Cut and Paste Job
After reading Joseph Tainter's excellent and influential The Collapse of Complex Societies, I looked forward to reading Heinberg's The End of Growth. Big disappointment.
Heinberg doesn't so much present a coherent analysis as pastiche of sources -- some academically respectable, others self-proclaimed. Many of his assertions have been commonplace for the last 40 years -- the earth is a closed system with resource limits, we are running out of fossil fuels and there is no ready substitute, national debt has caused instability in international currency, an so forth. Lacking original thought or thesis, Heinberg opts for a kitchen sink approach by trying to cover finance, energy, food, the environment -- all this in a breezy Sunday newspaper style.
The most objectionable part of this book is how Heinberg has omitted important information. For example, Tainter concludes his archeology classic by asserting that in the contemporary world, no single complex society can fail without being absorbed by adjoining complex societies. Instead, Heinberg intimates that complex societies planet-wide could very well collapse, and we should organize into self-help co-ops. Of he course touts his web-site and back-yard think-tank so the reader may access his updates. Like peak oil pundit James Kunstler (the Long Emergency), Heinberg seems to be feathering his own nest in the Dystopian Alarmist Industry.
To be sure, all the issues in Heinberg's book are important, but there is better information available elsewhere.
