Guardian: “Jeremy Leggett among 100 signatories to letter opposing oil firm’s likely influence over university’s climate change studies.” “The veteran environmental campaigners Jonathon Porritt and Jeremy Leggett are among 100 past and present students and staff who are accusing Oxford University of hypocrisy for accepting funding from
Solarcentury
The company I founded in 1998 to design and supply solar energy solutions for the built environment. Solarcentury
Solar Aid
The charity I founded in 2006, with a 5% contribution of Solarcentury profits, to help deliver solar lighting to Africa. Solar Aid
Books
An account, written with colleagues at Solarcentury and SolarAid in 2009, of how solar energy can play a key role in global renaissance: how an acceleration of growth in the solar industries – and their sisters in sustainable energy – can ameliorate the climate crisis, soften the energy crisis, help rebuild the damage caused by the financial crisis, and spread much hope besides.
“An incredibly inspiring read …a compelling, exciting and inspiring case for solar as a central thrust of a renewable energy future.”
www.Treehugger.com
Amazon.com: readers’ reviews and ordering
Download The Solar Century cover image
My account (1997 – 2005) of the peak oil threat: how the global oil industry is overblowing both its reserves and resources assessment and its ability to deliver oil to market in a timely manner, how the growing numbers of whistleblowers in an around the oil industry are faring with their warnings about the great global energy crisis that looms as a consequence, and how peak oil conflates with climate change.
Amazon.com: readers’ reviews and ordering
Portobello: publisher’s website
“Oil depletion is now meeting global warming …it’s scary….a mix of a textbook and a call to arms ….Few people could make the transition from geologist to oil consultant to chief scientist for Greenpeace and then to boss of Britain’s largest solar energy company ….his personal insights are fascinating ….the writing is always clear and conveys complicated but important technicalities in very accessible terms.”
Daily Mail
“Jeremy Leggett, former oil geologist and a fine writer, spells out the reality in Half Gone – and very different it is from the official blandishments from on high, in which the incompetence seems beyond belief and deception is a way of life.”
Guardian
“Leggett knows what he is talking about. ….The resulting book is a fast-moving, easily readable polemic whose unashamed populism doesn’t obscure the weight of it arguments.”
Sunday Times
“His arguments are so powerfully and persuasively drawn that his statements begin to seem obvious. ….a compelling must-read for politicians, pundits and punters alike.”
Independent
“If you want one book that ….. really deals with this and attempts to explain the complications of it, I recommend it to you.”
President Bill Clinton
“Really excellent. Personal and passionate, but strong on the science and eminently reasonable. Certainly the best account of the Peak Oil debate that I have come across so far, and I really hope that it is having the impact on key people that it deserves.”
Jonathon Porritt, Commission on Sustainable Development
“Among the shelf full of books on the oil situation that have been published in the last year or so, (this) is far and away the best.”
Lester Brown, President, Earth Policy Institute
“What makes Half Gone important is that it goes beyond the conventional clarion call about “peak oil” to consider also the other great fossil-fuel-related crisis we face – global warming. ….Despite its gloomy topic, (it) is an impressive and jaunty read and should be mandatory for politicians and planners ….a detailed, finely poised, buoyantly optimistic and ultimately plausible vision of how increased energy efficiency and renewable energy sources can lead to an ecologically viable and soft, rather than hard, landing.”
Sydney Morning Herald
“Leggett’s case is equally convincing and frightening. ….gives a fresh, keen understanding of the imminent need to alleviate our economic dependency on oil.”
Internationalist: Journal of Culture and Currents, Winter 2005 (US)
“Leggett summarizes data…. that convincingly indicate that world oil production is in irreversible decline.”
Gilbert Taylor, Booklist (US)
Book of the year: Ian Irvine, Independent-on-Sunday
Bookseller magazine votes Half Gone one of the top 50 environmental books ever (November 2009).
My account (1989-2000) of the first decade of international effort to negotiate a global climate change treaty, as I witnessed it in and around the negotiations. As far as I know, it remains the only eye-witness acount of the climate talks, and the way the fossil-fuel vested-interests (the “carbon club”) tried to derail them.
Amazon.com: readers’ reviews and ordering
“Vastly broadens our understanding. For the unscientific, this account of events from the International Panel on Climate Change set up by the United Nations in 1988, to the summit in Kyoto, Japan in 1997, is a revelation. Suddenly the apparently contradictory nature of so much we have heard and read falls into place.”
Glasgow Herald
“a page-turning story in racy prose” …“the final chapter is not only nail biting, but moves the reader to tears.”
Daily Mail
“The best book yet about the politics of global warming …essential reading.”
Sunday Times
“Racy… a powerful and highly readable book. Those who want a crash course on the nature of today’s environmental movement and the politics of the climate negotiations can be assured of an excellent, reliable read”
New Scientist
“The Carbon War is a must for anyone interested in observing how a few global oil corporations hijacked governments over the climate negotiations.”
Guardian
“provides ample evidence, much of it drawn from the author’s first-hand experience, to support its assertions. Mr Leggett knows both sides of the street.”
Economist