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

"The world is about to change dramatically and forever as the result of oil depletion. Within the next few years, the global production of oil will peak. Thereafter, even with a switch to alternative energy sources, industrial societies will have less energy available to do all the things essential to their survival. We are entering a new era as different from the industrial era as the latter was from medieval times." "The Party's Over deals head-on with this imminent decline of cheap oil. It shows how oil and war have always been closely related for the past century and how competition to control oil supplies is likely to lead to new resource wars in the Middle East, Central Asia and South America. Tracing the crucial role of fossil fuels in the rise of industrialism, the book discusses the degree to which energy alternatives can compensate for oil and recommends a managed transition to a slower-paced, low-energy, sustainable society in the future." This substantially revised edition brings the current debate over oil supplies and forecasts up to date, includes more recent evidence for a near-term oil peak, adds material on the looming natural gas crisis and on possible nonpetroleum sources of energy, and discusses in more depth the geopolitics of the steadily souring oil binge and the options now before us.