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DAVID BRAGDON, President of Metro Portland,
Oregon:
Transport Revolutions draws lessons from the
past to develop insightful scenarios about the
future of transportation and how it will be fuelled,
useful to students and policy-makers around the
world. This wide-ranging book blends history,
economics and political science to describe the
complex relationship between petroleum and how our
economies move.
ELIZABETH DEAKIN,
Professor of City Planning and Director,
Transportation Center, University of California:
A terrific book! Gilbert and Perl spell out the
policy options that are before us and illuminate the
consequences of the paths we may choose. Whether or
not the reader agrees with their analysis, this is a
book that deserves to be read, debated, and
recommended to others concerned about the economic,
environmental, and social wellbeing of our small
planet.
HANK DITTMAR, Chief
Executive of The Princes Foundation for the Built
Environment; former Chair of the Congress for the
New Urbanism; and author of Transport and Neigh-bourhoods,
and co-author and editor of New Transit Town:
People writing about the future of transport tend to
fall into one of two camps: technological
determinists who argue that cars will always triumph
and that oil depletion and climate change are
illusory, and doomsayers who prognosticate a world
of inevitable decline and loss of mobility. Perl and
Gilbert's Transport Revolutions takes the
middle path, presenting the incontrovertible
evidence about peak oil and climate change, and
detailing sensible policies and investments which
could avert the looming problems. This book deserves
a wide audience, and will be useful for policy
makers, analysts and professionals and
environmentalists alike.
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TONY HISS, Author of
The Experience of Place: A New Way of Dealing with
our Radically Changing Cities and Countryside,
and visiting scholar, Robert F. Wagner Graduate
School of Public Service, NYU:
This remarkably timely, optimistic and practical
book is about transitioning painlessly in two stages
to an oil-depleted world. Gilbert and Perl have
assembled, digested, and integrated a staggering
amount of information, and they describe the
revolutions ahead in clear, readable, non-jargony
prose.
DAVE HUGHES, President,
Global Sustainability Research:
Gilbert and Perl's analysis of solutions to the
transportation dilemmas facing us in an era of
diminished hydrocarbon availability is absolutely
fundamental reading for all of us, but particularly
for policymakers who can make a difference. If
policymakers ignore this book, it is at our peril.
Rt Hon EDWARD SCHREYER,
former Governor General of Canada, former Premier of
Manitoba:
Transport Revolutions is remarkably well
researched. Those who see imminent catastrophic
decline in oil-based energy for mobile transport
will probably regard the authors Gilbert and Perl as
being much too conservative or passive. Those who
crave a future that can proceed as "business as
usual" will regard this work as too disruptive and
too much of a calI to us alI to mend our ways.
Alternative energy sources, forms and modalities are
defined in an objective overview of the various
options. The case for renewables and the nuclear
option is made with objective analysis. In summary,
Transport Revolutions is a work of great
merit and standard of measure.
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