Existential threat, root cause, core problem
Failure to see, failure to act
What should we do? What should we save?
A Brief History of Progress. Seeds of civilization. In the beginning ; First attempts to harness energy ; The mother of invention ; Putting down roots ; The age of empires
The ghosts of empires passed. The impossible Moai ; Where did all the people go? ; The legacy of Eighteen Rabbit ; Forests to precede civilizations, deserts to follow ; The scourge of God ; Recurring themes
The fossil fuels savings bank. Black gold and the British century ; Black gold and the American century ; The global economy
Divorced from nature. Can the leopard change his spots? ; Are humans innately racist and violent? ; The tragedy of the commons ; Holding onto disastrous values ; Holding onto disastrous ideologies
The Petroleum Interval. The great energy transition. American prophet ; Predicting global peak oil ; Why is nobody warning us? ; The Red Queen and the last drop of oil ; The many lives of methane ; The problem with natural gas: it's a gas ; Hubberts Peak for natural gas ; Descending from Hubbert's Peak ; All aboard the carbon express! ; The gifts that keep on giving ; The nuclear option ; Energy: for here or to go? ; The platter of options
The ecological debt. The global commons ; There are plenty of fish in the sea ; Missing mountains and plastic oceans ; The great corn lawn ; Death by overpopulation
The view from Mauna Loa. It's a small world after all ; Thresholds and feedbacks ; The long-range weather forecast ; Impacts on the landscape ; The human landscape ; Mitigate, adapt, or suffer
The Wealth of Nations. Collision course. The harsh light of morning ; Disruption in supply ; Shock and aftershocks ; Oil skirmishes, oil wars ; The global economy as an ecosystem ; Diminishing marginal returns
Around the world in eighty depressions. The next half century ; The oil producers ; The first-world consumers ; The new consumers ; Left behind
End of empire. A multipolar world ; Shortening the interregnum
A General Theory. Ecology is the foundation of economics. Phoenix ; The fundamental need for growth ; There is no such thing as a free lunch ; The Jevons paradox
A new foundation. The low-hanging fruit ; A nuclear-hydrogen economy? ; A renewable energy economy? ; Food that doesn't cost the Earth ; A land ethic ; Breaking the fertility trap ; Lifeboat ethics
Reconnecting. Is socialism dead, and is capitalism doomed? ; The triumph of the commons ; Community of nations, nations of communities ; A call to arms.