The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies

Richard Heinberg

New Society Publishers, 2003 - Business & Economics - 275 pages

February 1, 2003

The Party's Over (TPO) is an excellently and thoroughly researched treatment of precisely the oil depletion problem, almost entirely free of the usual hidden political agendas, irrelevant personal memoirs, and philosophical delusions.

I would recommend TPO to anybody on this list . . . as a convenient and politically neutral "Pack-'O-Facts" that can be offered to friends, family, colleagues, policy makers, and anybody else in your life or world that you may feel needs a sober sit-down and some rational talking-to about the energy future of industrial civilization.

The Endnotes section at the book's end, organized by chapter, is the best bibliography I've ever seen on all aspects of the topic. This book bears direct comparison to only three other more-or-less mass or general market books that I'm aware of:

• Thom Hartmann, Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight;
• Jeremy Rifkin, The Hydrogen Economy;
• Kenneth Deffeyes, Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage.

With respect to these, I feel that TPO is:

• less irrelevantly philosophical than Hartmann's book, more up- to-date, and more pointedly technical in sources used.
• very similar to the first half of Rifkin's work, where he delineates the problem, but again a more comprehensive and at the same time more focused presentation. The second half of Rifkin's work, where he cheerleads in rather political mode for a salvaging of the world's economy via distributed hydrogen/fuel-cell infrastructure is not directly relevant, except I suppose inasmuch as it would seem to contradict Heinberg's skepticism about propping up global industrial civilization through a 11th hour switch to alternatives. I'd personally go with Heinberg's conclusions.
• again, in topic/coverage very similar to Deffeye's quite interesting work, but frankly for those who want a quick and focused rollup presentation/package for opening the topic with others, Deffeye's work is overly encumbered with too much aranca about oil geology and personal author's memoirs.

Overall, The Party's Over will serve as the state-of-the-art topic-opener on Hubbert catastrophism, for people on this list, well into the foreseeable future.

Scott Meredith
AlasBabylon list owner

Contents

• Energy Nature and Society: 9
• The Rules of the Game: 10
• Eating and Being Eaten: 14

About the author

Richard Heinberg is the author of nine books and is widely regarded as one of the world's most effective communicators of the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels. With a wry, unflinching approach based on facts and realism, he exposes the tenuousness of our current way of life and offers a vision for a truly sustainable future. Senior Fellow-in-Residence at Post Carbon Institute in California, Heinberg is best known as a leading educator on Peak Oil and its impacts. His expertise, publications and teachings also cover other critical issues including the current economic crisis, food and agriculture, community resilience, and global climate change.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies
• Author: Richard Heinberg
• Edition: 3, illustrated
• Publisher: New Society Publishers, 2003
• ISBN: 0865714827, 9780865714823
• Length: 275 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Development / Sustainable Development; Business & Economics / Industries / Energy; Business & Economics / Real Estate / General; History / United States / 20th Century; Nature / Environmental Conservation & Protection; Political Science / General; Political Science / International Relations / General; Technology & Engineering / Power Resources / Alternative & Renewable