Part one of a four-part video series. Released in conjunction with Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels. Is modern society hitting our defining moment, the point of diminishing returns? In this short video, Richard Heinberg explores how — in our economy, the environment, and...
Richard’s new book AFTERBURN: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels is released today. We’re running some of the essays from the book on PCI this week. To find out more about it see Announcing AFTERBURN: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels. Post Carbon...
Post Carbon Fellow Richard Heinberg was interviewed about his new book Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels for the Hal Ginsberg Morning Show on Radio Monterey. In the interview Richard talks about how we are living in an era that...
The press has been all abuzz the past few weeks speculating on what the drop in oil prices will mean for U.S. shale oil (tight oil) production. Pundits have been falling over themselves quoting various estimates of the breakeven...
The advent of fossil fuels changed the world profoundly (giving us everything from plastics and automobiles to global warming); the inevitable and rapidly approaching end of the oil-coal-and-gas era will likewise bring overwhelming transformation in its wake. My new...
Five years ago I wrote an article for Reuters titled “Goldilocks and the Three Fuels.” In it, I discussed what I call the Goldilocks price zone for oil, natural gas, and coal, a zone in which prices are “just...
The beginning of the Blue Nile near its outlet from Lake Tana in the highlands of Ethiopia. Photo by Ondrej Zvácek/Creative Commons Earlier this month, the foreign ministers of Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia reached agreement on basic principles for managing what...
“Even as a waste disposal site, the world is finite.” —William R. Catton Jr. Post Carbon Fellow Bill Ryerson’s introduction to the new book OVERdevelopment, OVERpopulation, OVERshoot. MOST CONVERSATIONS ABOUT POPULATION begin with statistics—demographic data, fertility rates in this or that...
It’s getting harder and harder to separate nature’s role in disasters from our own, and the dire water predicament confronting São Paulo, Brazil, is no exception. But as with the ongoing drought in California, there are important lessons from...
When I’m not writing books or essays on environmental issues, or sleeping or eating, you’re likely to find me playing the violin. This has been an obsessive activity for me since I was a boy, and seems to deliver...