Post Carbon Fellow Richard Heinberg was quoted in this article about the recent After Fossil Fuels: The Next Economy conference in Oberlin, Ohio.

From the article:

Coal reserves are getting progressively more expensive to mine, noted Richard Heinberg, a fellow with the Post Carbon Institute in Santa Rosa, California. Unconventional petroleum resources are also expensive to extract and have been profitable only because interest rates have been kept low, he added.

“We extract fossil fuels using the low-hanging fruit principle,” Heinberg said. “What’s left ain’t worth much.”