Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World

An excellent overview of what resource depletion and population pressure mean for industrial civilization, without any rose-colored glasses. Richard Heinberg gives a balanced analysis of how political power and environmental/social justice movements work, which is a very useful framework for understanding why things are the way they are and how these groups will react in the future. The book is accessible and compelling, and at under 200 pages (with the endnotes and bibliography), it manages to hit all the major points in articulate, concise prose.

The perfect companion piece to Kunstler's "The Long Emergency," Heinberg looks more closely at what can actually be done to slow the effects of the end of the cheap oil era, and what is likely to happen when that time inevitably does. As with Kunstler, Heinberg is severely, and rightly, critical of the suburbs, and of hour-long commutes to work and the shops.

The only thing Heinberg lacks is perhaps the authority that Kunstler possesses; his writing is less dramatic but more textbook-y, making it a slightly less convincing read.