The Energy/Food Crisis Is Far Worse than Most Americans Realize
Everyone who owns a gasoline-burning car has noticed that fuel prices have shot up in recent weeks. And most of us have read headlines about high energy prices driving inflation. But very few Americans have any inkling just how...
Man on Fire
Trigger warning: This article discusses suicide, depression, and climate grief. On Earth Day 2022, 50-year-old Wynn Bruce set himself on fire in front of the United States Supreme Court, apparently motivated by the climate crisis. He died the following...
The Failure of Global Elites
In the 1970s, global political and corporate elites had all the information they needed to put the world on a path toward long-term stability. Systems science was sufficiently advanced that a team of its practitioners organized a scenario study...
After the Ukraine Invasion: Sobering New Global Energy-Economic-Political Terrain
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the West’s response, are ushering the world into a new energy, economic, and political era. In broad outline, this new era will have less-globally-integrated energy markets, and less-secure supplies of fossil fuels. Since energy...
The Forest, the Moon, and the Last Time
A stoic meditation I have been practicing is called The Last Time. The idea behind this meditation is straightforward: there will be a last time for anything you do, and because you can’t really know when that is, reflecting upon this...
Dennis Meadows on the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Limits to Growth
Only rarely does a book truly change the world. In the nineteenth century, such a book was Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. For the twentieth century, it was The Limits to Growth. Not only did this best-selling...
Report: Taxing the World’s Richest Would Raise US $2.52 Trillion a Year
A new analysis, “Taxing Extreme Wealth,” by the Fight Inequality Alliance, Institute for Policy Studies, Oxfam, and Patriotic Millionaires found a shocking rise in global wealth among the world’s richest people despite deepening inequality during the Covid-19 pandemic. The analysis,...
How Are the US and Other Countries Doing on Fighting Climate Change?
On December 8, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to spearhead his administration’s efforts to combat climate change. What does this order actually promise to accomplish? How does that compare with what other nations are doing? Is any...
Humility, Gratitude, and Solidarity
Amongst many other lessons from this past year for us at Post Carbon Institute is the reminder to stay humble. We have long warned humanity (anyone who would listen) that we were on an unsustainable, ruinous path that no...
The End of Growth: Ten Years After
A note from Richard Heinberg to our Post Carbon Institute readers: Thanks to a generous grant from Mobius Foundation, all donations made through the end of the year will be matched! Every donor will also get an exclusive link...