The Book to Thwart Energy Spin Doctors

• The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude
• Andrew Nikiforuk Greystone Books (2012)

The name Andrew Nikiforuk is, of course, well known on these pages. His book, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, is a seminal work on the issue of the tar sands, or as the industry and governments would prefer, oil sands. I would go so far as to say that one cannot begin to discuss this issue intelligently (there's a novel idea!) without having read that book.

His latest, The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude, would I thought by reading the dust jacket be just another of those dumbed-down screeds so popular when complicated issues are discussed.

‘Canada has almost lost its capacity to make good policy’: Nikiforuk

Andrew Nikiforuk delivers a discomforting critique of the fossil fuel-based economy in his latest book, The Energy of Slavery: Oil and the New Servitude (Hardcover, Greystone Books/David Suzuki Foundation, $29.95), which argues that today’s energy consumption habits are based on slavery. He likens today’s consumers to modern-day slaveholders who are indebted by increasingly rare and costly energy to produce their food and power their appliances and vehicles.

The award-winning Calgary-based author, journalist, and The Tyee contributor has written on energy and the environment for more than two decades.