Bad Energy

Green energy and renewables are heralded as the only way to mitigate our ever-worsening ecological crisis. But that’s not the whole story. 

In Bad Energy, award-winning journalist Joshua Frank argues that the green energy transition is driven not by an effort to save the planet but by profit incentives. We must stop burning fossil fuels if we have any hope of saving the planet, but the significant, haphazard expansion of green energy in recent years—from large solar projects to wind energy to mining for renewables—has destroyed communities and ecosystems. And worse, renewables simply cannot match our ever-expanding demand for energy, driven in no small part by the rapid proliferation of data centers in the world’s wealthiest nations.

Taking readers from copper mines in Montana and Bolivia to wind farms in Wyoming to the geopolitical battle over deep-sea mining in the South Pacific, Bad Energy offers a stark assessment of the costs of the rush for renewables and the demand for endless growth. As Frank makes clear, we cannot consume our way out of climate chaos. What we need instead is rejection of the capitalist interests driving planetary collapse and a radical vision for a truly sustainable future.

Author Biography

Joshua Frank is an award-winning California-based journalist and coeditor of the political magazine CounterPunch. He is the author of Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America and a coauthor of several books, including The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink. His work regularly appears in TomDispatch, The Nation, Earth Island Journal, and other outlets.