| Summary: | In late 2003, the unprecedented power failures in London, England, as well as New York City and much of the eastern coast of North America, reveal that although human ambition may be limitless, the planet's resources are irrevocably finite and cannot sustain our present way of life. Today's way of life cannot renew itself without cheap energy, but the resources from which energy is extracted are becoming inexorably scarcer, more costly, and the focus of conflict between states. A fundamental shift in the way people live is inevitable, but a less tightly-integrated world will arise through a gradual and sometimes acutely painful adjustment to the fragility of the high-tech lifestyle that people have adopted.
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