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Think Resilience Lesson 4: Depletion

April 25, 2017

Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg sat down to deliver a 22-chapter lecture series entitled “Think Resilience: Preparing Communities for the Rest of the 21st Century,” which explores how communities can build resilience in the face of our intertwined sustainability crises. The series is intended for students and concerned individuals of all ages.

Chapter 4: Depletion

Depletion is an inescapable fact of life: As soon as you’ve taken one sip of your coffee, or one bite of ice cream, you’ve begun to deplete that resource. Economists will tell you, “No problem. You can just run to the store and buy more, or find something else just as good as a substitute.” But does that work on a finite planet, and are all resources so easily substitutable?

Here Richard Heinberg explores the topic of depletion and why it matters so much — to our well-being today and the future of humanity and the planet tomorrow.

View transcript

View Chapter 1: Introduction

View Chapter 2: Energy

View Chapter 3: Population & Consumption

New chapters will be rolled out on a regular basis over the coming weeks, but you can also sign up to view all the videos right away.

Image Credits

Richard Heinberg

Richard is Senior Fellow of Post Carbon Institute, and is regarded as one of the world’s foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels. He is the author of fourteen books, including some of the seminal works on society’s current energy and environmental sustainability crisis. He has authored hundreds of essays and articles that have appeared in such journals as Nature and The Wall Street Journal; delivered hundreds of lectures on energy and climate issues to audiences on six continents; and has been quoted and interviewed countless times for print, television, and radio. His monthly MuseLetter has been in publication since 1992. Full bio at postcarbon.org.

Tags: peak oil, Resource Depletion

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