Richard William Heinberg (b. October 21, 1950) is an American journalist and educator who has written extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion. He is the author of 14 books, and presently serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.[1]
Heinberg grew up in St. Joseph, Missouri. His father, William Heinberg, was a chemist and high-school physics and chemistry teacher. Heinberg's interest in science came from his father, but at an early age, he rejected his parents' fundamentalist Christian beliefs. At one point he lived at Colorado's Sunrise Ranch, headquarters of the "Emissaries of Divine Light" group, which Heinberg referred to as "a sort of benign cult".[2]
After two years in college and a period of personal study, in November 1979 Heinberg became personal assistanttoImmanuel Velikovsky. After Velikovsky's death, Heinberg assisted his widow in editing manuscripts.[3][4] He published his first book in 1989, Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age,[5] which was the result of ten years of study of world mythology. An expanded second edition was published in 1995.[6] He began publishing his alternative newsletter, the MuseLetter, in 1992. His next book – published in 1993 – was Celebrate the Solstice: Honoring the Earth's Seasonal Rhythms through Festival and Ceremony.[7]
Heinberg has proposed an international protocol to peak oil management with the aim of reducing the impact of the arrival of the peak.[12] The adoption of the Protocol would mean that oil-importing nations should deal to reduce their importations in an annual percentage, while exporting countries should deal to reduce their exportations in the same percentage. The Uppsala Protocol[13] has been focused in a similar direction.
Heinberg serves on the advisory board of The Climate Mobilization, a grassroots advocacy group calling for a national economic mobilization against climate change on the scale of the home front during World War II, with the goal of 100% clean energy and net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.[16]
Heinberg is one of the more moderate commentators on peak oil (compared with others like James Howard Kunstler[17]).
Heinberg's books from the later 1990s address the relationships between humanity and the natural world. In 1998, he began teaching at New College of California[18] in the "Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community" program, which he helped design. He remained a member of the Core Faculty until 2007, when the College closed its doors. His book The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies, published in 2003, was one of the first full-length analyses of peak oil.
In 2004, Heinberg provided the closing address for the First US Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions. His title was "Beyond the Peak".
Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age (1989; revised edition, 1995; British edition, 1990; Portuguese edition, 1991)
Celebrate the Solstice: Honoring the Earth’s Seasonal Rhythms through Festival and Ceremony (1993; Italian edition, 2002; Portuguese edition, 2002)
A New Covenant with Nature: Notes on the End of Civilization and the Renewal of Culture (1996; Portuguese edition, 1998) ISBN978-0-8356-0746-9
Cloning the Buddha: The Moral Impact of Biotechnology (1999; Indian edition, 2001; Japanese edition, 2001; Chinese edition, 2001)
