Authors: Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson
Publishers: Harper Collins
ISBN: 978-0-06-171564-8

Click Here To Purchase Who Turned Out the Lights?: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis

While some readers may find Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson's Who Turned Out the Lights: Your Guided Tour To The Energy Crisis a tad dry, its content more than compensates for this.

As noted in the book's preface, most of us are quite confused when it comes to understanding our energy troubles. Every day we are bombarded with facts, figures, data, prophesies, predictions, and everything else you could think of concerning energy and the environment. Experts spar with each other and frankly we don't know whom to believe. Will the world run out of oil in our lifetime? Will global warming cause crop failure and famine? It is little wonder that for most of us all of this has become an incomprehensible nightmare. The authors fully realize that millions of individuals are deeply concerned about the energy issue and want to understand its implications.

Consequently, in order to make some sense of all of this, Bittle and Johnson have put together an excellent primer that will explain the basics, present options and not recommendations. The primary objective, according to the authors, is to have us stop, take a deep breath, back up a bit, and go back to the basics. Their aim is to present material in a way that will explain the nuts and bolts in comprehensible English. Moreover, their plan is to explore the principal options in a coherent manner and to summarize different points of view about them.

They also believe that the USA is at the stage now that it is ready to act, however, it is imperative that we understand the implications of the various paths that could be pursued. The book also illustrates how issues are constantly changing and that we should focus on public questions, rather than individual ones. Finally, the authors make it clear that the objective of their book is not to refight climate change war, as they have too much to cover. As they clearly state: “What we're writing hereis based on the assumption that the country needs to reduce activities that contribute to global warming.”

Divided into sixteen chapters with a comprehensive endnotes section, Who Turned Out the Lights provides its readers with a useful tour of the current thinking touching on a multitude of topics such as why the USA needs to get its energy act together, how did we get to where we are today, pandering to the voters, how some of our past thinking has been flawed, fossil fuel, oil, coal, nuclear energy, wind and solar power, and many other timely issues.
The authors have extensively researched their topics and for the most part have achieved their goal of presenting us with a clearer understanding of a subject that is often complex and confusing.  Those willing to join them on their brief tour will find the book a most helpful guide.

Scott Bittle is executive editor of PublicAgenda.org, where he has prepared citizen guides on more than twenty major issues includingthe federal budget deficit, Social Security, and the economy. He is also the website director for Planet Forward, an innovative PBS program designed to bring citizen voices to the energy debate.

Jean Johnson  is co-founder of PublicAgenda.org, and has written articles and op-eds for USA Today, Education Week, School Board News, Educational Leadership, and the Huffington Post Website.

Click Here To Purchase Who Turned Out the Lights?: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis