Oil depletion and climate change will create an entirely new context in which political struggles will be played out. Within that context, it is not just freedom, democracy, and equality that are at stake, but the survival of billions of humans and of whole ecosystems.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the urgent need to address climate change and resource depletion, as these issues will reshape political dynamics and threaten human survival and ecosystems.
Richard Heinberg highlights the profound impact that oil depletion and climate change will have on the political landscape, suggesting that these environmental crises extend beyond traditional issues like freedom and democracy. Instead, they pose existential threats that could endanger the survival of millions of people and entire ecosystems, thus transforming the nature of political struggles in a world increasingly marked by resource scarcity and ecological challenges.
In practice
During a speech on environmental policy, one might use this quote to underscore the importance of proactive measures in addressing climate change.
If we do nothing, we still get to a post-carbon future, but it will be bleak. However, if we plan the transition, we can have a world that supports robust communities of healthy, creative people and ecosystems with millions of other species.
The industrial civilisation is based on the consumption of energy resources that are inherently limited in quantity and that are about to become scarce. When they do, competition for what remains will trigger dramatic economic and geopolitical events; in the end, it may be impossible for even a single nation to sustain industrialism as we have know it in the twentieth century.
The magnitude of this evil among us is so deeply felt, and so universally acknowledged, that no merit could be greater than that of devising a satisfactory remedy for it.
All is change; all yields its place and goes.
I asked all of our recruiters to give me all resumes of prospective employees with their name, gender, place of origin, and age blacked out. This simple change shocked me, because I found myself interviewing different-looking candidates - even though I was 100% convinced that I was not being biased in my resume selection process.
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters
When it's time to let go, I don't look back, and I start another project as soon as possible. One thing I remind myself is that I don't want to Photoshop my past.
This will be a great day in our history; the date of a New Revolution - quite as much needed as the old one. Even now as I write they are leading old John Brown to execution in Virginia for attempting to rescue slaves! This is sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind which will come soon!
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