CONTENTS -- Foreword -- Energy Unveiled: A photo sampler of global energy impacts -- Introduction -- PART I: A Deeper Look at the Energy Picture -- Introduction: Energy Literacy -- Energy and the Scaffolding of Civilization -- What is Energy? -- Net Energy -- Energy Density -- Embodied Energy -- Energy Slaves -- Energy-Fueled Population Growth -- Energy-Fueled Economic Growth -- Peak Oil and Resource Depletion -- Energy Sprawl -- Visual Blight -- Climate Change -- Energy Conservation -- Efficiency -- Curtailment Writ Large -- PART II: The Predicament -- Introduction: Energy, Nature, and the Eco-Social Crisis -- Five Carbon Pools -- Faustian Economics -- Life-Affirming Beauty -- Our Global Ponzi Economy -- Coal: The Greatest Threat to Civilization -- The View from Oil's Peak -- Energy Return on Investment -- Alternative Energy Challenges -- When Risk Assessment Is Risky: Predicting the Effects of Technology -- Malevolent and Malignant Threats -- Progress vs. Apocalypse: The Stories We Tell Ourselves -- PART III: The Landscape of Energy -- Introduction: A Tour of the Energy Terrain -- Energy in Numbers -- Conventional Oil -- Offshore Oil -- Unconventional Oil -- Natural Gas -- Shale Gas -- Coal -- Nuclear -- Hydropower -- Geothermal -- Liquid Biofuels -- Biomass Electricity -- Industrial Wind -- Solar Photovoltaic -- Concentrated Solar Thermal -- Refineries -- Pipelines and Transport -- Powerlines -- Hydrogen -- Micropower -- Emerging Energy Technologies -- PART IV: False Solutions -- Introduction: False Solutions to the Energy Challenge -- Drill Baby Drill: Why It Won't Work for Long-Term Energy Sustainability -- Nuclear Power and the Earth -- The False Promise of "Clean" Coal -- The Whole Fracking Enchilada -- River Killers: The False Solution of Megadams -- Bioenergy: A Disaster for Biodiversity, Health, and Human Rights.

Oil Shale Development: Looming Threat to Western Wildlands -- Gas Hydrates: A Dangerously Large Source of Unconventional Hydrocarbons -- Regulatory Illusion -- Retooling the Planet: The False Promise of Geoengineering -- PART V: Wildness Under Attack -- Introduction: Onslaught of the Energy Machine -- Will Drilling Spell the End of a Quintessential American Landscape? -- A photographic gallery of destruction: areas around the globe affected by energy production -- PART VI: Depowering Destruction -- Introduction: Toward an Energy Economy as if Nature Mattered -- The Case for Conservation -- Reinventing Fire -- Cap the Grid -- Protected Areas: Foundation of a Better Future Relationship with Energy -- Three Steps to Establish a Politics of Global Warming -- Distributed Renewable Generation: Why It Should Be the Centerpiece of U.S. Energy Policy -- No Ecological Sustainability without Limits to Growth -- PART VII: What We're For -- Energy Literacy -- Conservation -- Resilience -- Eco-Localism -- Beauty -- Biodiversity -- Family Planning -- What We're For -- Afterword: Places Where the Wind Carries the Ashes of Ancestors -- Acknowledgments -- Photo Credits -- Copyright/Publisher Information -- ENERGY in Print.