Edwin Black talked about his book, Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives, published by St. Martin's Press. He said that people have been trying to monopolize resources such as wood, water, and electricity since the beginning of human history. He described the first battery-powered cars, developed in the 1890s, which were undermined by interests who stood to profit from cars powered by the internal combustion engine. He said that Henry Ford and Thomas Edison undertook a secret program to bring back the electric car in 1912, but it was ultimately unsuccessful. He speculated about the feasibility of alternative energy sources such as corn and sugar cane ethanol, hydrogen, nuclear power, and solar power. After his presentation he responded to audience members' questions.
Bio
Edwin Black
Edwin Black is the award-winning, New York Times and international bestselling investigative author of 56 bestselling editions in 14 languages in 61 countries, as well as scores of newspaper and magazine articles in the leading publications of the United States, Europe and Israel. His work focuses on genocide and hate, corporate criminality and corruption, governmental misconduct, academic fraud, philanthropy abuse, and historical investigation. Editors have nominated Black nine times for the Pulitzer Prize, and in recent years he has been the recipient of a series of top editorial awards. For his work, Black has been interviewed on hundreds of network broadcasts from Oprah, the Today Show, CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports and NBC Dateline in the US to the leading networks of Europe and Latin American. His works have been the subject of numerous documentaries, here and abroad. Black's speaking tours include hundreds of events in dozens of cities each year, appearing at prestigious venues from the Library of Congress in Washington to the Simon Wiesenthal Institute in Los Angeles in America, and in Europe from London's British War Museum and Amsterdam's Institute for War Documentation to Munich's Carl Orff Hall.