Living in Peace and Wisdom on our Planet

One of the most influential proponents of Peak Oil, Mr. Richard Heinberg discusses this topic and related sustainability issues in an extensive interview on the Ecological Options Network. Mr. Heinberg is an ecologist and author of Power Down, Peak Everything and a number of influential books concerning Peak Oil. See http://www.richardheinberg.com/books

Mr. Heinberg calls himself a realist, not a pessimist, in predicting what will happen as worldwide oil supplies continue to dwindle. And in fact, when asked, if he has to choose between pessimism and optimism, Mr. Heinberg selects optimism because "Peak Oil will cause the collapse of Human Kind and Industrialism, which will return the remaining humans and the Earth back to its pre-industrial natural balance."  Indeed, Heinberg offers a compelling perspective.

In this interview, Mr. Heinberg offers exhaustive detail concerning the history of energy and business growth and how they are interrelated – as the amount of energy is increased, the amount of productivity increases; without continued increases in energy we will see a decrease in productivity and growth. With India and China requiring more and more oil, supply will not meet demand causing severe shortages in the next 2 to 10 years. Some would argue with Oil trading at the $90 dollar per barrel level we are already seeing shortages, which are being met by higher prices, which is reducing demand slightly. A day will come, however, when there will simply not be enough oil to go around… and this has been known to cause tension and wars says Mr. Heinberg.

Mr. Heinberg talks extensively about oil and natural gas wars that can be caused by demand for the oil and natural gas far outstripping supply. With the world full of weapons, including chemical and nuclear, Mr. Heinberg fears that energy wars "could get quite ugly." In addition, alternate energy, coal, other energy resources, and population control are methodically discussed.

This interview gives a great overview of Peak Oil, Natural Gas, and Coal. Most importantly the video discusses life after Peak Oil, and how humans will have to adjust to survive. This video is frank in its detail concerning the difficulties that are ahead – and they are going to be very difficult indeed. 

One can absorb many salient statistics and analysis from Mr. Heinberg's interview.  There is, however, a unifying undercurrent to it all . . . Plan now before it is too late.