Richard Heinberg wants you to “learn to be successfully and happily poorer.” Photo: video screenshot.
Inspiration For the Burned-Out Localizer
While Marx predicted that socialism would follow capitalism, Richard Heinberg predicts the next thing will be localism.
“All roads appear to lead eventually to localism; the questions are: how and when shall we arrive there, and in what condition? (And, how local?),” Heinberg writes in his latest book, Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels.
But that’s not what’s new in this collection of Heinberg’s essays. Anyone following the Transition movement has been hearing for nearly a decade that more active local economies are the inevitable future once the triple threat of climate change, peak oil and economic crisis topples global industrial capitalism as we know it. The message came through loud and clear in 2008 with The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins and the world’s local future has been a core tenet of Transition ever since.
What’s new about Afterburn is that it offers two things that Transitioners or anyone else who forecasts a more local future needs today: inspiration and advice for the future that’s better than most of what you’ll read elsewhere.
Inspiration
These days, with gas prices hovering around $2.50 a gallon and all the talk about cheap gas from fracking, if you still care about peak oil, then you’re going to be pretty lonely. It’s easy to feel like you’re the crazy person for seeing an end to fossil fuels and thinking it’s a big deal when everybody else acts like the party of cheap energy and economic growth is going to last forever.
– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/06/inspiration-for-the-burned-out-localizer/#sthash.LLWef4Ru.dpu
