Edwin Black - The Plan: How to Rescue Society the Day the Oil Stops-Or the Day Before

As always, when I embark upon great voyages of understanding, the ocean is filled with great vessels of assistance, indispensable fellow travelers, and not a few maelstroms to weather. One person cannot do this work without massive help. In all my projects, I have been blessed with great minds, energetic volunteers, and numerous individuals who opened doors and shined lights in the darkness at crucial moments. Their fingerprints are forever invisibly emblazoned along the margins and between the lines of every page of The Plan. But some of their names are also recited here.

I began the project with several dozen volunteers in seven countries assembling reams of data and documents in new and unusual ways to assemble the puzzle pieces of The Plan. But in the last several months, our battalion was reduced to a squad of day-in day-out researchers and fact checkers. First and foremost, I acknowledge team leader Annie Steinmetz in Arizona who worked tirelessly in spite of time zones and terrible computer crashes. Intellectual agility is the single most precious commodity in a project like this. She demonstrated it every day in fact checking, organizing, and project traffic supervision. Annie also showed her editorial prowess as the line editor. She became the fulcrum of the enterprise. There can only be one.

Martin Barillas in Michigan assisted with stubborn fact checking, assembling the documentation. As an editor in his own right, and a former diplomat, Martin brought great intellectual goods to the table. I also thank Eve Jones of New York for her keen eye, sharp editing and indefatigable energy in tackling footnotes and documentation. Because Eve has worked with me on several earlier books, she knew exactly what to do. Carol DiSalvo of Florida gave of her time during the most pivotal times on the project as the crunch times came. Eric Moore of New York assisted at a key moment of investigation as he tackled several pounds of data. Space does not permit me to list several dozen others from New Zealand, Canada, England, France and Israel who floated in and out of the project to volunteer at a crucial moment.

Each of my projects benefits from the vast knowledge, advice and mental clarity of many experts. I was blessed to have many with great insight representing both broad and narrow interests. Having worked with scores of scholars in this field, two of the most knowledgeable I have encountered are Gal Luft, Co-director of the Institute for the Analysis Global Security and Richard Kolodziej, Director of Natural Gas Vehicles America, who both assisted immeasurably.

Others who rendered detailed page and verse assistance include Erik Kreil of the Energy Information Administration of the Department of Energy, one of the nations most devoted and knowledgeable oil crisis experts, along with his colleagues, Matt Cline and Mark Schipper. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) is the most important and underthanked energy agency in government, working with tireless devotion to protect this nations energy vulnerability with its most potent secret weapon: knowledge. This agency is the bedrock of what America knows and does not know about the hole we are digging. The EIA operates numerous websites which are vast and reliable repositories of indispensable information. Anyone can access them day or night.

Likewise, I extend thanks to Jason Elliott of the International Energy Agency in Paris, a clear thinker whose information and insights were most valuable. Thanks to Karl Means and David Pordy of the Shulman Rogers law firm for their expertise regarding patent law.

My manuscript was tediously read and re-read in many versions on a deadline basis as we sculpted, balanced and harmonized the many competing interests, factual assertions, viewpoints and accumulated expertise. I give special thanks to Canadian oil expert Gord Laxer of the University of Alberta and the Parkland Institute, Norman Olsen of Iowa State University and the Iowa Energy Center, John Holbrook of the Ammonia Fuel Network, Mark Abramowitz of the California Hydrogen Business Center, and also to individuals I cannot name in the U.S. Department of Energy and the International Energy Agency who worked many hours to help my information be as correct as possible. I also thank Source A, Source B and Source C in the U.S. government who worked exhaustively with me on condition of anonymity and in so doing helped expose the awesome facts surrounding the nations precarious sleep-walking deeper and deeper into the petroleum morass.

Numerous professional, commercial and corporate entities rendered pivotal assistance and deserve special commendation. Among the carmakers, I thank my personal favorite, Honda, for all it has done and shall do. Arguably the best of the manufacturers, Honda shall deliver. I have always driven Hondas and always will. Their executives exemplify some of the best thinkers on the planet.

An extra measure of gratitude goes to General Motors. In recent times, few have caused General Motors more public grief than I. In unending front page investigations, I have chronicled the companys conscious destruction of the electric trolleys, inexcusable alliance with Adolf Hitler, and seemingly intractable harm to our fuel independence. General Motors media relations people and their executives in the past have been arrogant and in denial about their own arrogance. Yet, knowing what they do about me, General Motors moved with electric speed to provide me every detail of information, every act of cooperation and access to its top executives. The company responded to every request--not within hours, days or weeks, but within minutes, sometimes moments. Perhaps this company has been reinvented from the inside out. Therefore unqualified and spotlighted thanks go to media manager Rob Peterson, GM Vice President Jon Lauckner and to Geri Lama as well as Source G and Source G1. On this book tour, I shall not only drive a Honda GX powered by CNG, but also a GM hydrogen vehicle. Perhaps on the next book tour, I will drive up in a GM Volt.

Salutes are given to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Its experts and media managers worked above and beyond with me, moment-to-moment on a deadline basis, to ensure that I had access to the most current and often still unpublished information. They did so without condition knowing that I oppose oil. Likewise, the Enbridge Corporation and the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association both mobilized all the information and insight at their disposal the moment I asked.

I was obstructed or otherwise refused information from a variety of important sources. The American Trucking Association declined to help and refused repeated requests for information. Shirley Neff of the Association of Oil Pipe Lines in Washington D.C. refused on several occasions to provide any information whatsoever. Without the complete helpfulness of the Enbridge Corporation and the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, my understanding of how oil moves great distances would have been far less complete. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) spurned all requests for information on General Motors and the Third Reich or on Nazi oil activities. The USHMMs four top executives, Andrew Hollinger, Paul Shapiro, Arthur Berger, Sara Bloomfield, already embattled for their bitter and protracted war with numerous Holocaust survivor organizations over information dissemination as well as critics seeking more insight into the Nazi-Arab alliance, declined to even respond to requests.

This project was enabled, in large measure, by software not previously available, or at least not in the configuration it now exists. At the top of the list is Adobe which provided my team with powerful suites permitting high-speed virtual information gathering, processing and assemblage. I also thank the Internet which, as bad as it is, can be an agent of immeasurable good.