Profit from the Peak: The End of Oil and the Greatest Investment Event of the Century, by Brian Hicks and Chris Nelder
The title here is maybe a little misleading. This isn’t a get rich quick book nor is it about profiting from the misery of others. In fact, you don’t get get to investment ideas until way into the book and even then, each idea is just a paragraph or two.
It’s the getting there that makes the ideas so valuable. The authors spend considerable time explaining peak oil, the various types of renewable energy and how they work, and scenarios for dealing with global warming and peak oil. So, when they say that Valero Oil (VLO) might be a long-term stock to buy, it’s after they’ve explained that most of the sweet light crude is gone, leaving only the more difficult sour crude, and that Valero is one of the only refineries in the US that can process sour crude.
There’s some fascinating stuff here. Did you know there are “green hawks” in the Pentagon? Yes, they may be hardcore neocons but they also believe peak oil and global warming are quite real and are trying to get the rest of the Pentagon to realize it too.
You can read Profit From The Peak for its excellent investment ideas but also because it one of the best explanations of peak oil and renewable energy I’ve seen.
I don’t think they’re so much “green hawks” as realists. This has been slapping us in the face since the seventies, only believers in adolescent fairy tales to explain away the dark argue otherwise.
In my observation the worthy investment is in those who figure out how to capture the methane released by the thawing tundra of Siberia and the Northwest Territories.
There are also enormous amounts of methane trapped at the bottom of the oceans. Japan is trying to determine how to get it. Risky, to be sure.