Introduction - Beyond Smoke and Mirrors - page 11

There is as yet no agreement on what should replace it, or
on how to bring in the rapidly developing countries of the
world, despite two large, international conferences

that tried.
The European Union

s (EU) cap-and-trade program
has not worked as well as hoped, but Europe did meet its
Kyoto commitments. Other mechanisms

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tried on a

smaller scale, like the Canadian Province of British

Columbia s Revenue Neutral Carbon Tax, have been

surprising successes.
I have dealt with all of these issues by updating the text
in all of the chapters of this second edition, where appro-
priate, to re

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ve years.
In the rest of this introduction, I want to outline a
broader perspective on energy issues

ect what has happened in the past

that I have

developed since writing the first edition of Beyond Smoke

and Mirrors. There the focus was, almost exclusively, on
climate change. I dedicate the next paragraphs to a friend
at Princeton University, a very good physicist, who does
not believe that human activities are the main cause of
climate change. He once honored me by saying I was the
only honest believer in climate change that he knew. We
have not talked much about it in the past few years, but
perhaps the next few paragraphs can persuade him that we
have to change our ways for many reasons beyond redu-
cing greenhouse gas emissions. I call this way of thinking
“ Energy from Three Perspectives ” : Economy, Security,

and Environment.
While poets and song writers say it is love that makes
the world go round, and bankers say it is money, it is
really energy that makes the world go round. Energy
heats our homes, cooks our food, lights our evenings,