What Clive Crook doesn’t know about energy will hurt him (and us too!)

The incurious mind often doesn’t know what it doesn’t know and so, not surprisingly, doesn’t think to ask questions. Such is the case with Clive Crook in his recent piece in The Atlantic Monthly (subscription required, but even if you can’t read it, I will outline his main points). While misleading articles about oil and energy are so numerous in the media these days that responding to them all would be an impossible task, it is occasionally worthwhile to critique a typical specimen so as to remain in practice.

In a nutshell, Crook appears to be channeling Daniel Yergin who contends that the main obstacles to an energy-secure future are political, not technical or geological. But Crook should have been more careful to conceal his ignorance of the world’s energy landscape. He tells us the following:

Energy Bulletin