The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations
Something like a new Cold War is taking shape, and Daniel Yergin's book makes a compelling case for why energy sits at the very heart of it. The shale revolution has handed America a degree of geopolitical leverage it hasn't enjoyed in decades, vaulting it past Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world's dominant energy producer. That single shift has redrawn the assumptions underpinning global politics and rattled the confidence of economies built on oil dependency. Controversial fracking technology is central to this story, and Yergin doesn't shy away from the arguments surrounding it. Meanwhile, a sanctions-burdened Russia is tilting towards China, with Putin and Xi finding common cause in pushing back against Western influence, including a joint posture over the South China Sea, one of the busiest and most strategically sensitive trade corridors on the planet. The Middle East, carved up after the First World War with consequences that never quite settled, faces fresh turmoil as ISIS and Iran's Revolutionary Guards contest its borders, and oil-dependent nations scramble to adjust to the price collapse that shale helped trigger. There's a larger anxiety running through all of this: that peak oil demand is no longer a distant theory, as renewables mount a genuine challenge to fossil fuels. Yergin's great strength is in bringing rigour and proportion to the energy transition debate, resisting both panic and complacency. It's a wide-ranging, soberly argued account of a world being quietly, but fundamentally, reshaped.
- Author: YERGIN DANIEL
- Publisher: Penguin
- Genre: Industry-Specific Business
- ISBN: 978-0141994635
- Pages: 544 pages