Praise for No Standard Oil

“Gordon is trained as a chemical engineer but thinks like an economist. She favors the preferred intervention of economists for addressing climate change, namely taxing greenhouse gas emissions. But she stresses that not all fossil fuels generate the same emissions: differences in crude products and refining techniques mean that the emissions produced by otherwise equivalent amounts of oil and gas can vary by a factor of ten. Thus, simply taxing gas at the pump but neglecting emissions along the supply chain may fail to shift the production of fossil fuels toward cleaner sources, unnecessarily raising costs while squandering opportunities to curb climate change. Better emission-related data, reported by companies subject to stronger government oversight, can inform better policy. Gordon emphasizes that there is no silver bullet for the climate crisis. Fossil fuels, like it or not, will still be in use in 2050. But they should be priced more appropriately, in line with their social costs. They should be produced using clean refining techniques and supplemented with clean energy sources developed through collaboration among the public sector, the private sector, and academia.”

— Barry Eichengreen, George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science, UC Berkeley, in Foreign Affairs

“In No Standard Oil, Deborah Gordon shows that no two oils or gases are environmentally alike. Each has a distinct, quantifiable climate impact. While all pollute, some are much worse for the climate than others. In accessible language, Gordon explains the results of the Oil Climate Index Plus Gas, an open source model that estimates global oil and gas emissions. Gordon identifies the oils and gases that are the most harmful to the planet, and proposes innovative solutions to reduce their climate footprints. Climate stabilization cannot wait for oil and gas to run out. No Standard Oil shows how we can take practical steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the oil and gas sector while making sustainable progress in transitioning to a carbon-free future.”

— Michael Svoboda, Yale Climate Connections, in 12 books on climate, conflict, and oil

"Cleaning up today's fuel supply chains is an integral but often overlooked part of the drive towards net zero emissions. [Gordon] spells out with admirable clarity the scale of the problem, the huge variations in environmental performance across different parts of the oil and gas industry, and the strategies and data that can make a difference."

— Tim Gould, Chief Energy Economist, International Energy Agency

"Californians have a deep and complicated relationship with oil. The birth of the modern environmental movement coincides with a 1969 oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel that killed thousands of sea birds and left blobs of tar on the beaches for months. Revenue from oil production on State lands still significant. And combustion of petroleum products for transportation remains the biggest contributor to global warming. The analytical approach described in No Standard Oil provides a sophisticated tool that undergirds California's groundbreaking Low Carbon Fuel Standard, the most effective
policy to date for bringing new, more sustainable fuels to market."

— Mary Nichols, Chair of the California Air Resources Board

"An anatomy of hydrocarbons worthy of Leonardo da Vinci, No Standard Oil dissects the oil and gas industries to rank the sources of damage to the environment, the economic factors at play, how best to tailor efforts to mitigate climate change, who might do it, and the principles for triage in the
industry as they do."

—Chas Freeman, Former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia

"In No Standard Oil, Deborah Gordon showcases the unrivalled knowledge that she and her Oil Climate Index Plus Gas (OCI+) colleagues have built up of the climate impacts of oil and gas supply. This is essential reading for anyone looking to truly understand how oil and gas contribute to climate change, and how the supply side can help to solve the problem."

— Simon Dietz, Professor of Environmental Policy, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics