History teaches us that the future is local

As a scholar of classical and medieval Studies, David Porreca examines the ‘thermodynamics of civilizations’ and how the fall of past societies may hold lessons for today’s globalized economy. His research exposes the problem of centralizing energy and resources, which contributed to the collapse of economic powers such as the Roman Empire. Porreca contends that if economy is a subset of our ecology, it stands to reason that the future is local.