The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial SocietiesNew Society Publishers, 2005 M08 1 - 288 páginas The world is about to run out of cheap oil and change dramatically. Within the next few years, global production will peak. Thereafter, even if industrial societies begin to switch to alternative energy sources, they will have less net energy each year to do all the work essential to the survival of complex societies. We are entering a new era, as different from the industrial era as the latter was from medieval times. In The Party's Over , Richard Heinberg places this momentous transition in historical context, showing how industrialism arose from the harnessing of fossil fuels, how competition to control access to oil shaped the geopolitics of the 20th century, and how contention for dwindling energy resources in the 21st century will lead to resource wars in the Middle East, Central Asia, and South America. He describes the likely impacts of oil depletion, and all of the energy alternatives. Predicting chaos unless the U.S. -- the world's foremost oil consumer -- is willing to join with other countries to implement a global program of resource conservation and sharing, he also recommends a "managed collapse" that might make way for a slower-paced, low-energy, sustainable society in the future. More readable than other accounts of this issue, with fuller discussion of the context, social implications, and recommendations for personal, community, national, and global action, Heinberg's updated book is a riveting wake-up call for humankind as the oil era winds down, and a critical tool for understanding and influencing current U.S. foreign policy. Listen to an interview with Richard Heinberg from WRPI.
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Dentro del libro
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... requires energy. Food is stored energy. Ecosystems organize themselves to use energy as efficiently as possible. And human societies expand or contract, invent new technologies or remain static, in response to available energy supplies ...
... require us to think much more clearly, critically, and contextually about energy than we have ever done before. In this chapter we will first review some basic facts about energy and the ways in which nature and human societies function ...
... concentrate it, it could still work for us; but the act of re-concentrating it would itself require more energy. Thus, in effect, available energy is always being lost. The Second Law Energy and Earth: The Rules of the Game.
... require minerals from the soil, but most of their mass is actually derived from air, water and sunlight, via photosynthesis. Hundreds of chemical changes are involved in this process, the results of which can be summarized as follows ...
... require large territories; in this case, the human carrying capacity of a typical environment may be considerably less than one person per square mile. Horticulture yielded more food from a given land area, permitting.
Contenido
LIGHTS OUT APPROACHING THE HISTORIC INTERVALS | |
NONPETROLEUM ENERGY SOURCES | |
Hydrogen | |
A BANQUET OF CONSEQUENCES | |
MANAGING THE COLLAPSE | |
AFTERWORD TO THE REVISED EDITION | |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies Richard Heinberg Sin vista previa disponible - 2005 |
The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies Richard Heinberg Sin vista previa disponible - 2005 |