February/March 2004
Do
Corporations or "We The People" Rule?
Democracy Unlimited Steering Committee
The
Buying of the President 2004
Interview with Charles Lewis by Amy Goodman
America's
Empire of Bases
Chalmers Johnson
Answer
the &$%#* Question!
Trudy Liberman
Their
Media War and Ours
Danny Schecter
Locally
Grown Food
Wendy Siporen
The
End of Fossil Fuel: Crisis and Opportunity
Roar Ramesh Bjonnes
The
Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies
Richard Heinberg
Reviewed by Jim Hight
New
Energy … New Jobs
Michael Schellenberger
Can
the Safety of Meat in the U.S. be Guaranteed?
Michael Greger, MD
The
Sacred Enneagram
Eli Jaxon-Bear
Understanding
Your Life Through Color
Nancy Anne Tappe
Reviewed by Ellae Elinwood
Primary
Perception
Cleve Backster
Reviewed by Paul Von Ward
Cosmic
Calendar
Salina Rain
The Party’s Over
Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies
By Richard Heinberg ~ Reviewed by Jim Hight
Toward the end of his book, The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, Richard Heinberg tells his readers he is not “a gloomy and depressed individual [but] reasonably cheerful and optimistic.”
Heinberg felt compelled to offer this personal insight to clarify that research and analysis, not neurotic pessimism, informed the grim scenario he presents in 240 pages: Global oil production will start to decline within the next 12 years, followed by shortfalls in natural gas supplies. These events will lead to a worldwide depression of unprecedented severity and duration.
Only rich people will be able to drive cars or travel in airplanes, while the rest of humankind will compete desperately for the energy to produce, transport, and refrigerate food; pump and purify water; heat homes; and meet other survival needs. “Famine, disease, economic collapse, despotism, and resource wars,” will characterize much of the 21st century, writes Heinberg.
Gloomy and depressing indeed.
But Heinberg’s book, which was recommended to me by the research engineers at Humboldt State University’s Schatz Energy Research Center, can be empowering for anyone seeking leverage to change Americans’ energy habits.
If Americans face up to the consequences of declining fossil fuel energy, conservation and fuel-efficiency policies will no longer be just about preserving nature or saving the planet—they will be about saving the humans.
Heinberg introduces readers to energy studies with a remarkably readable chapter summarizing the earth’s natural and human history, with energy as the actor animating every organism, ecosystem and community. He then sketches the profound changes wrought in human societies as coal, oil and natural gas supplemented the limited energy available from biomass fuels, wind and water.
In the hard-data core of the book, Heinberg draws on the work of petroleum geologists such as M. King Hubbert (who correctly predicted in 1949 that US oil production would peak by 1972), Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere (advisers to the CIA and the giant energy corporations) to show that global oil production will likely reach its peak between 2006 and 2015.
Great reservoirs of petroleum and natural gas will still be in the ground, but they’ll be increasingly difficult and expensive to tap, according to Heinberg. For the first time in the industrial age, the amount of energy available from fossil fuels will begin to decrease every year. With economic growth dependent on increasing energy use, such a decline in oil and gas supplies will knock the global economy to the mat.
Heinberg maintains that oil companies and the Bush Administration are well aware of these facts, and he casts the Iraq war and US military expansion in Central Asia as moves to gain strategic control over regions with the largest oil reserves.
An essay writer, editor of his own monthly Museletter and a teacher at the New College in Santa Rosa, Heinberg has a deft touch with technical topics. He explains clearly, for examples, why oil shale will never yield much useable petroleum and how “energy returned on energy invested” (EROEI) ratios work.
The author is less nimble with economic subjects. His explanation of the role of debt in energy usage patterns, for example, will probably leave many readers confused.
But Heinberg deserves extra credit for resisting the temptation to comfort readers, as other popular authors have done, with the notion that renewable energy sources like wind and solar can meet the planet’s energy needs. “We should be investing in [renewables] and converting our infrastructure to use them, [but renewables] will be unable to support the kinds of transportation, food, and dwelling infrastructure we now have,” writes Heinberg.
Instead, we must learn to survive using much less energy. Heinberg says this will require “a nearly complete redesign of the human project,” entailing dramatic changes in how we live, work, feed ourselves and travel. This will be extraordinarily difficult, but Heinberg believes the post-petroleum era will ultimately lead humans to create communities that emphasize artistic satisfaction, spiritual experience and “just and convivial social arrangements.”
How much pain we and our descendants must endure in this transitional era will depend on how soon political and business leaders acknowledge the inevitable and plan for a future without abundant fossil fuels, writes Heinberg.
Toward this end, Heinberg advocates all the right energy policies: require utilities to generate more electricity from renewables; enact tougher fuel-efficiency standards for cars; institute carbon taxes to discourage fossil fuel consumption; and use the new tax revenues to fund wind, solar and other renewables.
But Heinberg’s recommended political strategies seem to be shaped more by simplistic anti-corporate populism than by a clear-eyed assessment of how more Americans can be won over to support progressive energy policies.
He dismisses politicians of both parties as being incapable of summoning the honesty and integrity to deal with the coming crisis—a valid criticism to some degree. But Heinberg would be more effective if he told readers more about the legislators and public-interest groups that are fighting for fuel efficiency standards and greenhouse gas regulations.
But these weakness aside, Heinberg has painted a vivid picture of what’s ahead as our industrial society begins to run out of the substance that has been its life’s breath for 150 years. Hopefully, many will read it and heed it.
Arcata, California resident Jim Hight is a freelance writer and a research analyst for Environmental Business Journal. Richard Heinberg, from Santa Rosa, CA, has been writing about energy resources issues and the dynamics of cultural change for many years. A member of the core faculty at New College of California, he is an award-winning author of three previous books. His Museletter (www.museletter.com) was nominated for its “Best Alternative Newsletter” award by Utne Reade. The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies is published by New Society Publishers, 2003.
