Oil in the Age of Depletion: A Renewed Assault on Human Rights & the Environment

Sonia Shaw, author and independent journalist, will speak on::

Oil in the Age of Depletion: A Renewed Assault on Human Rights and the Environment

Sonia Shah author of Crude: The Story of Oil (Seven Stories Press, September 30, 2004) will be speaking on Oil in the Age of Depletion: A Renewed Assault on Human Rights and the Environment. In Crude, author and independent journalist Sonia Shah presents the first concise history of this, the world's most coveted and contentious mineral. But this portrait of the fuel that defined an age is shot through with a history of destruction and conflict as myriad as oil's use. As the stakes of such dangerous engagement rises, still the frenzy for oil by worldwide producers and Western consumers ramps up. Yet crude's reign, Shah suggests, is in its twilight. With peak production in the Middle East projected in the next five to fifteen years, this finite natural resource that empowered superpowers and defined the most strategic regions on the earth, is dwindling. And the consequence for this New American Century may determine how we live in the next.

Sonia Shah is an independent journalist whose writing has appeared in Salon.com, The Nation, The Progressive, Knight-Ridder, and elsewhere. She is the editor of both the critically acclaimed Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire (South End Press, 1997) and Between Fear and Hope: A Decade of Peace Activism (Fortkamp, 1992). A former editor at South End Press and Nuclear Times magazine, her work has been widely anthologized.

Copies of the book Crude: The Story of Oil will be available for sale at the event. Following her speaking, Sonia Shah will be available to sign books.

Suggested donation $5, no one turned away for lack of funds.

Co-Sponsored by Global Exchange, New College Center for Education and Social Action and the Post Carbon Institute.

For more information call: June Brashares, Global Exchange 415-575-5542
or Jon Garfield, New College 415-437-3425