Power

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