Daniel Yergin

Daniel Howard Yergin (born February 6, 1947) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, speaker, and economic researcher. Yergin is the co-founder and chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy research consultancy that is now part of IHS Inc. He is best known as author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power and The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World.

Early life and education

Born in Los Angeles, California to a Chicago Tribune reporter father and a mother who was a sculptor and painter, Yergin attended Beverly Hills High School.^[1] He received his B.A. from Yale University in 1968, where he served on the board of the Yale Daily News, and was a founder of The New Journal. He earned his PhD in International Relations (1974) from Cambridge University where he was a Marshall Scholar. He also holds honorary doctoral degrees from Colorado School of Mines, University of Houston, and the University of Missouri.

Career

From 1978 through 1980, he was a Lecturer at the Harvard Business School and, until 1985, a Lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He founded Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) in 1982 with the purchase of a $7.00 file cabinet from Goodwill.^[2] In 2004, CERA was acquired by the information company IHS Inc., of which he is now Vice Chairman.^[3]

Books

Yergin's first book, Shattered Peace, focused on the origins of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West. It was named 'best book of the year' by the National Historical Society. Shattered Peace was partly based upon Yergin's PhD dissertation.

He co-authored and co-edited with Robert B. Stobaugh, Energy Future: the Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School, which was a New York Times bestseller.^[4]

Daniel Yergin is best known for The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, a number-one bestseller that won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1992 and the Eccles Prize for the best book on economics for a general audience.^[5] The book was adapted into a PBS/BBC mini-series seen by more than 20 million viewers. Yergin was awarded the 1997 United States Energy Award for "lifelong achievements in energy and the promotion of international understanding.”

His next book was Russia 2010 and What It Means for the World, written with Thane Gustafson, which provided scenarios for the development of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This was followed by The Commanding Heights: the Battle for the World Economy, written with Joseph Stanislaw, which started out as a 60,000-word essay and described in narrative form the struggle over the "frontier" between governments and markets and the rise of globalization.^[6] It was made into a prize-winning six-hour PBS/BBC television series. Yergin was executive producer and host of the series. Yergin interviewed many high profile people including Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Gordon Brown, Newt Gingrich, and Robert Rubin, as well as prominent economists.

In September 2011, Yergin published The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, which continued his history of the global oil industry but also addressed energy security, natural gas, electric power, climate change and the search for renewable sources of energy.^[7]

All of Yergin's books were drafted in long-hand.^[8]

Peak oil controversy

Yergin has criticized predictions of imminent peak oil, noting in 2011 that the early 21st century is the fifth period of widespread predictions that world oil production was about to fall. The four previous times when experts commonly predicted that oil production would soon decrease were: first in the 1880s, then after each of the World Wars, and again in the 1970s. He wrote that Hubbert peak theory ignores the effects of economics and technological advances. Instead of a peak, Yergin predicts future oil production will be more of a plateau, as increasing prices moderate demand and stimulate production.^{[9][10][11][12]} He also addressed peak oil in a chapter in The Quest entitled “Is the World Running Out of Oil?”

Yergin's peak oil views have been attacked by critics from a peak oil perspective.^[13][14] For example, Jean Laherrere contends that Yergin's predictions on energy production and prices have omitted key facts, leading Yergin to draw incorrect conclusions.^[15] Others have criticized his predictions and that of CERA.^[16]

Books by Daniel Yergin

• Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Reprints: Penguin, 1978, 1980, ISBN 0-395-27267-X; Penguin, rev. & updated, 1990, ISBN 0-14-012177-3.

• The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. ISBN 0-671-50248-4. Reprint: Simon & Schuster, 1992, ISBN 0-671-79932-0.

• The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World. Penguin Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1-59420-283-4.^[17]

Books co-authored by Daniel Yergin

• Energy Future: The Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School. New York: Random House, 1979. ISBN 0-394-50163-2. Reprints: Ballantine Books, ISBN 0-394-29349-5; Knopf, 3rd ed., 1982, ISBN 0-394-71063-0; Random House, new revised 3rd ed., 1990. [With Robert B. Stobaugh.]
• Global Insecurity: A Strategy for Energy and Economic Renewal. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1982. ISBN 0-395-30517-9. Reprint: Viking Penguin Books, 1983, ISBN 0-14-006752-3. [With Martin Hillenbrand.]
• Russia 2010 : And What It Means for the World. New York: Random House, 1993. ISBN 0-679-42995-6. Reprint: Vintage, 1995, ISBN 0-679-75922-0 }. [With Thane Gustafson.]
• The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy. Revised, retitled, and updated ed. New York: Free Press, 2002. ISBN 0-684-83569-X. (Original edition, entitled: The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World: New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998; ISBN 0-684-82975-4.) [With Joseph A. Stanislaw.]

References

Articles and interviews

• Booknotes interview with Yergin on The Prize, January 27, 1991
• Mr Bush and the Riga axioms, S. Varadarajan 2005
• Crisis in the Pipeline, Daniel Yergin, The Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2006
• A Price Tag to Growth, LiveMint, February 23, 2007
• Visions of an Age When Oil Isn’t King The New York Times, September 20, 2011

External links

• Daniel Yergin Official Website
• Articles and Appearances by Daniel Yergin
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Daniel Yergin at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Daniel Yergin in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Daniel Yergin at the Notable Names Database