Richard Heinberg is a journalist and educator who specialises in the subject of resource depletion. He is perhaps best known for his book The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, which examined the subject of peak oil and its meaning for the future of civilisation.
Urgent Global Challenges
In Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, Heinberg examines in fine detail the mounting pressures on the world's environment. A potent mix of an exploding global population, increasingly volatile oil prices and the effects of global warming are presenting urgent challenges that the world is not ready to cope with.
In a sobering section of the book, Heinberg looks to the collapses of once mighty civilisations, the Roman Empire and the Maya. Both these civilisations came to an end due to resource depletion.
Strategies to Cope With the World's Environmental and Resource Problems
Powerdown presents four main strategies that the world could adopt to meet the looming challenges of peak oil, overpopulation, resource depletion and global warming.
“Last One Standing”. This strategy, most commonly employed today by the governments of nation states, is to launch wars over vital resources. Rather than choose the path of co-operation, the human instinct for preservation through war could become the most obvious choice of modern nations. The most well known contemporary version of these events was the Iraq War. While not directly a war launched to seize Iraq’s oil, it was an attempt to create a Middle East that was more sympathetic to the US and its interests.
“Powerdown”. This would involve looking realistically at the changes society and its economy needs to make for a transition to a low energy civilisation. This path would require co-operation, conservation and the setting of self-imposed limits. Obviously, the last point would be difficult, as modern economies are built on exponential growth.
“Waiting for a Magic Elixar.” In the developed world, citizens have become used to the notion of technological innovation and wizardry as the norm. In essence, the belief is everyone can relax as science will have the answers to problems of global warming, peak oil and over population.
In this section of the book Heinberg examines realistically the potential of new technologies, and finds them over-hyped.
“Building Lifeboats.” The building of human lifeboats would require the virtues of community and solidarity. Rather than looking towards war as a way of securing resources, people would organise themselves into working groups to solve energy problems created in a post –carbon world. This would not mean a utopian lifestyle, but rather a life lived close to the land involved in farming and other types of manual labour.
Heinberg's Powerdown a Pessimistic Yet Philosophical Book
Many may find Richard Heinberg an excessively pessimistic writer on the subject of oil depletion, over population and climate change. It’s possible to find other writers on the same subject, like Peter Tertzakian and Jeff Rubin, who hold a far more sanguine view.
Heinberg writes in a deeply philosophical vein, confronting hard realities. His position is deeply considered after much research and reading. The reader can only hope that his prognostications for the future are incorrect.
Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, published by New Society Publishers (2004). ISBN: 0-86571-510-6
Chris Saliba - Chris Saliba is a freelance writer. Read more of his workplace articles at chrissalibafreelancewriter.blogspot.com
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