In Lives Per Gallon, Tamminen takes a hard look at these and other health, environmental, and national security costs hidden in every barrel of oil. While the petroleum industry is raking in huge profits, Tamminen shows, it is studiously avoiding measures that would lessen the hazards of its products. Using the successful lawsuits by state governments against big tobacco as a model, the author sets forth a bold strategy to hold oil and auto companies accountable and force industry reform. He also offers a blueprint for developing alternative energy sources based on California's real world experiences. Certain to be controversial, Lives Per Gallon is an unblinking assessment of the true price of petroleum and a prescription for change. The choice is clear: continuing paying with our health, or kick our addiction and evolve beyond an oil-dependent economy.

Quotes

"America's prosperity, our independence and security, our democracy and our ideals, our international leadership and national pride are all dependent on our breaking our lethal oil addiction. Terry Tamminen has turned the spotlight of clarity on the defining issue of our age."
--Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

"The book reads like a gangster thriller, while providing detailed and painful truths about how much the oil and auto industries have controlled development (or lack thereof) in the U.S....a definite 'must read' for anyone interested in improving America's future and national security."
--Jonathan Patz

"We all thought we knew the costs of oil addiction-power to terrorists and tyrants, and global climate change. But Tamminen's book demonstrates that we don't know the half of it. Gasoline is a deadly carcinogen like tobacco. The health, environmental, and climatic impact of our oil dependency, he shows, is catastrophic. And the economic cost of subsidizing the oil industry is bankrupting. But Tamminen does more than point to the problems. He lays out step-by-step solutions to ending our oil addiction. I only wish that all members of Congress would read this book."
--Dick Morris

Table of Contents

• Prologue: The Origin of the Specious
• Chapter 1: The Breath of Our Fathers
• Chapter 2: A Losing Proposition
• Chapter 3: Desperate Enterprise
• Chapter 4: All That Glitters
• Chapter 5: Wealth Seems Rather to Possess Them
• Chapter 6: Worse Poison to Men's Souls
• Chapter 7: 2025 - A Future without Oil
• Chapter 8: The Quality of Mercy - Oil on Trial
• Epilogue: The Seventh Generation
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index