Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival

Richard Heinberg is the author of thirteen previous books including The Party’s Over, Powerdown, Peak Everything, and The End of Growth. He is Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and is widely regarded as one of the world’s most effective communicators of the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels. Heinberg has given hundreds of lectures on our energy future to audiences around the world. He has been published in Nature and other journals and has been featured in many television and theatrical documentaries. He lives in Santa Rosa, CA. List of Figures List of Sidebars Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Power in Nature: From Mitochondria to Emotion and Deception The Basis of Life’s Power Power and Bodies Power and Behaviors Proto-Human Powers 2. Power in the Pleistocene: On Spears, Fires, Furs, Words, and Flutes And Why Men Are Such Power-Hogs Hands and Stone The Fire Ape Skins From Grunts to Sentences Gender Power The Power of Art 3. Power in the Holocene: The Rise of Social Inequality Gerdening, Big Men, and Chiefs: Power from Food Production Plow and Plunder: Kings and the First States Herding Cattle, Flogging Slaves: Power from Domestication Stories of Our Ancestors: Religion and Power Tools for Wording: Communication Technologies Numbers on Money Pathologies of Power 4. Power in the Anthropocene: The Wonderful World of Fossil Fuels It’s All Energy The Coal Train Oil, Cars, Airplanes, and the New Middle Class Oil-Age Wars and Weapons Electrifying! The Human Superorganism 5. Overpowered: The Fine Mess We’ve Gotten Ourselves Into Climate Chaos and Its Remedies Disappearance of Wild Nature Resource Depletion Soaring Economic Inequality Pollution Overpopulation and Overconsumption Global Debt Bubble Weapons of Mass Destruction 6. Optimum Power: Sustaining Our Power Over Time Involuntary Power Limits: Death, Extinction, Collapse Self-Limitation in Natural and Human-Engineered Systems Taboos, Souls, and Enlightenment Taxes, Regulations, Activism, and Rationing: Power Restraint in the Modern World Games, Disarmament, and Degrowth Denial, Optimism Bias, and Irrational Exuberance 7. The Future of Power: Learning to Live Happily Within Limits All Against All Trade-Offs Along the Path of Self-Restraint The Fate of the Superorganism Questioning Technology Learning to Live with Less Energy and Stuff Lessening Inequality Population: Lowering It and Keeping It Steady Fighting Power with Power Long-Term Power Through Beauty, Spirituality, and Happiness Notes Index About the Author About New Society Publishers