The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century's Sustainability Crises Paperback – Illustrated, September 1, 2010

The chapters in Post Carbon Reader represent the best thinking on our low-carbon future that is presently available. I've gotten a lot of books about peak oil and the unsustainability of industrial civilization, and this one is clearly the most well informed and the most thorough reference I've found. Hah - it's the best "resource" on our dwindling "resources". It's basically a manual on understanding the complex set of converging consequences of our modern times. Read the chapter list to get a sense of the wide-ranging places this book goes. And then read the book.Thoughtful people need to read this book. And those who don't read it need to get the messages that are in the book now, because learning them through the school of hard knocks is going to be tough, to say the least. Lots of books show how our petroleum - soaked way of life is ending, but this book goes way beyond one or two aspects of the problem - it successfully characterizes the myriad interrelated components of the system that has brought us to our current precarious position. While we can't avoid the coming powerdown, we can at least try to mitigate it. What we do now and in the next few years can make a big difference to our grandchildren. This book helps one understand the problem and it clearly points out the directions in which we need to be headed.

We have reached the "limits of growth," as the editors have so aptly revealed, and the world as we know it must change: but how. Heinberg and Lerch's compilation of essays aptly describe the above statement, and do much more. Their authors describe in a clear, logical manner just where we are heading, and what the future will have to be like. In my opinion, the views of these authors should be considered facts, as they are the logical results of the paths we are treading; considering population trends,our dependence on fossil fuels, and the trends of climate change.This is a "must read," an almost undenyable critique of the plight world civilization finds itself in.

A thoughtful, intelligent, sane view of our world today and what it could be tomorrow. With a broad range of viewpoints and an interesting mix of topics, The Post Carbon Reader will grab you one way or another, whether you agree or not. Well done, Post Carbon Institute. Keep up the good work saving the world -- and helping us save us from ourselves.

Many topics appear not so relevant anymore. Given current Global Cooling process unfolding around the world some premises based on Global Warming are just plain silly. Additionally a lot of emerging evidence about inorganic oil origin make the energy crisis discourse misleading or at least incomplete. The only valid point is that if we are to have a better future Sustainability thinking should substitute Infinite Growth trend.

The Post Carbon Reader is a must for people who are interested in the future their children and grandchildren will face. I am only half way through the book and have learn't a lot about the economic and environmental problems that America can expect to face within the next few decades. I expect the rest of the world will not be exempt from these problems either.The book is split up into sections, each written by highly qualified members of the Post Carbon Institute. My only regret is that politicians will either be too busy or too set in their ways to take the books conclusion on board and act upon them.All in all a well researched book and very frightening.PS Richard Heinburg (one of the authors) will be visiting Australia next month to lecture on the topic of his book "The end of Growth"

The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century's Sustainability CrisesHas pertinent facts about sustainability. Good price. Thanks.

If our younger generation are to be able to have a hope of dealing with the mess they are about to inheret they had better be well prepared, this book is the best primer on the subject of our mutual future I have yet discovered.

This collection of essays, on a wide variety of individual environmental topics, is the best single source I have found so far. A must read for anyone concerned with what we are doing to the biosphere which keeps us all alive.