Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival

Climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, poverty, and inequality are all symptoms of one overarching problem: the way we humans accumulate and use power. If we want to address this problem and reduce the chances of a chaotic collapse of society, we will have to confront our overuse and abuse of power. But first we'll need to define power (both physical and social) and learn how energy flows through ecosystems and...

To understand humanity's relationship with energy and power, and to get a handle on why we're experiencing a polycrisis of climate change, social inequality, and loss of biodiversity, you have to go back to the beginning – all the way back to the origins of life on Earth. Explore how power functions in nature, including predator/prey relationships, self-balancing mechanisms in organisms and ecosystems, and the maximum pow...

Join renowned energy and sustainability expert, Richard Heinberg, as he describes the flow of power in hunter-gatherer communities of the Pleistocene. As people learned to wield fire, deploy an array of tools, and coordinate actions through increasingly descriptive language, they became more capable of concentrating power. This development produced mind-blowing impacts on brain capacity and other aspects of human evolution. As you ...

Richard Heinberg, renowned energy and sustainability expert, explores the development of social power – simply defined as the ability to get other people to do something. Whether through money, violence, writing, or other means, humans have devised interesting ways of exerting influence over one another. One major downside, with implications for the collapse of societies, is widespread inequality. Concentration of social power tend...

Over the 19th and 20th centuries physical power, social power, and economies grew explosively. The main cause was humanity’s exploitation of fossil fuels. Sources of oil, coal, and natural gas – a vast underground storehouse of ancient sunlight – provided an almost magical and seemingly unlimited supply of energy to grow more food, provision more people, build more cities, and create more technologies. But this age of "more&qu...

As exploitation of fossil fuels powered exponential growth in population and consumption, humanity began running into problems. Serious problems. The existential kind, like the potential for runaway global warming and the onset of the sixth mass extinction. For many problems, a solution exists, but what happens when a selected solution actually generates more problems? Energy and sustainability expert Richard Heinberg explains the ...

Overpopulation, overconsumption, and overexploitation of Earth's resources go way beyond the realm of simple problems with straightforward solutions. Instead, they are dilemmas that require tradeoffs and difficult decisions. To guide such decisions, energy and sustainability expert Richard Heinberg explores big ideas such as the adaptive cycle, resilience theory, and prudent predator theory. Heavy topics abound, from death to ...

Learn how humanity can exercise collective self-restraint to navigate the social and environmental crises of the 21st century. The world is in overshoot. There are too many people consuming too much stuff, and we're facing climate change, biodiversity loss, and immense social inequality. We're currently on a pathway to collapse, but the future doesn't have to be bleak. We can develop communities where we take care of...

First wisdom, then action. Richard Heinberg shares insights from his deep dive into the nature of power and power relationships. He addresses the three main "power tools": money, weapons, and communication technologies with humble and thoughtful advice on how to approach them. You’ll have the chance to contemplate how you might live your most authentic life with moderation, rationality, responsibility, and sometimes sacri...