For um.

“On no one quality, on no one

process, on no one country, on

no one route, and on no one

eld must we be dependent,” argued Winston

Churchill to Parliament in 1913. “Safety and

certainty in oil lie in variety and variety alone.”

Churchill, as First Lord of the Admira lty,

had previously made the consequential deci-

sion to stake Britain’s naval supremacy upon

oil rather t han coal. is meant “more gun-

power and more speed for less size or cost.”

Churchill argued that only d iversication of

supply would justify his decision to avoid reli-

ance on coal mined in Wales.

“ere is much to be said for a n ecumeni-

cal approach that recognizes the contribution

of the range of energ y options,” writes Daniel Yergin in his latest magnum

opus, e Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World.

“Churchill’s famous dictum about supply—‘variety, and variety alone’—still

resounds powerfully.”