{"id":61069,"date":"2021-12-23T08:01:26","date_gmt":"2021-12-23T13:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61069"},"modified":"2021-12-23T08:01:26","modified_gmt":"2021-12-23T13:01:26","slug":"introduction-to-power-by-richard-heinberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61069","title":{"rendered":"Introduction to Power by Richard Heinberg"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Introduction to Power by Richard Heinberg<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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Richard Heinberg\u2019s latest title,\u00a0Power<\/em>\u00a0is an exploration of humanity’s power over nature and the power of some people over others.\u00a0Power<\/em>\u00a0traces how four key elements developed to give humans extraordinary power: tool making ability, language, social complexity, and the ability to harness energy sources \u2014 most significantly, fossil fuels. Today, we take an excerpt from\u00a0Power<\/em>\u00a0that explains how Richard started on the journey of writing this book.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Excerpted from the introduction to\u00a0Power<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Many people are searching for a magic formula to save the world from the converging crises of the 21st century. Climate change, economic inequality, air and water pollution, resource depletion, and the catastrophic disappearance of wildlife threaten to upend society while destabilizing our planet to such a degree that it may be impossible for future generations of humans to persist. What if we could solve all these problems with one simple trick?<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t hold your breath. A single solution doesn\u2019t exist: it\u2019s not socialism or capitalism, it\u2019s not renewable energy or nuclear power, it\u2019s not religion or atheism, and it\u2019s not hemp. However, I believe there is a single causative agent in back of most of our troubles, the understanding of which could indeed help us emerge from the hole we\u2019re rapidly digging for ourselves.<\/p>\n

That causative agent is power\u2014our pursuit of it, our overuse of it, and our abuse of it. In this book, I argue that all the problems mentioned above, and others as well, are problems of power. We humans are nature\u2019s supreme power addicts. Power\u2014the ability to do something, the ability to get someone else to do something, or the ability to\u00a0prevent<\/em> someone else from doing something\u2014is everywhere in the human world…<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction to Power by Richard Heinberg Richard Heinberg\u2019s latest title,\u00a0Power\u00a0is an exploration of humanity’s power over nature and the power of some people over others.\u00a0Power\u00a0traces how four key elements developed to give humans extraordinary power: tool making ability, language, social complexity, and the ability to harness energy sources \u2014 most significantly, fossil fuels. Today, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[141,425,5216,643,1081],"class_list":["post-61069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-climate-change","tag-inequality","tag-new-society-publishers","tag-power","tag-richard-heinberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61070,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61069\/revisions\/61070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}