Richard Heinberg

Electricity is our energy future, but the details of that future are still sketchy. Right now, the picture is being drawn by billionaire investors, but it looks dark and dystopian. Surely more imaginative artists could do better.

Community-scale and bioregional-scale responses to the Great Unraveling invite personal action and lead both to convivial social arrangements and to the discovery of ways to live more in cooperation with, less in domination of, the web of life.

If collective survival is possible, there will be a lot of work ahead. We’ll be more effective in that work if we’re unburdened by hate and recrimination, and are instead rooted in gratitude for life, nature, and community.

Peak oil calls on us to imagine a lower-energy future and to start adapting now. It’s a game-changer, and a life-changer.

Humanity soon will be returning to low-power ways of organizing itself. And in our new age of tariff wars, the tide is already turning from global to regional in trade, investment, and politics. What has seemed impossible may soon become obviously necessary to larger numbers of people.

In this article, I’ll make a case for the increasing likelihood of conflict, internationally as well as domestically within the US, and then consider some novel ideas about conflict. As we’ll see, either taking sides in an approaching battle, or refusing to do so, comes with a cost.