Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines
Reviewed by Robert Pritchett
Introduction
This book is a compilation of a few essays written by
Richard Heinberg in his Museletter series - http://www.richardheinberg.com/museletter
The 21st century ushered in an era
of declines, in a number of crucial parameters:
- Global oil, natural gas and coal extraction
- Yearly grain harvests
- Climate stability
- Population
- Economic growth
- Fresh water
- Minerals and ores, such as copper and platinum
To adapt to this profoundly
different world, we must begin now to make radical changes to our attitudes,
behaviors and expectations.
Peak Everything addresses many of
the cultural, psychological and practical changes we will have to make as
nature rapidly dictates our new limits. This latest book from Richard Heinberg,
author of three of the most important books on Peak Oil, touches on the most
important aspects of the human condition at this unique moment in time.
A combination of wry commentary
and sober forecasting on subjects as diverse as farming and industrial design,
this book tells how we might make the transition from The Age of Excess to the
Era of Modesty with grace and satisfaction, while preserving the best of our
collective achievements. A must-read for individuals, business leaders and
policy makers who are serious about effecting real change.
What I Learned
Richard Heinberg likes to write
essays, give seminars and speeches on why mankind is going downhill fast
because we used up many of the natural and non-renewable resources with
½ grabbed in our generation with nothing to give our descendants.
He renames “Climate Change” as
“Climate Chaos” (I call it the weather). He uses such terms as “diachronic
competition” and defines that as competing with future generations for
resources. He blames the Great Depression on overproduction. He writes that we
are “mired in the banality of consumerism” (planned obsolescence) and that
pushed us towards conservationism.
He would like us to reduce our
addiction to petroleum products and preaches that we will soon see the
generation of decline because the previous generation has been using up all the
resources.
Richard Heinberg thinks
“Urinetown” was a neat comedy – even as the end result is a doomed town
where everyone eventually dies from lack of water. Real funny stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urinetown
Is Richard Heinberg a Malthusian?
He sure sounds like one even as he claims the book and the others he refers to
that he and others have written in the recent past, are not “doomism”.
The book consists of 11 essays on
technology, agriculture, the Arts, 5 Axioms of Sustainability, parrots and
peoples, population, resources and human idealism, the end of an era with peak
oil and climate change, and activism, the Boomer’s last chance, a letter from
the future and talking ourselves to extinction.
I tend to disagree with many of
his conclusions and assertions, but I am intrigued by his thought-processes as
he walks through scenarios based on a left-of-center life experience. I grew up
in a culture of hope, a positive mental attitude, a knowledge that God promised
us that “there is enough and to spare” for all mankind, if we tend to our own
stewardships wisely. So it bothers me a bit to think we are “in decline” on so
many fronts and also see that the haves and have-nots are polarizing towards
extremes.
I too am not looking forward to
another world war based on anarchy and scrambling for a few remaining tidbits
of food or a few remaining drinks of water. Richard’s “Letter from the Future”
paints a chilling scenario that is a possibility if we don not do a global
course change in our energy consumption. We still have positive options that
can change the course of history towards improving mankind instead of dooming
it towards doing less with less instead of more with less.
Richard does point to
“permaculture” and back to self-sustaining local communities where everyone
knows everybody else and a return to a healthy farming community environment. I
tend to agree with him on this one where only 5% of our food processing is
being done by 5% of the population and is not looked upon as appositive career
move. I moved to the city from a dairy farm. I really would not mind going back
as hard and demanding as that life was.
Are we really in a “Century of
Declines”? Richard Heinberg thinks so. Personally, I am going to dedicate
myself to see that it does not happen through sustainable living activities. We
are going into World War IV (WWIII was the Cold War) and I want to avoid it.
Will it take such things as the
Post Carbon Groups, http://www.postcarbon.org,
Relocalization Network http://www.relocalize.net and Transition Towns Movement http://www.transitiontowns.org to expedite the process?
Will environmentalism take over as
the “new religion”? Richard Heinberg does not address that in this book –
perhaps he will address that in one of his Museletter essays sometime in the
near future.
Conclusion
Richard Heinberg asks tough
questions about resource use on a global scale and offers some interesting
possible solutions that can be done today, locally to reduce our dependence on
non-renewable energy.
Recommendation
Yes, I do recommend reading this
book. The cover is showing a house of cards built on current technologies. It
wouldn’t take much for it to all come tumbling down. There are ways today to
avoid that house tumbling down on top of us and Richard Heinberg does a pretty
good job showing us that perhaps thinking locally and acting locally isn’t such
a bad idea after all.
