this week, daniel yergin and his new book "the quest," and they continue the story of the oil industry's impact on international politics and the possible energy sources of the future. he discusses his findings with associated press energy writer deena. ♪ >> host: welcome, mr. yergin to "after words," and thank you for doing this. >> guest: thank you. >> host: let me congratlate you on this achievement. i wanted to ask you first what prompted this book? obviously, you had jr. pulitzer prize winning book about the history of oil, so why this? why now? especially when one of your primary conclusions is that for awhile, things are not really going to change much when it comes to where we get our energy from. >> guest: right. i think there's a couple reasons. one is about the big long trends won't change, a lot changed in the world. the soviet union collapsed. china was hardly in the prize. it's the only country that gets two chapters in this book. right up until what happened this year with fukushima and the nuclear accident and the arab spring, just both with big impacts on energy. many

>> guest: oh, from my perspective, from daniel yergin's perspective, from lots of folks' perspective, it's our oil interests. there's no question in my mind that--why are we so protective about the middle east? i mean, i'm not a foreign-policy expert, though people expect me to be an expert on crime and education and the city and everything else. but, i mean, we are running out of oil in this country. the estimates are 20, 30 at best. and it's one of many subsidies. there are other figures about what we subsidize at a local level: for example, the ambulance calls, the fire calls. level: for example, the ambulance calls, the fire calls. one of the fascinating events that happened to me on the road to telling this book and trying to do it as stories, not just as, you know, throwing numbers at people, is going to a pedestrian conference that's held every year in boulder, colorado. and we sat there and they poured the figures out. and we were sitting in this audience, and the numbers were flying. and all of a sudden, through this gauzy white window, the lights start to flash, the sirens s