Book Club Friday's (#30) - The last hours of ancient sunlight
About the Author
Thom Hartmann is a very respected author and talk show host whose shows are available in over a half-billion homes worldwide. He's the New York Times bestselling, 4-times Project Censored Award-winning author of 24 books in print in 17 languages on five continents. Leonardo DiCaprio was inspired by the book being reviewed in this post and was inspired to make the movie "The 11th Hour" (in which Thom appears). It would seem that he was a big influence in DiCaprio's most recent environmental movie: Before the flood.
Furthermore, as an entrepreneur, Thom has also founded several successful businesses which still are operating, and lived and worked with his wife, Louise, and their three children on several continents.
Also an avid traveller, in my opinion, he is a modern-day example of the renaissance man.
A little bit about the book!
The book was published in 2001 and still holds a strong recommendation from many different public figures. I first heard about it from listening to Multiple Tim Ferris podcasts where it kept coming up as a book recommendation from his guests on the show and boy was I glad that I bought it.
Thom highlights with scientific facts the actual rate at which we are destroying the earth and links it all back to the idea of 'the last hours of our ancient sunlight'. However, the main premise of the book relates to humanity's demand for more fuel as our population increases and the extent to which we are destroying ourselves in trying to suffice our demand for MORE. I am lead to believe that the title of the book is referring to our usage of ancient sunlight, that has been stored up in fossils and that we subsequently use for fuel in the modern age. This fuel has formed over millions of years, and we now use it as if we have an abundance of it but are gradually running out, eg. Our Oil reserves. Not just that, but in our quest to get more of the fuels to suffice demand, we are harming earth in the process... Thom highlights the consequences of this, our options and the world as it used to be, before the distinct desire for greed and power. (The book reminds me a little bit of Yuri Noah Harari's Sapiens at times with its look at historical examples of humans and what we used to be.) What I think is important is that the book makes you more conscious about the world around you, and answers many questions about why things are as they are and what can be done about it... all in approximately 300 pages which is fantastic.
Here's an example of the types of things you will learn from reading the book:
Thom states that in our history since the first oil drum was drilled in 1859, humans have extracted 742 billion barrels of oil from the Earth. It is estimated that there are about 1,000 billion barrels of oil left... however due to the law of compounding and the increase in our demand for oil, this 1,000 billion barrels is only going to last us approximately 45 years. And this was published in 1998. So now we would have 35 years left.
I want to highlight that there is a big difference between simply being aware of the consequences of your actions and the act of being an environmentalist and I believe that this is a big issue that acts like cancer on society. People are scared of being judged for making a difference by cutting beef out of their diet, switching to an electric car, or even pursuing a different career in renewable energy technology development. If there are to be drastic improvements to our society, I believe that we must change the way the media portrays these people, thinking outside the box should be promoted and not ridiculed. Thankfully, I do see the world moving in this direction... Better late than never.
Buy the Book!
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