PanThe Wall Street JournalThe short sellers Ms. McLean relied upon for her Enron reporting may have turned out to be right, but that doesn’t mean the ones she quotes frequently in Saudi America, such as Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates and David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, are equally prescient about shale. \'If it weren’t for historically low interest rates,\' she writes, \'it’s not clear there would even have been a fracking boom.\' That assessment exaggerates the burden of debt and plays down the technological breakthroughs that helped make the U.S. the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas. There is more to this story than Aubrey McClendon and cheap money ... In a book meant to be read quickly, Ms. McLean often dashes off quick points that are poorly reasoned ... Ms. McLean is glib about how easy the shift away from fossil fuels will be ... The race to protect humanity from the worst effects of climate change surely depends upon decarbonizing our energy system, but fracking has a role to play in the long process of adjustment.
