Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival

Written by Richard Heinberg

Narrated by David Skulski

Impeccably researched and masterfully written, this book explains how and why humanity is driving itself off the cliff. — Dahr Jamail, author, The End of Ice

Weaving together findings from a wide range of disciplines, Power traces how four key elements developed to give humans extraordinary power: tool making ability, language, social complexity, and the ability to harness energy sources ― most significantly, fossil fuels. It asks whether we have, at this point, overpowered natural and social systems, and if we have, what we can do about it.

Has Homo sapiens — one species among millions — become powerful enough to threaten a mass extinction and disrupt the Earth's climate? Why have we developed so many ways of oppressing one another? Can we change our relationship with power to avert ecological catastrophe, reduce social inequality, and stave off collapse?

These questions — and their answers — will determine our fate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Society Publishers
• Release date: Apr 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781897408629

Richard Heinberg

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. He lives in Santa Rosa, CA.

Reviews for Power

[Rich Bold · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great overview of how the universe works and societies and what it would take to have a future. One of the best books I have ever read.

[G A McKee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The author Richard Heinberg has shown yet again that he’s at the forefront of the global sustainability and eco-anxiety movement, as we face over-population, fossil fuel and resource depletion, not to mention global warming. What is welcome in this his latest and perhaps greatest work is the lack of identity politics when seen through his sweeping historical and anthropological perspective. I remember his book 'Running on Empty' back in the early 2000s that made his name synonymous with the then growing existential anxiety about 'Peak Oil'. Twenty years before then, in the early 1980s, we had another similar book about extinction of homo sapiens. That was 'The Fate of the Earth' by Jonathan Schell. It was drawing our attention to the 'Nuclear Winter' that would lead to extinction of all life on the planet following nuclear war between the then Soviet Union and the American Empire. This book 'Power', by Richard Heinberg. appears to be based on a very deep pessimism about the evolution of societies on this planet. Is this pessimism justified? Are we living in a 'nonesense suicide civilization' as described by peak oil 'doomers' in the early 2000s following 9/11? That is the paradox. We cannot know the distant future, and, in any case, it won’t affect us because our human bodies are designed to become extinct once we have reached our fourscore years. Thus human extinction is very real for all who accept death as a part of living. Religious insights maybe can protect people from eco-anxiety. We might ask what is the function of this virtue called faith? And hope? Those ancient religious virtues might inoculate young people from feelings of meaninglessness, despair and suicidal ideation caused by deep pessimism about the sustainability of human existence on this planet floating in space. Richard Heinberg is educating us about the precariousness of human mass existence. That leads to another paradox for young people. It was expressed by that eighteenth century English poet Thomas Gray. Here’s the last stanza of his melancholy poem.

To each his suff’rings: all are men,
Condemn’d alike to groan,
The tender for another’s pain;
Th’ unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
‘Tis folly to be wise.

Richard Heinberg’s book comes across and exceptionally devoid of ignorance. As one of the world’s leading writers on perceived impending doom for humanity, Heinberg might be remembered in the same light - or dark - as that cleric, economist and scholar Malthus (1766-1834) - who wrote a similar tome in 1798 entitled 'An Essay on the Principal of Population'. In this sense, the writings of Heinberg could be categorized as 'neo-Malthusian'.

Malthus warned us, over two centuries ago “The power of population is indefinitely greater that the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man”

Richard Heinberg - philosopher and scholar of energy, drawing from anthropology and evolutionary psychology, in this his 'magnum opus' named 'Power', basically gives us the same dire warnings as did Malthus over two hundred years ago.

Time will tell whether all this doom is justified. Sadly - or maybe happily - I will not be around to find out as I will be dead. I gave this book 5 stars out of 5.