In the text The Party’s Over by Richard Heinberg he discusses the central role of energy as a resource. Energy is the ability to do work. According to Heinberg “Without energy, nothing happens,” p.10. This means if there is no energy in human life than nothing will occur. Energy is needed in life because energy is the main source of all things. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transported or transformed in many different aspects, but it cannot literally be transformed into something different. Energy can be manifested into various forms: nuclear, mechanical, chemical, thermal, electromagnetic and gravitational; these different forms can be converted from one form to another. The issue with energy being converted is that it is often dissipated.

Dissipated means heat. Dissipated energy still exist, but it is barely found and when it is found or used it is often scattered making it less valuable then it once was. According to Heinberg “If we could gather it up and re-concentrate it, it could still work for us; but the act of re-concentrating it would itself require more energy,” This means that people could work together to gain it, but the only problem is it would waste more energy trying to gain it then to probably use it.

Energy is a huge resource that people need to survive, but it is always being lost. This leads energy into entropy. Heainberg states that entropy” It takes work-thus energy-to keep chaos at bay,” Meaning if we continue to use energy with out thinking about it then chaos will occur.