Essential, visionary essays about our post-carbon future

Climate change, along with the depletion of oil, coal, and gas dictate that we will inevitably move away from our profound societal reliance on fossil fuels; but just how big a transformation will this be? While many policy-makers assume that renewable energy sources will provide an easy "plug-and-play" solution, author Richard Heinberg suggests instead that we are in for a wild ride; a "civilization reboot" on a scale similar to the agricultural and industrial revolutions.

Afterburn consists of 15 essays exploring various aspects of the 21st century migration away from fossil fuels including:

• Short-term political and economic factors that impede broad-scale, organized efforts to adapt
• The origin of longer-term trends (such as consumerism), that have created a way of life that seems "normal" to most Americans, but is actually unprecedented, highly fragile, and unsustainable
• Potential opportunities and sources of conflict that are likely to emerge.

From the inevitability and desirability of more locally organized economies, to the urgent need to preserve our recent cultural achievements and the futility of pursuing economic growth above all, Afterburnoffers cutting-edge perspectives and insights that challenge conventional thinking about our present, our future, and the choices in our hands.

AWARDS

• FINALIST | 2015 Foreword INDIES: Essays

Richard Heinberg is the author of eleven previous award-winning books including The Party's Over, Powerdown, Peak Everything, and The End of Growth. He is a Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and is widely regarded as one of the world's most effective communicators of the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels. A recipient of the M. King Hubbert Award for excellence in energy education, Heinberg has given hundreds of lectures on resource depletion to audiences around the world. He has been published in Nature and other journals, and has been featured in many television and theatrical documentaries.

Acknowledgments

Introduction 1. Ten Years After 2. The Gross Society 3. Visualize Gasoline 4. The Climate PR Puzzle 5. The Purposely Confusing World of Energy Politics 6. The Brief, Tragic Reign of Consumerism- and the Birth of a Happy Alternative 7. Fingers in the Dike 8. Your Post-Petroleum Future (a commencement address) 9. The Fight of the Century 10. The Anthropocene: It's Not All About Us 11. Conflict in the Era of Economic Decline 12. All Roads Lead Local 13. Our Evanescent Culture- and the Awesome Duty of Librarians 14. Our Cooperative Darwinian Moment 15. Want to Change the World? Read This First

Notes Index About the Author