
Power
Limits and Prospects for Human Survival
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $27.29
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
David Skulski
-
By:
-
Richard Heinberg
About this listen
Weaving together findings from a wide range of disciplines, Power traces how four key elements developed to give humans extraordinary power: Tool making ability, language, social complexity, and the ability to harness energy sources - most significantly, fossil fuels. It asks whether we have, at this point, overpowered natural and social systems, and if we have, what we can do about it.
Has Homo sapiens - one species among millions - become powerful enough to threaten a mass extinction and disrupt the Earth's climate? Why have we developed so many ways of oppressing one another? Can we change our relationship with power to avert ecological catastrophe, reduce social inequality, and stave off collapse?
These questions - and their answers - will determine our fate.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2021 Richard Heinberg (P)2022 Richard HeinbergListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Heat Will Kill You First
- Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
- By: Jeff Goodell
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world is waking up to a new reality: wildfires are now seasonal in California, the Northeast is getting less and less snow each winter, and the ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica are melting fast. Heat is the first order threat that drives all other impacts of the climate crisis. And as the temperature rises, it is revealing fault lines in our governments, our politics, our economy, and our values. The basic science is not complicated: Stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, and the global temperature will stop rising tomorrow.
-
-
Eminently Skipable for Climate Science Believers
- By Chad on 07-15-23
By: Jeff Goodell
-
Doppelganger
- A Trip into the Mirror World
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Naomi Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who.
-
-
Elite Psychobabble
- By A Reviewer on 09-30-23
By: Naomi Klein
-
Breaking Together
- A Freedom-Loving Response to Collapse
- By: Jem Bendell
- Narrated by: Matthew Slater
- Length: 18 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook describes people allowing the full pain of our predicament to liberate them into living more courageously and creatively. They demonstrate we can be breaking together, not apart, in this era of collapse. Jem Bendell argues that reclaiming our freedoms is essential to soften the fall and regenerate the natural world. Escaping the efforts of panicking elites, we can advance an ecolibertarian agenda for both politics and practical action in a broken world.
-
-
The most frightening, enlightening book I’ve listened to in many years!
- By Marcia S. Ludwig on 03-26-25
By: Jem Bendell
-
Where Are We Heading?
- The Evolution of Humans and Things
- By: Ian Hodder
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this engaging exploration, archaeologist Ian Hodder departs from the two prevailing modes of thought about human evolution: the older idea of constant advancement toward a civilized ideal and the newer one of a directionless process of natural selection. Instead, he proposes a theory of human evolution and history based on "entanglement," the ever-increasing mutual dependency between humans and things.
-
-
A must read
- By selma lauvland on 09-18-18
By: Ian Hodder
-
Thinking in Systems
- A Primer
- By: Donella H. Meadows
- Narrated by: Tia Rider Sorensen
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the years following her role as the lead author of the international best seller, Limits to Growth - the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet - Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem-solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute's Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world....
-
-
Skip to the Middle
- By John Chambers on 06-20-20
-
At Work in the Ruins
- Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics and All Other Emergencies
- By: Dougald Hine
- Narrated by: Dougald Hine
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why would someone who cares so deeply about ecological change want to stop talking about it now? At Work in the Ruins is the book that grew out of Dougald’s attempt to answer that question. He delves deeply into what he discovered during the globally shared isolating Covid moment, why the virus and the measures taken against it drove so many of us to despair, and how we can re-find our bearings if the pandemic is not the big event that changes everything but simply one in a chain of emergencies that are bringing about the end of the world as we knew it.
-
-
Timely wonderfulness.
- By John Hughes on 12-23-24
By: Dougald Hine
-
The Heat Will Kill You First
- Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
- By: Jeff Goodell
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world is waking up to a new reality: wildfires are now seasonal in California, the Northeast is getting less and less snow each winter, and the ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica are melting fast. Heat is the first order threat that drives all other impacts of the climate crisis. And as the temperature rises, it is revealing fault lines in our governments, our politics, our economy, and our values. The basic science is not complicated: Stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, and the global temperature will stop rising tomorrow.
-
-
Eminently Skipable for Climate Science Believers
- By Chad on 07-15-23
By: Jeff Goodell
-
Doppelganger
- A Trip into the Mirror World
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Naomi Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who.
-
-
Elite Psychobabble
- By A Reviewer on 09-30-23
By: Naomi Klein
-
Breaking Together
- A Freedom-Loving Response to Collapse
- By: Jem Bendell
- Narrated by: Matthew Slater
- Length: 18 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook describes people allowing the full pain of our predicament to liberate them into living more courageously and creatively. They demonstrate we can be breaking together, not apart, in this era of collapse. Jem Bendell argues that reclaiming our freedoms is essential to soften the fall and regenerate the natural world. Escaping the efforts of panicking elites, we can advance an ecolibertarian agenda for both politics and practical action in a broken world.
-
-
The most frightening, enlightening book I’ve listened to in many years!
- By Marcia S. Ludwig on 03-26-25
By: Jem Bendell
-
Where Are We Heading?
- The Evolution of Humans and Things
- By: Ian Hodder
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this engaging exploration, archaeologist Ian Hodder departs from the two prevailing modes of thought about human evolution: the older idea of constant advancement toward a civilized ideal and the newer one of a directionless process of natural selection. Instead, he proposes a theory of human evolution and history based on "entanglement," the ever-increasing mutual dependency between humans and things.
-
-
A must read
- By selma lauvland on 09-18-18
By: Ian Hodder
-
Thinking in Systems
- A Primer
- By: Donella H. Meadows
- Narrated by: Tia Rider Sorensen
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the years following her role as the lead author of the international best seller, Limits to Growth - the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet - Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem-solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute's Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world....
-
-
Skip to the Middle
- By John Chambers on 06-20-20
-
At Work in the Ruins
- Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics and All Other Emergencies
- By: Dougald Hine
- Narrated by: Dougald Hine
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why would someone who cares so deeply about ecological change want to stop talking about it now? At Work in the Ruins is the book that grew out of Dougald’s attempt to answer that question. He delves deeply into what he discovered during the globally shared isolating Covid moment, why the virus and the measures taken against it drove so many of us to despair, and how we can re-find our bearings if the pandemic is not the big event that changes everything but simply one in a chain of emergencies that are bringing about the end of the world as we knew it.
-
-
Timely wonderfulness.
- By John Hughes on 12-23-24
By: Dougald Hine
-
End Times
- Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration
- By: Peter Turchin
- Narrated by: Robin McAlpine
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States.
-
-
Boomer History
- By Kevin on 08-12-23
By: Peter Turchin
-
What We Owe the Future
- By: William MacAskill
- Narrated by: William MacAskill
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In What We Owe The Future, philosopher William MacAskill argues for longtermism, that idea that positively influencing the distant future is a key moral priority of our time. It’s not enough to reverse climate change or avert the next pandemic. We must ensure that civilization would rebound if it collapsed, counter the end of moral progress, and prepare for a planet where the smartest beings are digital, not human. If we set humanity’s course right, our grandchildren’s grandchildren will thrive, knowing we did everything to give them a world of justice, hope, and beauty.
-
-
Empty philosophising
- By Oleksandr on 08-25-22
-
The End of the World Is Just the Beginning
- Mapping the Collapse of Globalization
- By: Peter Zeihan
- Narrated by: Peter Zeihan
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For generations, everything has been getting faster, better, and cheaper. Finally, we reached the point that almost anything you could ever want could be sent to your home within days - even hours - of when you decided you wanted it. America made that happen, but now America has lost interest in keeping it going.
-
-
Everyone dies except Americans
- By preetam on 06-22-22
By: Peter Zeihan
-
Overshoot
- The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change
- By: William R. Catton
- Narrated by: MJ McGalliard
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our day-to-day experiences over the past decade have taught us that there must be limits to our tremendous appetite for energy, natural resources, and consumer goods. Even utility and oil companies now promote conservation in the face of demands for dwindling energy reserves. And for years some biologists have warned us of the direct correlation between scarcity and population growth.
-
-
A Five Star Book... In Print Form.
- By Joshua on 11-04-20
-
Artificial Intelligence
- Modern Magic or Dangerous Future?
- By: Yorick Wilks
- Narrated by: Hannibal Hills
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
AI expert Yorick Wilks takes a journey through the history of artificial intelligence up to the present day, examining its origins, controversies, and achievements, as well as looking into just how it works. He also considers the future, assessing whether these technologies could menace our way of life and how we are all likely to benefit from AI applications in the years to come.
By: Yorick Wilks
-
Escape from Overshoot
- Economics for a Planet in Peril
- By: Peter A. Victor
- Narrated by: Robert Lawrenson
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Earth is in overshoot. The cumulative impact of eight billion humans, combined with the relentless pursuit of economic growth in the name of "progress", has stressed the planet beyond its limits. We must act now.
By: Peter A. Victor
-
Invention and Innovation
- A Brief History of Hype and Failure
- By: Vaclav Smil
- Narrated by: Tim Fannon
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil. In his latest and perhaps most digestible book, Invention and Innovation, the prolific author—a favorite of Bill Gates—pens an insightful and fact-filled jaunt through the history of human invention. Impatient with the hype that so often accompanies innovation, Smil offers in this book a clear-eyed corrective to the overpromises that accompany everything from new cures for diseases to AI.
-
-
Not the best from Vaclav, but near the top
- By Tan on 07-19-23
By: Vaclav Smil
-
An Inconvenient Apocalypse
- Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity
- By: Wes Jackson, Robert Jensen
- Narrated by: Graham Rowat
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades, our world has understood that we are on the brink of an apocalypse—yet the only implemented solutions have been small and convenient, feel-good initiatives that avoid unpleasant truths about the root causes of our impending disaster. Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen argue that we must reconsider the origins of the consumption crisis and the challenges we face in creating a survivable future. Longstanding assumptions about economic growth and technological progress—the dream of a future of endless bounty—are no longer tenable.
-
-
Narrator doesn’t fit the topic.
- By Keith on 01-29-23
By: Wes Jackson, and others
-
The Crash Course (2nd Edition)
- An Honest Approach to Facing the Future of Our Economy, Energy, and Environment
- By: Chris Martenson
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world is experiencing a series of crises. In this revised edition, Chris Martenson delivers an incisive and eye-opening exploration that explains why it is the interconnectedness of the various crises that matters most. From energy shortages to climate instability, financial crises, supply chain disruptions, pandemics, war, and crop failures, you'll discover the common factor that is driving them all and how to adapt to volatile new realities and safeguard your own personal wealth, health, and community.
-
-
thoughtful analysis
- By carpenter Joe on 09-08-24
By: Chris Martenson
-
Fossil Future
- Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less
- By: Alex Epstein
- Narrated by: Alex Epstein
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For over a decade, philosopher and energy expert Alex Epstein has predicted that any negative impacts of fossil fuel use on our climate will be outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels to human flourishing--including their unrivaled ability to provide low-cost, reliable energy to billions of people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people. And contrary to what we hear from media “experts” about today’s “renewable revolution” and “climate emergency,” reality has proven Epstein right.
-
-
Strongly Recommend
- By Kevin on 06-14-22
By: Alex Epstein
-
Regeneration
- Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation
- By: Paul Hawken
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin, Bahni Turpin, Lauren Baldwin, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Regeneration offers a visionary new approach to climate change, one that weaves justice, climate, biodiversity, equity, and human dignity into a seamless tapestry of action, policy, and transformation that can end the climate crisis in one generation. It is the first book to describe and define the burgeoning regeneration movement spreading rapidly throughout the world.
-
-
More damage than good for the climate crisis
- By Matthew on 06-06-22
By: Paul Hawken
-
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
- By: Kate Raworth
- Narrated by: Kate Raworth
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Economics is the mother tongue of public policy. It dominates our decision-making for the future, guides multi-billion-dollar investments, and shapes our responses to climate change, inequality, and other environmental and social challenges that define our times. Pity then, or more like disaster, that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet are still taught in college courses worldwide and still used to address critical issues in government and business alike. That's why it is time, says renegade economist Kate Raworth, to revise our economic thinking for the 21st century. In Doughnut Economics, she sets out seven key ways to fundamentally reframe our understanding of what economics is and does. Along the way, she points out how we can break our addiction to growth; redesign money, finance, and business to be in service to people; and create economies that are regenerative and distributive by design.
-
-
Economic romanticizing, not economic thinking
- By LAM X LUU on 04-05-18
By: Kate Raworth
Critic reviews
"Impeccably researched and masterfully written, this book explains how and why humanity is driving itself off the cliff." (Dahr Jamail, author, The End of Ice)