About the author

Michael P. Byron

Michael P. Byron holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine. He teaches all aspects of Political Science and Political Economy in colleges in the San Diego area. He has published a number of peer-reviewed professional papers, and numerous newspaper opinion pieces, and has presented many papers at international conferences. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Socio-cybernetics. Byron was the Democratic Party’s candidate for United States Congress in California’s 49th Congressional District in 2004.

Sound Bite

Exploring the links between politics and economics, globalization, peak oil, global warming, and disastrous weather, the author shows how human values and human activity have set us on a course to calamity and calls for a profound change in how we exploit the earth's resources.

About the Book

Ready for a dramatic lifestyle change? If mankind continues to deplete Earth's bounteous resources at an accelerating pace, drastic changes are inevitable. Infinite as Earth's resources have always seemed to be, the author presents evidence showing that mankind is rapidly using up many of the most necessary resources, and he draws a dire conclusion about the consequences for everything from our future food supply to global political stability. He argues that the failure of the US and other nations' political systems to deal with these issues has driven the planet's ecology to the brink of collapse. This book provides an integrated assessment of current problems involving climate, ecology, energy, politics and economics. Systems theory is used in a non-technical manner to explain these linkages and the causes and consequences of human actions upon them. In addition, the author gives a detailed, clear analysis of how humans process information in order to learn to deal with the world around them'and in particular how to deal with crisis situations. The book describes how and why these problems have arisen from mankind's values and actions, and serves as a call to action for radical change to set civilization on a more promising path to long-term survival. The book places particular emphasis upon the role of multinational corporations in contributing both to our ongoing political failure to respond effectively to these challenges and, also, to causing global warming and hydrocarbon resource depletion. The effects of the legal doctrine of corporate personhood upon the ability of these artificial 'persons' ability to capture control over human political systems are carefully analyzed. The consequences of the resultant failures of corporate-subordinated political systems are shown to be both inevitable and foreseeable so long as the doctrine of corporate personhood operates. He further observes that corporatism could not have gained so much political control without the support of the public, especially the religious right, and Dispensationalists in particular who believe that we have entered into the final period of history during which the Bible's prophecies will be carried out'literally. The sooner we see the destruction of our earthly paradise, the sooner they hope to get to heaven. Such beliefs are neatly exploited by those who have a more venal interest in promoting slash-and-burn technologies.

About the Book

Michael P. Byron's book makes a sweeping and urgent argument: that the overlapping crises of peak oil, climate change, and political dysfunction are not separate problems but deeply connected symptoms of a civilization heading toward collapse. Byron works through each crisis methodically, covering the physical realities of hydrocarbon depletion, the science of global warming, rising sea levels, melting ice caps, and the frightening wildcard of methane hydrate release. He doesn't stop at environmental issues — chapters on famine, disease, economic collapse, and the corrupting influence of corporate power on American democracy round out a picture that is deliberately comprehensive and deliberately alarming.

What sets this book apart from standard environmental writing is Byron's use of systems theory to show how these crises feed into and amplify each other. He argues, drawing on Jefferson among others, that political failure in the United States has been a root cause of the planet's vulnerability, and he takes direct aim at the alliance between corporate interests, religious dispensationalism, and government as a force actively working against meaningful change. He is skeptical of techno-optimism and so-called magic bullet solutions, pushing readers instead toward a deeper rethinking of values and consumption.

The book closes with a call to action, asking what can realistically be done when money and power have so thoroughly overwhelmed democratic institutions. Byron's tone is that of someone genuinely alarmed but still invested in the possibility of course correction. Readers interested in the politics of energy, the human causes of climate change, or the long-term sustainability of global civilization will find this a dense but accessible overview.

Additional information

Weight N/A
Book Type Ebook, Hard cover, Soft cover
Pages

252

Release Year

LC Classification

JA75.8.B85

Dewey code

333.790973–dc22

BISAC I

BUS070040

BISAC II

SCI024000

BISAC III

POL033000

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