Richard Heinberg - Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival

Richard Heinberg offers a powerful new way of understanding the historic rise and probable fall of our species. It is an impressive, sweeping, and thought-provoking narrative.

Dennis Meadows, co-author, The Limits to Growth

A profound, rigorous, convincing, and actionable lesson on how to understand power less as the control one has over others and more as the collective capacity we have to share with one another. A rich, moving, and necessary treatise from our most accomplished, coherent, and compassionate thinker on sustainable futures.

Douglas Rushkoff, author, Present Shock and Team Human, founder, Laboratory for Digital Humanism

Richard Heinberg is a writer of unfailing interest and this book sums up much of his lifes thinking. Understanding our dilemma in terms of power is, well, a powerful way for getting at the predicaments and possibilities of this fraught moment in our evolving history as a species.

Bill McKibben, author, The End of nature

Power is an extraordinary tour de force. It is a comprehensive compendium of how it has emerged, despite our self-proclamation to be sentient beings, that we now find ourselves scrambling on the edge of a cliff. Ironically this perilous rock-face is one that we ourselves have created. As a species, spurred on by the power of our migrant curiosity, we have exploited the immediate opportunities of the natural world while blindly discounting the future. But our planet keeps score and fortunately so does Richard Heinberg. Power is a must read and a call to action for those seeking a sustainable, balanced, human future in harmony with the Earth. No guarantees, of course, but harnessing the power of sentient action certainly beats the alternative; of continuing our blind stumble only soon to be swept aside, as have many creatures before us.

Peter C. Whybrow, author, The Well-Tuned Brain

Heinberg goes to the very heart of the issue. Using his immense knowledge of biology, science, history, psychology, and the politics of energy, he shows that the Environmental and social crises we face today have in their origin the insatiable human pursuit, and often abuse, of power, in all its forms. In showing us the path forward, Heinberg guides us to achieve power-limiting behavior so that we cannot just survive but thrive on a healthy planet and in healthy balance with one another.

Maude Barlow, author, activist, and co-founder, The Blue Planet Project

Power is sweeping in scope and a powerful presentation. Richard Heinberg is willing to face the harsh reality of multiple, cascading social and ecological crises without flinching, and he has written a comprehensive book offering readers a framework for moving forward that isnt based on wishful thinking. Drawing on his decades of activism and research, Heinberg explains why power and energy are central concepts for understanding the human predicament and shaping our future. Equal parts science and philosophy, history and contemporary analysis, Power is more engaging than a scholarly tome and more thoughtful than journalism. Heinbergs book is a model of public scholarship about life-or-death challenges to human societies.

Robert Jensen, author, The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson

Richard Heinbergs panoramic review of known forms of power is both sobering and inspiring. Given our species habitual methods for getting its way, be these methods physical, mental, or social, the outlook for our future is bleak indeed. Yet, Heinberg allows for the slim but real possibility of exercising restraint. If we are so persuaded, by wisdom or love for beauty, the future even now remains open. Indeed, such restraint returns us to ancient, almost forgotten appetites and capacities.

Joanna Macy, author, World As Lover, World As Self

Power serves as a Rosetta Stone to decipher how our species went from one of many to apex predator in a very short time. A necessary book to fully understand the imperative that our species returns to right relation in this critical time.

Peter Buffett, composer and philanthropist

For three decades, Richard Heinberg has been foretelling a day when humanity will be compelled to make a fateful choice: either turn away from our path of headlong growth or follow that path into a dark, dystopian future. Now, in 2021, that day has come. As with previous reversals of growth in societies throughout history, Heinberg concludes, humanitys ability to successfully navigate the coming worldwide decline will depend on how we handle power. We must, he says, finally reject vertical social powerthe ability to get others to do somethingand embrace our collective horizontal power the ability of a group to self-organize to accomplish something. Power is Heinbergs masterwork and it could not be more timely, arriving just as our window for action threatens to slam shut. Ignore this book at your peril.

Stan Cox, author, The Green New Deal and Beyond

Heinbergs Power is a searing, unflinching revelation of what has driven us to our current existential crisis: humanitys quest for power. Impeccably researched and masterfully written, this book explains how and why humanity is driving itself off the cliff. If there is any hope for us to continue, Heinberg shows why it must come from efforts to limit our own power.

Dahr Jamail, author, The End of Ice

Power is Richard Heinberg at his synthesizing best. In this sweeping volume, he deftly links raw energyessential for anything to happen in the physical worldto the exercise of political power in the cultural domain. If the productive use of energy is the ultimate key to evolutionary success, then humanity has no equal on Earth. But energy is also the source of societys addiction to economic growth, and the international power politics that are destroying the planet. In Power, Richard Heinberg asks whether we can avoid catastrophe. Will competing nations primal lust for power give way to high intelligence, mutual trust, and unreserved cooperation in the quest to salvage civilization? Not a trivial question, as only success will grant humanity the chance to scramble yet another rung up the evolutionary ladder.

William E. Rees, Phd, FRSC, Professor Emeritus, UBC/SCARP, Faculty of Applied Science, co-author, Our Ecological Footprint

Power reminds us that Richard Heinberg is one of the most important public intellectuals in the conversation about societys future. Eminently readable and engaging, Power is breathtaking in its scope and insight. Heinberg persuasively argues that we have reached evolutionary limits to concentrated social power and that empathy and beauty are key to averting ecological and social catastrophe.

Chuck Collins, Institute for Policy Studies, author, The Wealth Hoarders

I turn to Richard Heinberg whenever I need to understand something about energy; hes the go-to source. And now this! Power, with seamless fluency in paleo-history, Economics, psychology, and politics, is the must-read for anyone wondering how we can make it through the 21st century. This book is more than informative. It is enlightening. It is essential. It is powerful!

Suzanne Moser, climate researcher and consultant

A sobering and timely book just as many governments appear to acknowledgeafter decades of inactionthe dangers of climate change.

EEnergy Informer

It may be a moral idea that hard work pays off but if we need proof that it counts, this latest from Richard Heinberg carries all the evidence we need. His encyclopedic treatment of power is brilliant. It is sure to pop up in courses and living rooms like toast.