About this item
Climate change, along with the depletion of oil, coal, and gas, dictate that we will inevitably move away from our profound societal reliance on fossil fuels; but just how big a transformation will this be? While many policy-makers assume that renewable energy sources will provide an easy "plug-and-play" solution, author Richard Heinberg suggests instead that we are in for a wild ride; a "civilization reboot" on a scale similar to the agricultural and industrial revolutions.Afterburn consists of fifteen essays exploring various aspects of the twenty-first century migration away from fossil fuels including: Short-term political and economic factors that impede broad-scale, organized efforts to adapt The origin of longer-term trends (such as consumerism) , that have created a way of life that seems "normal" to most Americans, but is actually unprecedented, highly fragile, and unsustainable Potential opportunities and sources of conflict that are likely to emergeFrom the inevitability and desirability of more locally organized economies to the urgent need to preserve our recent cultural achievements and the futility of pursuing economic growth above all, Afterburn offers cutting-edge perspectives and insights that challenge conventional thinking about our present, our future, and the choices in our hands.
About the Author
Richard Heinberg is the author of eleven books including: Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future (2013) The End of Growth: Adapting to our New Economic Reality (2011) Blackout: Coal, Climate, and the Last Energy Crisis (2009) Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (2007) The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse (2006) Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World (2004) The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003) He is Senior Fellow-in-Residence of the Institute and is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost Peak Oil educators. He has authored scores of essays and articles that have appeared in such journals as Nature, The Ecologist, The American Prospect, Public Policy Research, Quarterly Review, Z Magazine, Resurgence, The Futurist, European Business Review, Earth Island Journal, Yes!, Pacific Ecologist, and The Sun; and on web sites such as Alternet.org, EnergyBulletin.net, TheOilDrum.com, ProjectCensored.com, and Counterpunch.com.He has appeared in many film and television documentaries, including Leonardo DiCaprio's 11th Hour, and is a recipient of the M. King Hubbert Award for Excellence in Energy Education.More information about Richard can be found on his website: richardheinberg.com
