The Edge: How competition for resources is pushing the world, and its climate, to the brink - and what we can do about it.

Rarely does one discover a book that is so topical and informed, that covers the geopolitical and environmental considerations on such an important topic. Mr Maxwell speaks from the coal-face, please excuse the pun. However he also maintains altitude, keeping strategic perspectives. It is like a concise encyclopaedia for those wanting to be in the real world.

This book is a real page-turner. Excuisit language and seldom available insight. It makes the reader feel as if (s)he were a proverbial fly on a wall watching big business and finance. The reader may 'recognise' some stories that "hit the press", but the book takes you also "behind the curtains" of the event. Simply excellent!

This is an informative guide to the recent history & current situation regarding global competition for resources, and the fact that the climate is being pushed to the edge by weak political leadership and national vested interests. I found the book depressing for 2 main reasons - firstly I had no idea that so much energy was lost from extraction to end-user, and secondly that governments are putting nowhere near enough effort into getting energy efficiency the primary goal. We waste about two-thirds of the energy produced to get it to the plug, and then waste more by our own inabilities to use energy efficiently. There seems no hope to me that this will end well for the planet & its bio-diversity. I have only scored the book a 4 because all the charts & diagrams in it are in black & white & in a tiny font - they are close to impossible to read.

Maxwell presents all the parameters pointing to action, with links out to the geopolitics of resource use, and ends with a very specific case for taking action on energy efficiency NOW. Not instead of other necessary actions, but as a critical corollary and enabler of long-term success in decarbonization. Why build out renewables if you do not also build out the capacity to use those precious electrons instead of letting them slip away through massive inefficiencies at every step of the chain?