“Power Trip” also reminds us of both the importance of long discarded forms of energy and the social consequences of various advances. How many of us know that wars were once fought over access to salt, a primary means of food preservation long before the availability of refrigeration? And few probably appreciate the role of the Franklin stove in reducing female fatalities from burns (the second leading cause of death among women in colonial times) and indoor pollution. Nor are most of us aware, even today, that indoor air pollution caused by the use of solid fuels in simple cookstoves in many parts of the world is responsible for 2.5 million premature deaths of women and children each year.

The central trade-off that animates “Power Trip,” however, is between the existential imperative of global decarbonization to staunch our march toward self-destruction and the moral imperative of increasing energy access to the “more than one billion people without access to electricity, piped water or sanitation.” Notably, the efficiency improvements in the United States, combined with the slowing of growth in energy consumption, has actually resulted in a reduction in our emissions domestically. The problem, of course, is that to achieve a reduction in overall global emissions while improving basic access to water and power will require significantly more aggressive efforts.

On the questions of what to do and where we are going, “Power Trip” does not provide much of a road map. Professor Webber crams a head-spinning number of lists and imperatives into a 10-page epilogue on “the future of energy.” We are directed to consider “six demographic trends, three technological trends and one overarching environmental trend” and told that, while “there are no universal, immediate solutions,” there are a variety of principles we would do well to follow. Long-term, global thinking is good, old clichés and false choices are bad. Hard to argue with that, but the complex underlying policy issues raised could have used a less perfunctory treatment.

“Ultimately,” Professor Webber argues, “we need some combination of new production, increased energy access, smarter solutions and a cultural emphasis on efficiency and conservation.” This exhortation may just seem like an anodyne slogan but, coming at the end of the book’s careful historical survey, it reflects something much more profound. Effectively addressing our energy challenges will require us to simultaneously confront large political, technological and social obstacles. In short, it is precisely the kind of complex policy problem the current polarized era feels structurally incapable of intelligently addressing.