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Publication Date: October 2, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0973590513 | ISBN-13: 978-0973590517 | Edition: First Printing
How much would you pay for a gallon of gas? $2.50? $10.00? Would you pay with the health of your lungs or with years taken from your lifespan?
The infamous "pain at the pump" runs much deeper than our wallets, argues Terry Tamminen, former Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency and current Special Assistant to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Petroleum may power our cars and heat our homes, but it also contributes to birth defects and disorders like asthma and emphysema, not to mention cancer. In Lives Per Gallon, Tamminen takes a hard look at these and other health, environmental, and national security costs hidden in every barrel of oil.
While the petroleum industry is raking in huge profits, Tamminen shows, it is studiously avoiding measures that would lessen the hazards of its products. Using the successful lawsuits by state governments against big tobacco as a model, the author sets forth a bold strategy to hold oil and auto companies accountable and force industry reform. He also offers a blueprint for developing alternative energy sources based on California's real world experiences.
Certain to be controversial, Lives Per Gallon is an unblinking assessment of the true price of petroleum and a prescription for change. The choice is clear: continuing paying with our health, or kick our addiction and evolve beyond an oil-dependent economy.
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...launches a blistering attack on the practices of the world's oil and automobile industries..."
(Sacramento Bee )
“America’s prosperity, our independence and security, our democracy and our ideals, our international leadership and national pride are all dependent on our breaking our lethal oil addiction. Terry Tamminen has turned the spotlight of clarity on the defining issue of our age.”
(Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. President, Waterkeeper Alliance )
“We all thought we knew the costs of oil addiction—power to terrorists and tyrants, and global climate change. But Tamminen's book demonstrates that we don't know the half of it. Gasoline is a deadly carcinogen like tobacco. The health, environmental, and climatic impact of our oil dependency, he shows, is catastrophic. And the economic cost of subsidizing the oil industry is bankrupting. But Tamminen does more than point to the problems. He lays out step-by-step solutions to ending our oil addiction. I only wish that all members of Congress would read this book.”
(Dick Morris Fox News political analyst and former advisor to President Clinton )
“Tamminen’s personal and impassioned overview of the evidence against Big Oil makes a persuasive argument for the urgency of ending our petroleum habit.”
(Orion magazine )
About the Author
Terry Tamminen founded the Santa Monica BayKeeper and served as its Executive Director for six years. He also served for five years as Executive Director of the Environment Now Foundation in Santa Monica. He was appointed as the Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency in November, 2003 and is currently Special Assistant to the Governor.
Product Details
Hardcover: 262 pages
Publisher: Island Press; First Printing edition (October 2, 2006)
From his youth in Australia to career experiences in Europe, Africa, China and across the United States, Terry has developed expertise in business, farming, education, non-profit, the environment, the arts, and government.
A United States Coast Guard-licensed ship captain, Terry has long been drawn to the undersea world, starting in the 1960s with a family-run tropical fish breeding business in Australia and continuing with studies on conch depletion in the Bahamas, manatee populations in Florida coastal waters, and mariculture in the Gulf States with Texas A&M University.
On land, Terry managed the largest sheep ranch east of the Mississippi, assisting the University of Minnesota in developing new methods of livestock disease control. Terry also managed a multi-million dollar real estate company, owned a successful recreational services business, and assisted the West African nation of Nigeria with the creation of their first solid waste recycling program.
In 1993, Terry founded the Santa Monica BayKeeper and co-founded additional Waterkeeper programs in five California watersheds. He later served as the Executive Director of the Environment Now Foundation in Santa Monica, CA and co-founded the Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic at the School of Law, University of California Los Angeles.
In the summer of 2003, Terry helped Arnold Schwarzenegger win the historic recall election and become Governor of California. He was appointed as the Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency in November 2003 and was later appointed Cabinet Secretary, the Chief Policy Advisor to the Governor. During his service in state government, Terry was the architect of many groundbreaking sustainability policies, including California's landmark Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, the Hydrogen Highway Network, and the Million Solar Roofs initiative.
Terry left state government in late 2006 in order to help other states and world governments adopt clean energy and sustainability policies based on California's successes. In February 2007, he founded the non-profit organization Seventh Generation Advisors (SGA). SGA's strategy is to create a "bottom up" approach, rather than waiting for policy from the top. This strategic approach has proven successful, and since 2007, Terry and SGA convinced many states and provinces to copy California policies and other "best practices" on clean energy and climate policy.
In 2007 he was also named the Cullman Senior Fellow for climate policy at the New America Foundation and was appointed as an Operating Advisor to Pegasus Capital Advisors, a private equity fund that provides capital to middle market companies across a wide variety of industries specializing in resource efficiency and sustainable technologies.
In 2011 Terry was appointed as the R20 Founding Chair's Strategic Advisor. The R20 Regions of Climate Action, created in 2010 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and other sub-national leaders, is a new public-private partnership, bringing together sub-national governments; businesses; financial markets; NGOs; and academia to implement measurable, large-scale, low-carbon and climate resilient economic development projects that can simultaneously solve the climate crisis and build a sustainable global economy. As the Founding Chair's Strategic Advisor, Terry is advising the R20 on policy and helping with the design and implementation of climate resilient economic development projects.
An accomplished author, Terry's latest book, Watercolors: How JJ the Whale Saved Us, shares his remarkable true story of the rescue of JJ, a one-day-old gray whale that was found abandoned in Marina del Rey, California. His previous book, Cracking the Carbon Code: The Keys to Sustainable Profits in the New Economy (Palgrave), shows how to find the low carbon products and services that save money, get ahead of regulations, and preserve resources for generations to come. Terry's former book, Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction (Island Press), is a timely examination of our dependence on oil and a strategy to evolve to more sustainable energy sources. He has also authored a series of best-selling "Ultimate Guides" to pools and spas (McGraw-Hill) and several theatrical works on the life of William Shakespeare. Terry is an avid airplane and helicopter pilot and speaks German, Dutch and Spanish.
Terry was one of six finalists for the 2011 Zayed Future Energy Prize, which offers $2.2 million of awards in the category of clean, sustainable energy recognizing individuals, non-profits, and companies that are doing the most to commercialize and distribute renewable energy to replace fossil fuels and cut pollution. Terry Tamminen was named Vanity Fair's May 2007 Environmental Hero and in TIME Magazine's 2007 Earthday edition, he was featured in the "51 Things We Can Do" section. In 2008, The Guardian ranked Terry No. 1 in its "Top 50 People Who Can Save the Planet." In 2009, Tamminen was named an "Eco Baron" in Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes's book, Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet.
If only there were a twelve step program for America's oil addiction. Of course, we'd all drive to meetings in our SUVs. This book is so much more than a chronicle of how the infernal combustion engine and the petroleum industry have made billions riding roughshod over the planet. It's a call to action. If you've ever done an intervention (or wanted to do one) for a friend who was hooked on something and killing himself/herself, then read this book and realize that your friend is the earth and everyone on it. Terry Tamminen's book makes us see that we're all caught in an oil spill.
Terry Tamminen has put together a monumental expose' of the true cost of our fossil fuel addiction and the U.S auto industry collusion to mislead both consumers and government alike on the health hazards of fossil fuel exhaust- not much different than tobacco smoke and that industry's playing-down the health risks of their products.
The history of oil use is well covered including wars and potential wars over it's control, government subsidies, fossil fuel contribution to global warming and the global crisis we face when the oil reserves run out. After reading about the multiple ways that fossil fuel consumption has polluted air, water and land, one is left with a feeling that the world oil supply will hopefully run out sooner than later.
Tamminen paints a bleak picture of the corruption and pollution of fossil fuel use, but he also gives positive coverage of the emerging clean/green ZEV (zero emission vehicles) technology such as electric, hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell propulsion and electric generating systems coupled with solar, wind, and photovoltaic systems to replace the out-dated fossil fuel systems. Also covered are the many things individuals can do on their own to reduce their personal energy consumption footprint, i.e., use low-watt bulbs, drive a hybrid or electric car and boycott wasteful products- buy green. Collectively, these actions add up and make a huge difference in total energy consumption while sending a strong message to the merchants of toxic products that their products are no longer desired.
This book reads like a mystery novel but weaves together a compelling mountain of facts that illustrate what President Bush has referred to as America's "addiction to oil." Tamminen's book explores in depth the severity of the consequences of that addiction, from demonstrable public health impacts to dependence on regimes that don't like us. But more importantly, this book identifies a number of solutions to move us away from our dependence on oil. Too many well-written books do a thorough job of outlining the problem, but few authors take the time to discuss solutions. Reasonable people will disagree about what are the best solutions to our addiction, but Tamminen's book offers a menu of tools that can begin the discussion.
