Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels

Essential, visionary essays about our post-carbon future

[Richard Heinberg] writes with incision, with passion, with rage, with compassion, and Afterburn captures in one single publication why he's such a shining light of insight in times of much darkness. The Party's Over changed my life. Perhaps Afterburn will change yours. — Rob Hopkins, founder, the Transition movement and author, The Power of Just Doing Stuff

This book will help fuel the future.—Randy Hayes, founder, Rainforest Action Network and director, Foundation Earth

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From climate change to resource wars to the collapse of consumerism, we’re in for a wild ride. Afterburn consists of 15 essays exploring various aspects of the 21st century migration away from fossil fuels including:

• Short-term political and economic factors that impede broad-scale, organized efforts to adapt
• The origin of longer-term trends (such as consumerism), that have created a way of life that seems “normal” to most Americans, but is actually unprecedented, highly fragile and unsustainable
• Potential opportunities and sources of conflict that seem likely to emerge.

From the inevitability and desirability of more locally organized economies, to the urgent need to preserve our recent cultural achievements and the futility of pursuing economic growth above all, Afterburn offers cutting-edge perspectives and insights that challenge conventional thinking about our present, our future, and the choices in our hands.
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With rare insight, clarity, and compassion Richard Heinberg helps us face the music. —Joanna Macy, author, Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects
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Richard Heinberg is a Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, the author of eleven previous books including The Party’s Over and The End of Growth . He is widely regarded as one of the world’s most effective communicators of the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels.