But Robert Bryce's "Gusher of Lies" (PublicAffairs, $26.95) shuns the notion that - with energy use growing in almost every country - a US law could fight the forces behind global warming.
"We likely have no choice but to adapt to the changing global climate for the simple reason that curbing carbon dioxide emissions to any significant degree appears hopeless," writes Bryce, who is the managing editor of an energy industry publication.
Which of them is right may determine whether the United States begins to move in the next decade or two beyond the energy system that's based almost entirely on carbon-belching fossil fuels, or whether alternative energies like wind, solar, and advanced biofuels will generate only a tiny fraction of our energy.
Krupp writes that if the government capped emissions, that would spur an industrial revolution as sweeping as that effected a century ago by Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller, and secure the planet against the calamity of global warming.
With the two Democrats and one Republican running for November's US presidential election promising to regulate planet-warming gases, we may soon get a chance to see if his vision is clear.
Hundreds of companies will compete to sell new low-carbon fuels, eventually reducing US oil and natural gas imports, writes Krupp, who has experience helping business help the environment. In 1990 he assisted then-president George H.W. Bush in adopting the world's first emissions market, which famously cut acid rain for far less cost than originally estimated.
One company he likes is California-based Amyris Biotechnologies, which says it can ferment sugar directly into a fuel that, unlike ethanol, can easily be sent through the existing oil pipeline network and be burned in any car.
For Bryce, these are "lies," as are any of the plans put forward since the Nixon administration that promise to make the United States energy independent with conservation and alternative energies.
