Reading the changing energy landscape

So dominating a role does energy play in the lives we lead and the land we use that its impacts are everywhere. We see them in the lost forests of England, in the reshaped countryside of the Ruhr, in the oil elds of Azerbaijan, in the abandoned swaths near Chernobyl and Fukushima, and in the vast reservoirs that have formed behind giant dams everywhere from Asia to Zambia. All these are energy landscapes, and once we become attuned to their origins, we begin realizing that our need for energy, in all its many forms, results in much of what awaits us when we venture outdoors. The more capable we become at reading the energy landscape, the more we appreciate how we can use this ability to recall the past, explain the present, and foretell the future.