Uploaded September 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
#RichardHeinberg discusses his newest book, 'Power, Limits and Prospects for Human Survival', available September 14th at power.postcarbon.org/. In the last few centuries, humanity has seized power so rapidly and at such scale that we have overwhelmed Nature’s capacity to maintain balance. Our societies, based on production and consumption, ignore natural limits to growth, extracting non-renewable resources and metabolizing them into waste. Power has led to gross inequality, exploitation of other animals and each other, and a world where our stuff now outweighs the living biomass. We have even managed to interfere with the fertility of amphibians and mammals, including ourselves, by introducing hormones into the environment.
Beauty is a fundamental aspect of Nature. Unless we use our power to protect that beauty, and to disrupt the political, economic, and social power structures that have brought us to the brink of total collapse, Nature’s power, which is actually far beyond ours, will destroy us. We have the capacity to redevelop a new civilization based on limits and caring, that is aligned with nature. But we must seize that power and do so immediately.
This was one of Stuart Scott’s last conversations before his passing in July 2021.
For more information on the state of our planet visit the FacingFuture Library at https://facingfuture.earth/library
#RichardHeinberg discusses his newest book, 'Power, Limits and Prospects for Human Survival', available September 14th at power.postcarbon.org/. In the last few centuries, humanity has seized power so rapidly and at such scale that we have overwhelmed Nature’s capacity to maintain balance. Our societies, based on production and consumption, ignore natural limits to growth, extracting non-renewable resources and metabolizing them into waste. Power has led to gross inequality, exploitation of other animals and each other, and a world where our stuff now outweighs the living biomass. We have even managed to interfere with the fertility of amphibians and mammals, including ourselves, by introducing hormones into the environment.
Beauty is a fundamental aspect of Nature. Unless we use our power to protect that beauty, and to disrupt the political, economic, and social power structures that have brought us to the brink of total collapse, Nature’s power, which is actually far beyond ours, will destroy us. We have the capacity to redevelop a new civilization based on limits and caring, that is aligned with nature. But we must seize that power and do so immediately.
This was one of Stuart Scott’s last conversations before his passing in July 2021.
For more information on the state of our planet visit the FacingFuture Library at https://facingfuture.earth/library
