41 pages • 1 hour read
Hope JahrenThe Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 3, Chapters 12-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Energy”
Part 3, Chapter 12 Summary: “The Plants We Burn”
This chapter moves into the field of geology to understand the origins of fossil fuels, or the materials from which we produce energy. Over millions of years, the ocean floor collected the remains of small dead animals. In time, those remains sunk into the ground, fossilized, and created materials such as crude oil. Thanks to plate tectonics, some of what was once seafloor has become land, meaning oil is available even on inland. The same holds true for ancient forests, whose decomposed remains mixed into the ground and, after millions of years, produced coal: “Coal, oil, and natural gas are the pressed, cooked, and cracked remains of the plants and animals (but mostly plants) that lived hundreds of millions of years ago” (103). When extracted and set on fire inside power plants, they produce energy (plastic products are another important product of oil).
Globally, energy resources are derived from 40% oil, 30% coal, and 30% natural gas. At the current rate of global consumption, oil and natural gas supplies will last only another 50 years, with coal lasting another 150 years. Because the Earth creates fossil fuels over millions of years, they are called nonrenewable resources. The countries in the OECD consume the majority of the globe’s supply of oil and gas; the Middle East provides the majority of those fossil fuels, however, meaning these resources are consumed and produced in different locations.
Corn and sugar plants can produce ethanol, while biodiesel derives from soy and canola. These products are called biofuels and often receive the label “renewable,” although Jahren is skeptical of that designation. The resource intensity of biofuel creation and their limited supply eliminate them as a viable alternative to fossil fuels.
Part 3, Chapter 13 Summary: “The Wheels We Turn”
The strong flow of a river’s water can turn large, heavy wheels. As the wheels turn, turbines transform the wheel’s movement into electricity. Hydroelectric dams, as these systems are called, are an alternative source of energy to fossil fuels. Second only to fossil fuels, hydroelectricity is a popular approach to generating electricity around the world, accounting for 18% of its production. Wind turbines are another technology that generate technology from the movement of a wheel. In that case, they depend on wind to initiate the movement.
Nuclear power is another alternative to fossil fuels, but it’s an extremely controversial industry. Nuclear power plants generate toxic waste that is impossible to fully get rid of: If thrown in a landfill, kept in ponds, or dumped into the ocean, it is hazardous to the surrounding ecosystem. The most famous example of nuclear power generation gone wrong is the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, when a meltdown and subsequent eruptions exposed many thousands of people to radioactive contaminants. Because of its risks, nuclear power production has decreased to less than 6% of global energy supply. In the United States, however, that number is much higher, with nuclear power accounting for 20% of the energy supply.
Part 3, Chapters 12-13 Analysis
Chapter 12 is one of the longer chapters in the book, even describing some in-class activities Jahren has encouraged her students to do to track their fossil fuel consumption—for instance, analyzing which products in their backpacks or their clothing were made or derived from plastic. However, as in most of her chapters, Jahren does not adopt a strong stance one way or the other (in this case, in favor of or opposed to fossil fuels and their products). On the topic of plastic, for example, she writes, “The invention and innovation of plastic truly qualifies as one of the manufacturing miracles of the twentieth century” (112). Plastics are particularly beneficial in the medical field because they are not porous and can be kept sterile. However, the author is also quick to mention statistics critical of plastic: It pollutes our oceans, landfills, and cities, and it requires a great deal of fossil fuels during production. Just how we should reduce reliance on plastic, however, she does not say.
What Jahren is clear about is that she is highly skeptical that alternative fuels will save our global population from its dependence on fossil fuels. Biofuels, for example, provide a miniscule amount of energy and would last only six days in the United States if the country completely turned off other fuel sources.
Jahren’s discussion of alternative sources of electricity is similarly skeptical. She doubts that forms of energy such as wind turbines or solar can provide enough electricity to replace fossil fuels: “Entirely switching over to renewables at their present rate of efficiency is, unfortunately, a pipe dream” (122). Jahren’s stance is a somewhat controversial one: As she notes herself, talking about renewable forms of energy as the knight in shining armor that will save us all is popular. However, as Jahren’s numbers demonstrate, renewable energy can provide no such promise. As she frames it, the main solution is to consume less fossil fuels while also incorporating renewable sources of energy.
