Energy

A critique of contemporary food and energy analysis, this essay argues that many proposed solutions to food insecurity and fossil fuel dependence remain trapped within the assumptions of growth and technological complexity. Instead, it calls for a more honest reckoning with ecological limits, inequality and the possibility of a lower-energy, more localized future.

The war in Iran has made the paradox inescapable. The pursuit of energy security through fossil fuels produced the very disruption it was meant to prevent. Instead, the transition to renewables offers the genuine insulation that oil never can: from global price shocks, from the geopolitical risks embedded in that dependence, and from the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis.

Can modern civilization survive for the long term within planetary limits? This dialogue pits optimism about renewable energy and human adaptability against a more fundamental critique: that modernity itself may be incompatible with ecological sustainability.

In this interview with 15/15\15 magazine, Richard Heinberg argues that current transition strategies ignore a central reality: replacing fossil fuels is not enough without reducing overall energy use.

Twenty years after a global proposal to limit oil extraction, Richard Heinberg revisits its relevance in this interview and argues that equitable rationing may be key to reducing conflict and managing resource decline.

For the past couple of decades, we at Post Carbon Institute have been pointing out that a transition to alternative energy sources will necessarily be slow and incomplete. Given that oil is a depleting, polluting, non-renewable resource, industrial society is due for a reckoning. We are all in an extended Wile E. Coyote moment.