'The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies."Richard Heinberg has distilled complex facts, histories, and events into a readable overview of the energy systems that keep today's mass society running. The result is jarring. The Party's Over is the book we need to reorient ourselves for a realistic future." Chellis Glendinning, PhD, author of Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy
"A few generations hence, our descendants will look back on the industrial world of today with a combination of awe, wonderment, and horror. Their past is our future - a transitional era of dwindling energy supplies, resource wars, and industrial collapse. If societies a century from now have managed to learn how to live peacefully, modestly, and sustainably, it may be at least partly because the advice in this timely book was heeded." Thom Hartmann, author of The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight and Unequal Protection: The rise of corporate dominance and theft of human rights"As Richard Heinberg makes shockingly clear in this extraordinarily well-researched and -written book, our way of life will soon change dramatically, as oil production and reserves both begin to decline. He also makes clear that our actions now will strongly affect what is left of the world when this shift away from oil takes place. But before we can act we must understand, and before we can understand we must be informed. In this compelling book, Richard Heinberg gives us the tools - the information and understanding - to act. This is a wise and important book." Derrick Jensen, author of A Language Older than Words and The Culture of Make Believe"Richard Heinberg has written an outstanding book, The Party's Over. I hope that the U.S. President and Congress read his book.The world and the U.S. populations are projected to double in 50 and 70 years, respectively, and global oil supplies are projected to be mostly depleted in 50 years! I agree with Heinberg that society is headed for serious trouble in the near future." David Pimentel, PhD, Professor, Department of Entomology, Systematics and Ecology, Cornell University
Synopsis
When Mike Bowlin, Chairman of ARCO, said in 1999 that "We've embarked on the beginning of the last days of the age of oil," he was voicing a truth that many others in the petroleum industry knew but dared not utter. Over the past few years, evidence has mounted that global oil production is nearing its historic peak.
Oil has been the cheapest and most convenient energy resource ever discovered by humans. During the past two centuries, people in industrial nations accustomed themselves to a regime in which more fossil-fuel energy was available each year, and the global population grew quickly to take advantage of this energy windfall. Industrial nations also came to rely on an economic system built on the assumption that growth is normal and necessary, and that it can go on forever.When oil production peaks, those assumptions will come crashing down.As we move from a historic interval of energy growth to one of energy decline, we are entering uncharted territory. It takes some effort to adjust one's mental frame of reference to this new reality.Try the following thought experiment. Go to the center of a city and find a comfortable place to sit. Look around and ask yourself: Where and how is energy being used? What forms of energy are being consumed, and what work is that energy doing? Notice the details of buildings, cars, buses, streetlights, and so on; notice also the activities of the people around you. What kinds of occupations do these people have, and how do they use energy in their work? Try to follow some of the strands of the web of relationships between energy, jobs, water, food, heating, construction, goods distribution, transportation, and maintenance that together keep the city thriving.After you have spent at least 20 minutes appreciating energy's role in the life of this city, imagine what the scene you are viewing would look like if there were 10 percent less energy available. What substitutions would be necessary? What choices would people make? What work would not get done? Now imagine the scene with 25 percent less energy available; with 50 percent less; with 75 percent less.Assuming that the peak in global oil production occurs in the period from 2006 to 2015 and that there is an average two percent decline in energy available to industrial societies each year afterward, in your imagination you will have taken a trip into the future, to perhaps the year 2050.But how can we be sure that oil will become less abundant? Petroleum geologists like Colin Campbell (formerly with Texaco and Amoco) point to simple facts like these: Oil discovery in the US peaked in the 1930s; oil production peaked roughly forty years later. Since 1970, the US has had to import more oil nearly every year in order to make up for its shortfall from domestic production. The oil business started in America in the late nineteenth century, and the US is the most-explored region on the planet: more oil wells have been drilled in the lower-48 US than in all other countries combined. Thus, America's experience with oil will eventually be repeated elsewhere.Global Discovery of OilGlobal discovery of oil peaked in the 1960s. Since production curves must eventually mirror discovery curves, global oil production will doubtless peak at some point in the foreseeable future. When, exactly? According to many informed estimates, the peak should occur around 2010, give or take a few years.'
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