Prospect online this week

The latest eco-blockbuster to follow in the wake of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is A Crude Awakening, released in Britain this Friday. The movie is intended to alert its audiences to the dangerous consequences of "peak oil"—the fact the the earth's oil reserves are in dangerous decline. But, argues Derek Brower, whose review appears this week at Prospect online, the film suffers from all the deficits of the peak oil theory it promotes. It fails to understand the nature of oil markets and it misunderstands the methodology behind estimates of remaining reserves.

Also this week: Anthony Giddens on new research by US sociologist Robert Putnam that may provide backing for Prospect editor David Goodhart's thesis on solidarity and diversity.