Journalist Maass has written a concise and hard hitting book about oil politics. He starts by noting that to the nations that have oil comes “ trouble rather than prosperity.” He surveys some of these troubled lands: Saudi Arabia, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, and Ecuador. He concludes, “there is too much corruption-inducing, economy deforming, conflict-enhancing, fate-altering value locked up in natural resources like oil.” The obvious solution is to make the minerals less valuable and this is where a convergence occurs between the answers to global warming, dwindling oil supplies, and the inability of oil rich nations to establish democratic institutions.