Maggie Koerth-Baker - Before the lights go out: conquering the energy crisis before it conquers us

Copyright 2012 by Maggie Koerth-Baker. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Koerth-Baker, Maggie, date.
Before the lights go out : conquering the energy crisis before it conquers us / Maggie Koerth-Baker.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-470-87625-1 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-17557-6 (ebk);
ISBN 978-1-118-17558-3 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-17559-0 (ebk)
1. Renewable energy sourcesUnited States. 2. Energy developmentUnited
States. 3. Energy consumptionUnited States. 4. Energy conservationUnited States. 5. Energy policy--United States. I. Title.
TJ807.9.U6K64 2012
333.790973dc23
2011043334

For Grammy

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Nobody writes a book all on their own. I started working on the proposal for what eventually became Before the Lights Go Out in 2008. That seed of an idea would never have grown without help.

First and foremost, I want to thank my husband, Christopher Baker, who first encouraged me to write a book about energy. His insight and suggestions helped shape my perspective. His emotional support has been invaluable. His pumpkin pancakes are amazing.

Mark Frauenfelder, David Pescovitz, Xeni Jardin, Cory Doctorow, and Rob Beschizza at BoingBoing are amazing people and even more amazing people to work for. I am very grateful to them for their encouragement, their ideas, and their flexibility as I worked on this project. I would be significantly less sane right now without the Happy Mutants.

Seth Fishman, my agent, helped me take some half-formed ideas and shape them into a story. Thank you for believing in this idea, reading my drafts, and helping me navigate the strange new world of publishing.

Eric Nelson, my editor at Wiley, pushed me to write a book that was far better than what I would have written on my own. Thank you for asking the right questions, telling me when my words didnt quite work, and helping me put the pieces in the right order.

I am indebted to the many, many people who have talked shop on energy, climate, and infrastructure with me over the last few years. Those conversations are the mortar that binds this book together. That gratitude extends to more people than I could possibly count, but there are a few Id like to thank in particular. Eli Kintisch, Alexis Madrigal, David Biello, and Christopher Mims have helped turn my Twitter stream into a virtual think tank full of insanely smart colleagues. I am grateful for the ideas they offered and for their willingness to read some of this book in its early stages. Someday, I will get them all in one room, and we will take over the world. Prasad Vaidya, David Eijadi, and Alicia Ward at the Weidt Group got my research started off right, and helped put me in contact with some valuable sources. William Moomaw at Tufts was gracious enough to let me drag him into hour-long interviews several times early in my research, and in doing so helped shape my perspective in this book. Skip Laitner, Karen Turner, Steven Sorrell, Harry Saunders, and Blake Alcott have spoken with me multiple times and answered innumerable e-mail questions about the rebound effect. I hope that I have managed to take all the information that they shared with me and do justice to that nuanced and complicated issue. Gavin Schmidt and RealClimate helped me explain risk and uncertainty. Michael Noble at Fresh Energy and John Foley at the University of Minnesotas Institute on the Environment offered some great ideas and pointed me in the right direction.

Thanks is also due to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, and the Electric Power Research Institute, all of which were invaluable resources in the creation of this book.

Also thanks to some wonderful people who gave me a lot to think about after the book was finished: David Isenberg, Tom Evslin, Stephen Kamman, Jim Baller, and Bill St. Arnaud. There were far more people whom I interviewed for this book than could ever be mentioned in the main text. Thank you all for your contributions and insights. I never did an interview for this book that didnt teach me something important.

I also need to thank my friends and journalism colleagues who let me bounce ideas off of them, read chapters of this book, and generally helped me ensure that I was writing for everybody and not just energy wonks. Esther Porter, in particular, was a wonderful editor. Maryn McKenna, Dennis Cass, and John Pavlus read some of my earliest drafts, and their advice kept me from making some seriously terrible mistakes. Maryn and Dennis also need to be thanked for giving me an impromptu master class in how to write and organize a book. Tim Carmody and Matt Novak are New Optimists who helped set the tone for my writing here.

When I realized that the work on this book wasnt going to end when I turned in the final draft, the following people helped me figure out some great ideas for marketing: Rebecca Skloot, Joel Fitch, Carrie Downing, Lars Ostrom, Esther Porter, Christopher Baker (again), Jennifer Harmening, and Jessica Deutsch. Extra special thanks to Kristin Verby, who designed several sample covers for this book that really helped me communicate my ideas to the designers at Wiley.

While researching this book I did a fair amount of traveling, and I am grateful to the friends (and strangers) who opened their homes to me: Donovan Atkinson and Ryan Garceau; Astrid and Chris Hayden; Kim Tholen and Nicholas Bohac; Amanda Kim Stairrett (who was also invaluable in helping me navigate the Department of Defense and gave me some great insight into the culture of the military); John Schlueter and Emily Hagen; and Heather Christian and Couchsurfing.org.