No More Food, No More Black Gold

You might expect the author of The End of Oil and The End of Food to be gloomy and dry, but at a recent appearance in San Francisco , Paul Roberts was described as "candid and engaging." Thanks to the Hagan Foundation Center for the Humanities and the President's Speakers Series at Spokane Community College we'll be able to see this charismatic speaker at next year's festival on Wednesday the 15th of April at 7.30 pm in the Lair Auditorium at SCC.

A journalist since 1983, Paul Roberts has written for The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The (UK) Guardian and has freelanced for Slate, USA Today, The New Republic, Newsweek, The Christian Science Monitor, Rolling Stone, and Outside magazine. He was a finalist for the National Magazine Award (1999) and for the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2005.

The topics of The End of Oil, the decline of global petroleum production, the social and political costs of a post-oil shock and the possibilities for moving beyond oil, are hotter now than they were when the book came out. That explains why a 2004 Mother Jone's interview with Paul Roberts reads like it is about our upcoming election, if you just blank out the candidates' names. In his June 2008 National Geographic article, "Tapped Out," Paul describes how oil companies are predicting when supplies will level off, but explains why that won't change how much money we're spending at the pump. "Whatever the ceiling turns out to be, one prediction seems secure: The era of cheap oil is behind us. "

As if not being able to drive your SUV for much longer isn't bad enough, Paul's latest book, The End of Food, discusses the factors involved in third world food crises and how western nations will soon feel the effects of them, because of how dependent we are on our large-scale, hyper-efficient industrialized food production, which generates food more cheaply than at any time in history, but has reached a point of dangerously diminishing returns.

Read Bee Wilson's May 19, 2008 Critic at Large article, "The Last Bite: Is the world’s food system collapsing?," in The New Yorker for an in dept review of the book. Then listen to Paul Roberts discussing these issues with Tom Ashbrook on NPR's On Point show from May 28 of this year. That should prepare you enough to be able to participate in what is sure to be a lively discussion on the 15th. You could of course also buy Paul's books and read them before next April.

See you then!