Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines

by Richard Heinberg

The twentieth century saw unprecedented growth in population, energy consumption, and food production. As the population shifted from rural to urban, the impact of humans on the environment increased dramatically. The twenty-first century ushered in an era of declines, in a number of crucial 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 policymakers who are serious about effecting real change. Richard Heinberg is a journalist, lecturer, and the author of seven books, including The Party’s Over , Powerdown , and The Oil Depletion Protocol . He is one of the world’s foremost Peak Oil educators.

Genres: Nonfiction, Environment, Economics, Peak Oil, Politics, Sustainability, Science

224 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2007

About the author

Richard William Heinberg is an American journalist and educator who has written extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion. He is the author of 13 books, and presently serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another grumpy pastoralist who wants us all to "return to the farm" where we'll find satisfaction in folk guitar music and lentil-based entrees. Heinberg rings all the proper alarm bells (oil depletion + climate change + garbage + population = major bummer for life on Earth) but swerves into tedious maunderings about how much he despises Modernist art (the cruel and lifeless streamlining of the Machine Age!) and how his generation -- the Baby Boomers, *of course* -- will be remembered as the generation whose greedy consumption toppled humanity into a New Post-Carbon Dark Age. (More likely they'll be remembered for their generational vanity.)

Even so, if you want to skim past the "musings' and just read the Grim Facts, this book offers many useful jolts of terror. Modern agriculture requires petroleum: when that's gone, Heinberg says, the human population will starve back from 8 billion to less than one billion in the coming century, with all the chaos and bloodshed that you'd expect from such a massive "dieback." Heinberg's most cogent point concerns the "free market correction" theory of energy transition, which states that as oil grows scarcer and more expensive, alternate forms of energy will become increasingly more viable. Heinberg points out that (a) a new energy infrastructure will require decades to ramp up, and (b) by the time oil scarcity is signaled through dramatic price rises, we won't have decades, only a matter of years. He wrote this in 2007; events in the financial markets since then should shake any sane person's confidence in the foresight and wisdom of corporations to avert a global catastrophe.

Heinberg's thesis boils down to: "Science got us into this mess, therefore we can't expect science to get us out of this mess." Maybe so, but I suspect most of us would rather give solar grids and thorium reactors a chance before we voluntarily unplug the Internet and beg the Amish to be our life coaches.

(Recommended alternate reading: J.G. Ballard's novella "The Ultimate City.")

[Charlie George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Heinberg ushered me into my awareness of Peak Oil several years ago with Party's Over (see my favorites shelf), which is a traumatic experience for many thoughtful people. Since my interest has been waning for some months, I thought it was do-or-die time for another Heinberg book, Peak Everything. Either it was all a buncha BS and I should I see through it and cast it aside, or it's true and there's nothing more important for the survival of our species than popularizing this cause.

Of course, real life is never so simple a dichotomy. The truth lies somewhere in between the two extremes, and the future is famously hard to predict. He makes critical points about population pressures and trends, and he bridges the tragic chasm between Peak Oil depletionists and the global warming environmental "movement" (such as it is). Heinberg also makes needed recommendations how the two camps can work together and get along better.

His central thesis is that both groups ultimately want to phase out fossil fuel use. This can only be accomplished through efficiency, transition to other energy sources, and dreaded, politically toxic curtailment, a.k.a. reduction of the economy, population, or both... The curtailment will happen one way or another, it is only a question of whether we curb our unchecked growth in a controlled, sane way, or wait for catastrophe to sort us out with extreme prejudice. This is not a possibility, but rather a certainty; the geology will see to that.

There are limits to growth and resources are not infinite. That's the part economists don't get, and they've led us astray with the suburban project that James Kunstler calls "the greatest mis-allocation of resources in history", which is saying a lot when you consider the opulence of emperors past. However when you look at the raw power we squander in our happy motoring, we put those emperors to shame. Their waste is merely small-time, as illustrated in Heinberg's example: consider the effort involved in pushing a car that has run out of gas a few feet. Now consider pushing it 25 miles. That's the power supplied by 1 gallon of gas. In our average energy consumption we each have the energy equivalent of something like 1000 slaves toiling away to meet our every need. That's the amount of work it takes to keep our supermarket stocked, our buildings climate controlled, fresh water in the taps and the lights on, etc. If it doesn't feel like you have 1000 slaves working to make your life paradise, that's because we're squandering all that energy on inefficient, far-flung living arrangements and consumerist waste, and we're used to it. Picture life in a blackout with no generators and you start to get an idea what those 1000 slaves worth of energy do for us.

Such is the system we live in and it is simple enough to prove once you start looking into Peak Oil literature. The hard part is what to do about it. I sold my car last year but I'm not fooling myself into believing even that makes much of a difference in my heavy, big-city-dwelling "footprint".

[Kitap Yakıcı · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: 2.5 stars

Inessential collection of essays on wide-ranging topics: the myth of value-neutral technology, a meaningful definition of "sustainability," the painful implications of exponential growth for progressive values (drawing on Al Bartlett's indispensable talk "Arithmetic, Population, and Energy"), a peak oil-themed review of the documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill , thoughts on bridging the divide between those concerned with Peak Oil and those worried about Climate Change, and a fictional communique from the future addressing the failings of the early 21st century.

I describe this volume as inessential because either Heinberg himself or another author (like James Kunstler or John Greer) has addressed these issues elsewhere and at greater length. This collection seemed like something the publisher put together simply to make more money off the Peak Oil/Climate Change crowd, and there is something about that that seems profoundly self-contradictory.

[John Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a series of essays, Heinberg calls us to action on various aspects of the problem that our energy addiction is causing and will cause in the near future. Solving this problem is, of course, critical, and Heinberg has a good voice for shedding light on the nature of the problem. I was greatly agitated by the introduction (which is, of course, the point), but the rest of the book seemed less cohesive, although still compelling. The introduction (which I recommend to everyone) is a short and sharp summary of the problem of energy addiction (which generally manifests itself in our discourse as Peak Energy and Climate Change); Heinberg states directly that the book is not meant to go into detail about the problem, for he leaves that task to other books. The rest of the book is interesting and certainly frightening, but it explodes in a dozen different directions. It seems like the book is not meant to stand alone, but is instead a sort of continuation of Heinberg's other books. In addition, the book seems resigned about the problem, and I left it uncertain how to proceed, myself. I may start, however, by trying to complete the picture with his other books, as well as other sources.

[Greg Gustafson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sobering preview of the hard road ahead and the over-consumption that will have led us to that fate. The "letter from 2107" is fascinating.
It could well be too late to change our lifestyles, or prepare ourselves for the century of declines and the hardships this will bring. However, this book is a necessary one.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a frustrating read inasmuch as it consists of a long sermon addressed to the choir. Anyone who is a denier of peak oil will not only dismiss the author's rhetoric outright but is unlikely to even pick up this book to begin with. Heinberg's 2007 predictions significantly overstate our reality in 2024. According to his account, we should be experiencing rolling blackouts by now, and the foundations of our fossil fuel-driven society should be visibly crumbling. Granted, some of what he predicts is starting to occur, particularly supply-chain issues and economic pressures. However, the U.S. has largely escaped these issues compared to other parts of the world. Thus, the book as a whole tends to work as evidence in support of peak oil deniers and, if anything, might actually serve to dissuade the faithful.

In addition, Heinberg's demographic severely skews his perspective. For example, he depicts the post-WWII era as an idyllic time in which housing was cheap, food was plentiful, and everyone owned a car. This ignores the gross injustices that spurred on the civil rights movement, the ongoing plight of Native Americans, and the rights denied to women, among many other similar examples. And in general, the author fails to distinguish between the lived experiences of white, mainstream Americans and those of the disadvantaged and dispossessed.

On the other hand, for those "radicals" who are looking for a reality check, Heinberg packs enough enthusiasm into his informally-worded pep rally to engage the eager reader at least some of the time. While the book could have benefited from additional hard data, the presented information is still useful. In short, a flawed effort, but not entirely without value. Arguably a two-and-a-half star read.

[N · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got a lot out of reading this book, and it course corrected some of my personal ideas for how the next 100 years will probably look. However, the endless dire note and insistence that there's nothing at all humans can do to keep the entire world from falling apart was a bit too much for me. It called upon memories of famous writings where people insisted that intense famines were going to happen everywhere - and instead human ingenuity kicked in and artificial fertilizer was invented, and that tied with some other situations (like ramping up food production for world war II), led us to a point in history where instead of famines we actually had more food than we knew what to freaking do with. Whether that's a good thing is debatable, as our surplus' of food and material have led us kind of to the exact situations that Peak Everything is talking about, but I digress.

This book is peppered with important facts that you need to become aware of, and you need to consider how they'll affect your daily life.

I would not suggest you listen to the audio book though. This is a perfect book for an author to fill with emotion and emphasisations, but instead it is so monotone and COMPLETELY devoid of emotions that I consistently suspected the book was being read by a male text to voice application.

[Arthur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting (and some less than interesting) essays on the sociopolitical implications of peak oil and the sustainability of industrial civilization in general.

Not a general introduction to the concept of peak oil. Read Heinberg's excellent "Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies" for a more structured, accessible introduction to the topic if you're unfamiliar with the subject matter.

If you don't know much about peak oil, or if you lean right politically (given Heinberg's unmistakable left-liberal sensibility and politics), you should probably just skip this one.

[Blair Pedersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome. He doesn't beat you around the bush like many of these books do and I can see that it was the basis for a lot of the climate science texts that are available now.

It's a bunch of essays about how dire our situation and basically gives solutions, but also looks at it from a doomsayers point of view. His view is that we're screwed and we need to do all the things, now (in 2008, when it was written), and that if we don't, the sh^& will hit the fan.

[Nika Olst · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book what now feels a century ago.. It must be about ten years and looking through my notes while currently reading Transition Towns By Rob Hopkins, I'd say this book is more relevant than ever.

[Ptrav · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found a bit of repeats from the author's other books.

[Dameon Launert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, but not quite as good as Heinberg's other books.

[Steve H · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s interesting to read a predictive book several years after the predictions have been made. One could be quick to find fault with predictions that haven’t come true in Heinberg’s timeline, but I have read enough other environmental books that note that predictions of dire environmental happenings are sometimes premature but rarely incorrect. This book from 2007 may have been premature in predicting some peaks, and it missed predicting the financial collapse of 2008, but the basic themes of the book are generally sound. There is a limited amount of x, and even if there are technological fixes to get more of x, the growing population will demand more of x, and eventually we will run out of it.

The book is a series of chapter-length essays that look at the development of human societies over the long term, from simple tool making, to the harnessing of stored energy to make things happen, to speculation about what the future holds when a world of people accustomed to or aspiring to using stored energy to create and move things no longer has that source of energy or has used so much of it that they’ve ruined the environment, creating other problems.

One of the most compelling sections is the “letter from the future” from a writer who is pleading with us in 2007 from his vantage point in 2107 to change our ways and recalling our profligate use of resources to satisfy our short term desires. He has us imagine people 50 or 100 years from now mining our landfills looking for useful materials and chastises us for wasting so much energy and so many resources creating disposable items. Think of that person the next time you are removing packaging material, throwing something out after only a single use, leaving the lights on, or taking a longer than necessary shower.

The book is hurt by some over-simplifying of complex ideas and by some rather politically biased and inflammatory phrases, but overall the essays knit together into a useful look at where we’ve been, how we got where we are, and what we might expect in the future. (A note on narration: the pronunciation of some words and phrases is, let’s say, occasionally jarringly “non-standard.”)

[The Capital Institute · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heinberg emphasizes the grim future of the global environmental crisis by examining peaks in population, food production, climate stability and fresh water availability. Building off his earlier works, Heinberg suggests any transition to a “post-carbon” future, will be “as reliant on hydrocarbons as it is on water, sunlight and soil.” (Publishers Weekly) Heinberg proposes that our transition to fossil fuel-free production focus on “handcrafted” buildings and objects, more durable design and conservation of resources.
Heinberg’s “wry” commentary and grim predictions create a path for the move from the “Age of Excess” to the “Era of Modesty,” while promoting collective goals and achievements. The book provides a good framework for individuals, business leaders and policymakers who want to push forward change.

[Henri Moreaux · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whilst it would be easy to dismiss Richard Heinberg as a grumpy pastoralist who wishes us all to return to the land, he does raise many valid points about modern society's reliance on cheap energy and the token dismissal of future energy problems being solved by the vague cloud of "technology".

I do however feel his love of primitive peoples undermines some of his arguments. Whilst the series of essays has some good material in terms of Peak Oil, evolution of modern society and America's post ww2 boom, there's some curveballs in there. One such example is as a "letter from the future" which takes an otherwise non fiction book straight into the realm of speculative fiction and just feels out of place; it almost reads as a blurb of a teen dystopian novel.

Overall, it's not a bad book on the topic of society's decline but I wouldn't be rushing out for a copy.

[Esmeralda Rupp-Spangle · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Bridging Peak Oil and Climate Change" and "A Letter From the Future" were by far my favorite essays in this all around very good book.
There were certainly weak points, but overall I really enjoyed it.
It's a book for those who are already familiar with peak oil and climate change science, and who are maybe tired of reading the same/ progressively worsening facts and figures over and over again, but are still interested in the subject and want more. A lot of this is written with the perspective of:
"Ok, we have this information, so now what?" which is great.

It is a realistic, practical, level headed approach to a terrifying set of facts was exactly what I was looking for in a book.

[Andrew Harvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly eye-opening book, by a writer not interested merely in shifting units by making the most shocking claims possible. It is probably better to read his more recent book The End of Growth in order to hear the latest statistics on these ideas, considering how fast the latent effects of Peak Oil are unfolding. In the new book, it is clear that Heinberg has done his homework on contemporary economics and geopolitics, and ties all this together in a very interesting way.

I particularly liked the chapter on the post-war Boomer generation, which certainly enabled me to look at that rose-tinted period of history in a different light. If you only read a part of this book, I would recommend that one.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heinsberg's Axioms of Sustainability: 1. Any society that continues to use resources unsustainably will collapse. 2. Population growth and/or growth in the rates of consumption cannot be sustained indefinitely. 3. Even renewable resources must be used at less than the rate of replenishment or their use is not sustainable. 4. To be sustainable, the use of non-renewabile resources must proceed at a rate that is declining and the rate of decline must be equal to or less than the rate of depletion. 5.Sustainability requires that substances introduced into the biosphere from human activities be minimized and rendered harmless.

[Richard Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a marvelous book that short-circuits the tendency of technophiles to believe that a miracle technology will come along and allow us to keep running things at this ultra-high energy consumption rate we've come to take as normal. By applying the same techniques used for oil to all other resources, Heinberg reminds us that we live on a sphere and that all resources are necessarily finite, thus limiting technological "civilization."

This is a must have book to become informed about the basic issues regarding the ongoing destruction of the planet.

[Bethk · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been awhile since I read the book. The date is approximate.

It does wake the reader up to that the problem is not just peak oil, peak coal, peak water, peak phosphorous, peak arable land - but peak EVERYTHING. Along with peak energy, all of these peaks will make a huge difference in how we live.

His last chapter was remarkable. There are a few things which are nowhere near their peak: Peak neighborliness, peak cooperation, peak community... We can get through this by working together especially at the local level.

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want everyone I care about to read this book. It's is about how to deal with the issue of peak oil, the effects it will have on our lives and what we can start doing to prepare ourselves. This is the issue that I think should be at the forefront of our collective conscious RIGHT NOW. I'm sad to see how little attention the issue gets in our media. Heinberg is an excellent author. There are maybe 2 chapters I don't feel fit with the premise of the book but overall its a must read.

[Janna · Rating 1 out of 5]

What did I learn from this book? That I wanted to climb in bed, pull the covers over my head and hide! One of the most depressing things I've read - it put me in a funk for days! It was so depressing that I couldn't even bear the thought of looking up some of the research from which his stats came...

[Intersection]

Heard an interesting interview on SLC's KRCL radio show RadioActive with the author. Here's a link to the show, but I don't think they have that one archived... http://www.krcl.org/radioactive-main.htm - I anyone finds it let me know.

[Cara · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is amazingly terrible. Aside from the subject matter, which is highly questionable, the writing is in serious need of a good editor. I felt like I was reading a middle school essay. E.g. "My thesis is...", "This chapter is about..." Really terrible stuff.

[Bryan457 · Rating 3 out of 5]

More a collection of essays than a comprehensive look at the subject. Some parts were exceptional. I loved the letter from the future. Some parts were less than exceptional. I didn't really enjoy the section on art.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bit of a disappointment. Less of a discussion of the Peak Oil theory (which is what I was looking for) than a series of broadly written essays on sustainability.

[Shauna]

Conny suggested that I read the chapters, "Axioms of Sustainability" and "Bridging Peak Oil and Climate Change Activism". Otherwise she told me that the book is largely technocratic.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the esasys was skippable -- the others were all worthwhile.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is scary not alot of new info but it was a scary read for me I think we are in big trouble.

[Gregor Erbach · Rating 2 out of 5]

not technical enough for my tastes