"Energy, Nature, ans Society" from The Party's Over

Richard Heinburg made a strong argument in Chapter One, “Energy, Nature and Society,” in his book The Party's Over. He argues that the people have “made the most of our advantages,” (Heinburg, 20). People have used their abilities to create, discover, and learn in order to adapt to the environment. The knowledge of concept is nothing less than an advantage. Obtaining energy and developing new methods was how people choose to demonstrate this advantage. He supports his argument by addressing five strategies: takeover, tool use, specialization, scope enlargement, and drawdown. Takeover is the process of using fire as energy. It kept people warm and contributed to their food supply. The “tool use” is the ability to create tools. Heinburg states, “Tools are extensions to ourselves, they change us. The human-tool complex is effectively a different organism from a toolless human,” (Heinburg, 25). People have simply adapted their lifestyle to the tool they created. Specialization is the strategy of people adding themselves in the category of tools. People began to produce labor. It soon became the “way” of making money. However, not all societies were able to take advantage of the specialization strategy, as well as others. The back-up plan to that, Heinburg explains, is the strategy of scope enlargement. In general, scope enlargement is the idea of sharing resources. Logically, though resources are limited. Drawdown is the strategy of “using their environment’s carrying capacity is to find and draw down nature’s of nonrenewable energy resources: coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium,” (Heinburg, 29). When energy became more of a demand, people began to turn to the earth’s resources. However, those resources are limited. What will be the strategy be then?