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MuseLetter #353 / July 2022 by Richard Heinberg Download printable PDF version This month's Museletter begins with "Deadly Optimism, Useful Pessimism," which warns against the former and shows how the latter could help us find a path towards realistic alternatives. The second article, "Will civilization collapse because it’s running out of oil?," summarizes an important […]
MuseLetter #352 / June 2022 by Richard Heinberg Download printable PDF version The 1970s Again? For the United States and much of the rest of the world, the 1970s were a time of high oil prices, surging inflation, stock market swoons, political upheaval, and geopolitical tension. Add pandemic and climate change to the list, and […]
MuseLetter #351 / May 2022 by Richard Heinberg Download printable PDF version Dear reader, This month’s MuseLetter consists of two essays. The first, “Can We Abandon Pollutive Fossil Fuels and Avoid an Energy Crisis,” maps the constraints of climate/energy policy that will shape the remainder of our lives. The second, “The Energy and Food Crisis […]
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 to see how trends in industrial production, population, food, pollution, and resource usage might interact over the next few decades; the study showed that continued growth in population and industrial production would prove unsustainable.
MuseLetter #349 / March 2022 by Richard Heinberg Download printable PDF version Dear subscriber, This month has seen the start of a historic and tragic invasion. In this month’s Museletter I’ve examined some of the Ukraine war’s likely implications for energy, economy, and geopolitics. Meanwhile, in a second piece Museletter maintains its gaze on an […]
MuseLetter #347 / January 2022 by Richard Heinberg Download printable PDF version This month’s Museletter kicks off with an essay on the important role of social cohesion in holding societies together and addressing crises. That is followed by one summarising the current status of global action to combat climate change. Social Cohesion Is Vital, and […]
MuseLetter #345 / November 2021 by Richard Heinberg Download printable PDF version How Much of the Worsening Energy Crisis is Due to Depletion? Coal and natural gas spot prices have recently soared to record levels internationally, while oil is trading at over $80 a barrel—the highest price in seven years. Newspaper columnists are asking whether […]
MuseLetter #344 / October 2021 by Richard Heinberg Download printable PDF version Evolution and Climate Change Through the Lens of Power This essay is based on, and partly extracted from, the book POWER: LIMITS AND PROSPECTS FOR HUMAN SURVIVAL. During the last century, evolutionary biologists developed the idea that power (defined as the rate of […]
MuseLetter #343 / September 2021 by Richard Heinberg Download printable PDF version This essay is adapted from my new book POWER: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival (New Society Publishers, September 2021). The Only Long-Range Solution to Climate Change Climate change is often incorrectly described as an isolated pollution issue. In this flawed framing, humanity […]
MuseLetter #342 / August 2021 by Richard Heinberg Download printable PDF version Callum Alexander from Scotland recently contacted me with a few queries about renewable energy. I thought they were interesting questions that might occur to others, so I asked his permission to publish our dialog. Callum: If you replace a coal- or gas-fired power […]
MuseLetter #340 / June 2021 by Richard Heinberg Download printable PDF version Too Much Power This article, the third in a series, is based on the Richard's forthcoming book, POWER: LIMITS AND PROSPECTS FOR HUMAN SURVIVAL. You can read the first article in the series here, and the second here. For information about the book and how […]
MuseLetter #339 / May 2021 by Richard Heinberg Download printable PDF version The Most Colossal Planning Failure in Human History A couple of days ago I happened to pick up an old book gathering dust on one of my office shelves—Palmer Putnam’s Energy in the Future, published in 1953. Here was a time capsule of […]
