by Frank Kaminski

Future Scenarios: How Communities Can Adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change
By David Holmgren
126 pp. Chelsea Green Publishing – Apr. 2009. $12.00.

In this short, crisp, well-reasoned book, writer and activist David Holmgren contemplates the possible futures that may lie ahead of us as the threats of climate change and oil depletion grow ever more acute.

The book doesn’t contain much in the way of new information for people who already know about climate change and peak oil. (For those unfamiliar with peak oil, it’s the inevitable, and almost certainly past-tense, point at which world oil production can’t grow any longer and must begin its remorseless, terminal decline.) Serious followers of these issues have long been reading almost daily about so-called oil reserve growth, collapsing exports, the role of energy in shaping human history and accelerated Arctic melting, among other issues on which Future Scenarios’ opening chapters dwell at length. Further, the conclusions that Holmgren draws from this background material in later chapters are mostly obvious ones to those who are informed about the issues.

The book does, however, represent a solid attempt to demystify these concepts for the general reader. It also performs the vital, but seldom undertaken, task of illustrating the synergism that exists between peak oil and climate change, and thus the importance of addressing both of them together.