Shopping Cart

We want to direct you to the right website. Please tell us where you live.

(This is a one-time message unless you reset your location.)

Available only in Digital (eBook) format.
Choose the preferred format for your device.

PDF
$16.95 $11.00 CAD
EPUB
$16.95 $11.00 CAD
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Pub. Date: 2004-09-01
ISBN: 9780865715103
Format: Paperback - 288 pages
Size: 6" x 9" (w x h)
BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Environmental Policy

Powerdown

Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World

If the US continues with current policies, the next decades will be marked by war, economic collapse, and environmental catastrophe. Resource depletion and population pressures are about to catch up with us, and no one is prepared. The political élites, especially in the US, are incapable of dealing with the situation, and have in mind a punishing game of "Last One Standing."

The alternative is "Powerdown," a strategy that will require tremendous effort and economic sacrifice in order to reduce per-capita resource usage in wealthy countries, develop alternative energy sources, distribute resources more equitably, and reduce the human population humanely but systematically over time. While civil society organizations push for a mild version of this, the vast majority of the world's people are in the dark, not understanding the challenges ahead, nor the options realistically available.

Powerdown speaks frankly to these dilemmas. Avoiding cynicism and despair, it begins with an overview of the likely impacts of oil and natural gas depletion and then outlines four options for industrial societies during the next decades:

  • Last One Standing: the path of competition for remaining resources;
  • Powerdown: the path of cooperation, conservation, and sharing;
  • Waiting for a Magic Elixir: wishful thinking, false hopes, and denial;
  • Building Lifeboats: the path of community solidarity and preservation.

Finally, the book explores how three important groups within global society-the power élites, the opposition to the élites (the antiwar and anti-globalization movements, et al: the "Other Superpower"), and ordinary people-are likely to respond to these four options. Timely, accessible and eloquent, Powerdown is crucial reading for our times.

Listen to an interview with Richard Heinberg from WRPI.

 

About the Author

Richard Heinberg is the author of eleven previous books including The Party's Over, Powerdown, Peak Everything, and The End of Growth. He is a 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.



Depletion & Abundance

Life on the New Home Front

by Sharon Astyk


The Long Descent

A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age

by John Michael Greer


The Resilience Imperative

Cooperative Transitions to a Steady-state Economy

by Micheal Lewis and Pat Conaty


Unlearn, Rewild

Earth Skills, Ideas and Inspiration for the Future Primitive

by Miles Olson


Radical Simplicity

Small Footprints on a Finite Earth

by Jim Merkel and Vicki Robin