January 2008

By David Sanborn Scott. Canadian Hydrogen Association, 2007. 482 pages.

Reviewed by Richard Engel

Smelling Land opens with an eighteenth century seafaring tale of a cabin boy who repeatedly warns his captain to change course, claiming he can smell land nearby. The boy is first ignored, then hanged for his insolence, upon which the ship promptly runs aground. David Sanborn Scott’s new book uses the idea of smelling land while at sea as a metaphor for looking at familiar things from a new perspective, an act that brings with it both opportunity and danger. Scott’s mission in Smelling Land is to deconstruct our relationship with energy down to its most basic principles, then use these principles to weave his detailed vision of a clean and sustainable energy future. As he does so, he tells the story of energy in a sweeping, literary manner reminiscent of books like Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.

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