Non-fiction book by Jeremy Rifkin and Ted Howard, with an Afterword by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen.In the book the authors seek to analyse the world's economic and social structures by using the second law of thermodynamics, that is, the law of entropy. The authors argue that humanity is wasting resources at an increasing rate, and that will lead to the destruction of our civilization, which has happened before on a smaller scale for past empires. The book promotes the use of sustainable energy sources and slow resource consumption as the solution to delay the death by entropy.The book is highly controversial.