Table of Contents
Prologue: The Eighth Deadly Sin 11
Part 1 The Efficiency Paradox 17
Chapter 1 The Petroleum Interval 19
Why Now? Why So Suddenly? 19
The Thermodynamics of Civilization 22
A Double-Edged Sword 26
Chapter 2 The Conventional Wisdom 31
The Growth Imperative 31
Killing Two Birds with One Stone 33
The Fifth Fuel 34
Feeding the Nine Billion 36
Greenwashing 38
Chapter 3 The Unconventional Wisdom 41
The Coal Question 4l
Conservation, Rebound, and Backfire 44
Efficiency and Progress 49
Efficiency with Declining Supplies 51
Part 2 Efficiency Traps 55
Ned, Gustavus, Henry, and Fred 55
Chapter 4 Energy Efficiency Traps 59
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles 60
How Fridges Changed the World 63
How Many Engineers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb? 65
The Efficient City Trap 68
Chapter 5 The Energy Substitution Trap 73
Energy Returned on Energy Invested 75
The Fundamental Weakness of Renewable Energy 79
Denial Is a River in Egypt 84
Is the Hummer Greener Than the Prius? 86
Why Biofuels Are for Biofools 91
Efficient Oil and Gas Production: The Big Fracking Shale Mess 94
Clean Coal and Other Oxymorons 97
A Nuclear-Hydrogen Future? 99
An Efficiency Bridge to the Future? 103
Chapter 6 The Efficient Food Trap 105
Good Intentions Pave the Way to Hell 105
Why the Green Revolution Failed and the Next One Will, Too 107
How the USDA and Monsanto Killed the Family Farm 109
How Efficiency Spoiled the Organic Movement 117
The Dismal Theorem 119
Part 3 Thinking in Systems 123
Chapter 7 Learning from Nature 125
Why Efficiency Is No Substitute for Sex 126
The Self-Assembling World 132
Why Smokey the Bear Causes Wildfires 134
Thinking in Systems 137
Controlfreakonomics 141
Productivity, Connectivity, and Resilience 145
Efficiency as a System Trap 153
Chapter 8 All the Oil in the World 155
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished 155
Conserve Oil: We Could, We Should, but We Won't 156
Global Climate Change: Certainties and Uncertainties 158
All the Oil We Can Burn, All the Carbon Dioxide We Can Emit 160
Carbon Dioxide Is the Least Important Greenhouse Gas 162
Fossil Fuels Are the Least Important Resources 165
Drill, Baby, Drill 166
Chapter 9 Efficient Business and Economy Traps 169
Just in Time, Going Lean 171
Why the Biggest Employer in America Causes Unemployment 174
The CCPP Game 177
The Myth of the Efficient Market 179
An Efficient Global Economy 180
Efficient Public Institutions 183
Chapter 10 The Ecology of Collapse 189
Is the Singularity Near? 191
The Tragedy of the Commons 194
Escalation and Addiction 197
The Overshoot Trap 198
Burning Bridges 200
Efficient Control, Efficient Collapse 204
The Ecology of War 208
Part 4 Beyond Efficiency 213
What Will You Do in the Thirties? 213
Chapter 11 Resilience: Beyond Sustainability 217
Biomimicry 218
A Steady-State Economy 223
Feedback Loops and Reinforcing Cycles 227
Diversity and Equality 229
Pick Your Battles 231
Chapter 12 Strengthening Vital Systems 235
Environmental and Social Triage 235
Efficiency in Its Place 236
Recycling and Down-Cycling 238
Better by Design 241
Protecting Wild Lands 243
Power to the People 245
The End of Suburbia: Ghetto or Transition Town? 251
Building Sustainable Food Systems 256
Chapter 13 Building Resilient Communities 265
Swimming against the Tide 265
The Three Pillars of Democracy 268
The Three Pillars of Sustainability 270
The Three Pillars of Resilience 272
Epilogue: The Key that Unlocks the Efficiency Trap 277
Acknowledgments 281
Notes 283
Index 307
