RICHARD HEINBERG

From competition among hunter-gatherers for wild game to imperialist wars over precious minerals, resource wars have been fought throughout history; today, however, the competition appears set to enter a new--and perhaps unprecedented--phase. As natural resources deplete, and as the Earth's climate becomes less stable, the world's nations will likely compete ever more desperately for access to fossil fuels, minerals, agricultural land, and water.

The current global food system is highly fuel- and transport-dependent. Fuels will almost certainly become less affordable in the near and medium term, making the current, highly fuel-dependent agricultural production system less secure and food less affordable. It is therefore necessary to promote food self-sufficiency and reduce the need for fuel inputs to the food system at all levels.

Why did the Durban climate talks fail? Ultimately, the culprit is the near-universal pursuit of economic growth. All the major players want growth: the US, because it's still pulling out of a recession; China, because it knows 10 percent annual growth can't go on forever, but is trying to avoid a hard landing; Europe, which is trying to pull out of its sovereign debt spiral. The US and China, in particular, know that fossil fuels have given them growth in the past, and are especially reluctant to give them up now.

The following is the text of an address by Richard Heinberg to the Moana Nui Conference in Honolulu, November 12, 2011. Honolulu was concurrently hosting the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Conference; as a response to that secretive international trade meeting, the International Forum on Globalization and Pua Mohala Ka Po collaborated to organize Moana Nui.

Every activist engaged in combating human-caused climate change or specific elements of the current energy economy knows that the work is primarily oppositional. It could hardly be otherwise; for citizens who care about ecological integrity, a sustainable economy, and the health of nature and people, there is plenty to oppose...

These and many other fights against destructive energy projects are crucial, but they can be draining and tend to focus the conversation in negative terms. Sometimes it’s useful to reframe the discourse about ecological limits and economic restructuring in positive terms, that is, about what we’re for...

Recently I’ve been getting emails from folks who had previously read an article or two on Peak Oil and found the evidence convincing—but who have more recently encountered a piece or two by Daniel Yergin (or another writer following the same train of thought). Their new line of reasoning goes like this:...Just as “fracking” shale gas has been a “game changer” for the natural gas industry, new technologies for accessing tar sands, oil shale, and shale oil...will change the oil game...Now, every element of that argument has already been dealt with at length in the Energy Realist literature. But occasionally a review of previous course material is called for. So here we go...

Brutal police and military repression of the protests could buy time for politicians, but it would solve nothing. The unrest would go underground and tear at the social fabric, leading eventually to revolution or societal breakdown.

Reform, if it is to make a difference, must be fundamental. It must start by addressing issues of economic inequality, but then must eliminate the massive debt overhang that plagues not just governments but households and the entire financial sector. In essence, policy makers must cobble together a new economic model that meets human needs in the absence of economic growth.

We've just seen how the economy could be put on the right track. But sorting out the economy is not enough to save the world; that would be just the first step.

Now that there is a nascent movement taking form on the streets of American cities, the media are asking, Who are your leaders?, and, What are your demands? The leaders will emerge according to their abilities. The demands will bubble up on their own as well--but here perhaps suggestions are possible.

You courageous people in the #occupy movement are absolutely right in saying the system is broken, greedy, and unfair. But when our discussion turns to replacing the current system, we’ve got to embrace a bigger view of reality than the one held by stock traders and politicians. It's not just our wealth they want to control, it's our vision for what is both possible and necessary. We need a post-growth economy that works both for people (all of them) and for the rest of nature: a localized economy based on renewable resources harvested at nature’s rates of replenishment