Peter Lehner

I have the sense that this book was prepared by an environmental activist well in advance of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and was waiting for an event to occur which would provide the notoriety to propel it to market. The book sub-title includes "anatomy of a disaster", "fate of the Gulf", and "how to end our oil addiction", and I began reading this book thinking it might have been roughly divided in thirds addressing each of those issues. However, I felt the book was about 50% canned environmental discussion, 35% about the evils of big oil, and only about 15% about British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon. While I hoped for and expected a larger emphasis on the failed oil well itself, there was still enough detail, and enough of an explanation to understand the nature of the disaster.

If you found yourself caught up in the "drill baby drill" chanting during the 2008 Presidential election, you may want to skip this book. For others, it does describe the downside of our oil dependency, and how regulation and oversight of deepwater drilling rigs, which failed in this case, certainly have their value.… (mere)