Oil & Water

Oil and Water don't usually mix. But they do when we think about the two natural resources whose future scarcity could reshape our world. Today oil is central to our world and has played a role in the violent conflicts and in the divisions between rich and poor. Peter Maas, distinguished journalist and author of Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oilrefers to it as the oxygen of the global economy. And yet for years we have refused to talk about it honestly.

On the other hand, in the growing consensus over global warming and the cost of excess carbon, we are arguably overlooking the depletion of another precious resource: potable Water. In Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought journalist and water expert James Workman travels to the direst place on earth to see how, against all odds and under brutal government repression, an indigenous people draws on ancient wisdom to survive on extreme scarcity of water, and what we not only might learn, but must learn.

My conversation with Peter Maas:

My conversation with James Workman: