What the people really needed was just some basic common-sense information and advice, somebody to tell them the truth – that their way of life was coming to an end – and to offer them some sensible collective survival strategies.” – Richard Heinberg Now, You Face A Bleak Future “A Letter from the Future” is an imaginary letter written in the year 2101 to by a 100 year old Richard Heinberg – senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and author of 10 books on issues of energy, the economy and ecology – to people of the world living in our times, about the tough future expected according to tendencies scientists and economists foresee humanity experiencing in the coming century. It portrays a picture of a humanity struggling to make its way when the life it created for itself throughout the 20th century faces its depletion: depletion of energy resources, devaluing of money and products above the level of necessity, scarcity of food and water, and political motions toward fascism and war. After painting a bleak picture of a suffering humanity dealing with all of the above during the 21st century, Heinberg raises the question… Can You Change The Future? Possibly, as a result of reading this letter, you might do something that would change my world [the world of the person living in the year 2101]. … Then, I suppose this letter would change, as would your experience of reading it. And as a result of that, you’d take different actions. We would have set up some kind of cosmic feedback loop between past and future. It’s pretty interesting...
Crisis = The Clashing Point Between An Economy Of Infinite Growth And The Limits Of Finite Resources Economic growth is effectively over. There are practical limits to debt, and we’re hitting them. There are practical limits to energy sources, and we’re hitting them. There are real limits to the planet’s ability to absorb our wastes and industrial accidents, and we’ve hit those too. We’re being told that the economy is recovering. But take away new debt the government has taken on since 2008 to stimulate the economy, and there’s been no real economic growth. There is no recovery. It’s all been done with more debt. We’ve already mortgaged our grandchildren’s future, but to keep the economy from relapsing, we’ll need to borrow even more. The game is up. We’ve reached the end of economic growth as we’ve known it.” Unlike Many Think, There Is No ‘They’ To Blame For This Crisis: Everybody’s Addicted To Economic Growth We all got hooked on growth. Rising GDP numbers became our main measure of success. ‘More, bigger and faster’ meant ‘better.’ We’re all addicted to growth. We all want better jobs and higher returns on investments. But we live on a finite planet. The end of growth is not the fault of any one politician or a political party, but some people benefited from growth more than others.” To Live Without Economic Growth, We’ll Have To Start Doing A Few Things Differently We can live without economic growth, but we’ll have to start doing a few things differently: We have to measure and aim for improvements in life that don’t require...
