Earth

The biophysical environment is the biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organisms, or population, and includes particularly the factors that have an influence in their survival, development and evolution.^[1] The naked term environment can make reference to different concepts, but it is often used as a short form for the biophysical environment. This practice is common, for instance, among governments, that usually name their departments and agencies dealing with the biophysical environment with denominations like Environment Agency. There is an infinite quantity of environments, because we can always consider an additional living organism, that has its own environment, never the less when we use the expression "the environment" we are talking about the global environment, and usually as referred to humanity. This is an example of an environmental video https://vimeo.com/41834370

Constituents[link]

The scope of the biophysical environment is all that contained in the biosphere, which is that part of the Earth in which all life occurs. A biophysical environment is the complex of biotic, climatic, and edaphic factors that act upon an organism and determine its form and survival, and morphs itself in the process. Ecosystems, of which there are numerous types and are a defined part of the biosphere, collectively make up the whole of the biosphere. Within an ecosystem there are habitats in which an organism (including human beings) exists. At its most natural state, an environment would lack any effects of human activity, although the scale of this activity is such that all areas of the Earth have had at least some influence by humans. At the other end of the scale is the built environment and in some cases it has the biotic component that is virtually absent.

The biophysical environment can vary in scale from microscopic to global in extent. They can also be subdivided according to their attributes. Some examples may be the marine environment, the atmospheric environment and the terrestrial environment.^[2]

Life/environment interaction[link]

Life has to be adapted to its environment conditions. Temperature, light, humidity, soil nutrients, etc, all this has an influence in the species that can inhabit a particular environment. But life is not passive, and its activity modifies in various forms the environment conditions. Some long term modifications along the history of our planet have been dramatic, like the incorporation of oxygen to the atmosphere. The process consisted in the break down of carbon dioxide by anaerobic microorganisms that used the carbon in their metabolism, and released the oxygen to the atmosphere, and thanks to this, plant and animal life, that need oxygen, could emerge (Great oxygenation event). Other interactions are more immediate and simple, like the effect that forest trees have in the smoothing of the temperature cycle, compared to non protected neighboring areas.

Environmental science[link]

Environmental science is the study of the interactions within the biophysical environment. Part of this scientific discipline is the investigation of the effect of human activity on the environment. Ecology, a sub-discipline of biology and a part of environmental sciences, is often mistaken as a study of human induced effects on the environment. Environmental studies is a broader academic discipline that is the systematic study of interaction of humans with their environment. It is a broad field of study that includes the natural environment, built environments and social environments.

Environmentalism is a broad social and philosophical movement that, in a large part, seeks to minimise or eliminate the effect of human activity on the biophysical environment. The issues of concern for environmentalists usually relate to the natural environment with the more important ones being climate change, species extinction, pollution and old growth forest loss.

See also[link]

	Environment portal
	Ecology portal

• Biophysics subject to the context
• List of conservation topics
• List of environmental issues
• Lists of environmental topics

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

Look up Environment in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Miller, G. Tyler (1995). Environmental science. California: Wadsworth. ISBN 0-534-21588-2. 

Look up environment in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Environment may refer to:

• Environment (biophysical), the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism
• Environment (systems), the surroundings of a physical system that may interact with the system by exchanging mass, energy, or other properties
• Environments (series), a series of LPs, cassettes and CDs depicting natural sounds
• Built environment, constructed surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging from the large-scale civic surroundings to the personal places
• Knowledge environment
• Social environment, the culture that an individual lives in, and the people and institutions with whom they interact

In computing:

• Desktop environment, in computing, the graphical user interface to the computer
• Environment variables, the dynamic set of variables defined in a process
• Integrated development environment, a type of computer software that assists computer programmers in developing software
• Runtime environment, a virtual machine state which provides software services for processes or programs while a computer is running
• In Functional programming, the environment is "a function which maps variable names on to their values" ^[1]
• In Unified Process the Environment discipline "refers to the tools and customizing the process for the project" ^[2]

Environmental may refer to:

• Environmental art
• Environmental determinism
• Environmental epidemiology
• Environmental health
• Environmental movement
• Environmental policy
• Environmental psychology
• Environmental quality
• Environmental science, the study of the interactions among the physical, chemical and biological components of the environment

Other

• Environment (film), a 1917 silent film

See also[link]

• Ambient (disambiguation)
• Category:Environment, for articles relating to the effect of human activity on the environment
• Ecology, a sub-discipline of biology often confused with the environment in general
• Environmentalism, a concern with the preservation of the environment
• Epidemiology
• List of environmental issues
• Natural landscape
• All pages beginning with "Environment"

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Richard in his garden ca. 2011
Born	1950
Occupation	Writer, educator, environmentalist
Language	English
Nationality	USA
Ethnicity	USA
Genres	non-fiction
Subjects	peak oil, resource depletion, sustainability
Notable work(s)	The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies
Spouse(s)	Janet Barocco
richardheinberg.com

Richard Heinberg is an American journalist and educator who has written extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion. He is the author of ten books. He serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

Career[link]

Heinberg, after two years in college and a period of personal study, became personal assistant to Immanuel Velikovsky in November 1979 and after Velikovsky's death assisted Mrs. Velikovsky editing manuscripts.^[1][2] He published his first book in 1989, Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age,^[3] which was the result of ten years of study of world mythology. An expanded second edition was published in 1995.^[4] He began publishing his alternative newsletter, the MuseLetter, in 1992. His next book was published in 1993: Celebrate the Solstice: Honoring the Earth's Seasonal Rhythms through Festival and Ceremony.^[5]

In June 1995, speaking to the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations in Dayton, Ohio, Heinberg provided "A Primitivist Critique of Civilization"^[6] and discussed the ways in which "We are, it would seem, killing the planet."

His books from the later 1990s address the relationships between humanity and the natural world. In 1998 he began teaching at New College of California.^{[citation needed]} 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.

In 2003, Heinberg published The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies, one of the first full-length analyses on the issue 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."

In February 2007 Heinberg addressed the Committee on International Trade of the European Parliament and served as an advisor to the National Petroleum Council in its report to the U.S. Secretary of Energy on Peak Oil. In October 2007 he addressed members of the New Zealand Parliament. In 2008 he was a Mayor’s appointed member of the Oil Independent Oakland 2020 Task Force (Oakland, California),^[7] which was convened to chart a path for the city to dramatically reduce its petroleum dependence.

Heinberg is now the Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute in Santa Rosa, California. He lives in Santa Rosa, California. He is also a violinist, illustrator and book designer. He is married to Janet Barocco.

Heinberg has proposed an international protocol to peak oil management with the aim of reducing the impact of the arrival of the peak.^[8] 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^[9] has been focused in a similar direction.

Heinberg is the editor of MuseLetter,^[10] which has been included in Utne Magazine’s annual list of Best Alternative Newsletters. He has appeared in the documentaries The End of Suburbia, The 11th Hour, Crude Impact, Oil, Smoke & Mirrors, Chasing God, What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire, The Great Squeeze, The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, A Farm for the Future and Ripe For Change.

Publications[link]

• 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) ISBN 978-0-8356-0746-9
• Cloning the Buddha: The Moral Impact of Biotechnology (1999; Indian edition, 2001; Japanese edition, 2001; Chinese edition, 2001)
• The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003; British, Italian, German, Spanish, and Arabic editions, 2004–2005; revised North American edition, 2005; Spanish edition, 2007; French edition, 2008)
• Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World (ISBN 9780865715103) (2004; British edition 2005)
• The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse (2006, ISBN 978-0-86571-563-9),
• Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (2007, ISBN 978-0-86571-598-1).
• Blackout: Coal, Climate, and the Last Energy Crisis (June, 2009). (ISBN 9780865716568)
• The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century’s Sustainability Crises, edited by Richard Heinberg & Daniel Lerch (2010) ISBN 978-0-9709500-6-2
• The End of Growth, (September 2011) ISBN 978-0-86571-695-7

See also[link]

• Oil depletion
• Peak oil
• Petrodollar warfare

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Richard Heinberg

• Post Carbon Institute
• Heinberg's personal website
• 2008 interview on Global Public Media Heinberg on Post Carbon Institute's Green New Deal
• OneWorldTV video interview with Richard Heinberg
• Interview: (October 21, 2006) The Oil Depletion Protocol
• Interview, July 2006
• Oil, Smoke & Mirrors Contains interviews with Heinberg discussing peak oil.
• Critique of Civilization Paper presented at the 24th annual meeting of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations, June 15, 1995.
• Peak Everything lecture on YouTube
• BLIND SPOT Documentary, Official Website.
• The End of Growth: Heinberg on the Keiser Report 2011 interview with Richard Heinberg

v t e Peak oil Core issues Peak oil Mitigation of peak oil Predicting the timing of peak oil Hubbert peak theory Olduvai theory Results/responses Hirsch report Rimini protocol Price of petroleum 2000s energy crisis Energy crisis Export Land Model Food vs. fuel Oil reserves Pickens Plan Simple living Swing producer Transition Towns People Albert Bartlett Colin J. Campbell David Goodstein John Michael Greer Richard Heinberg M. King Hubbert James Kunstler Jeremy Leggett Dale Allen Pfeiffer Richard Rainwater Matthew Simmons Richard C. Duncan Kenneth S. Deffeyes Books The End of Oil The Long Emergency Out of Gas The Party's Over Power Down Beyond Oil Films A Crude Awakening Collapse The End of Suburbia Oil Factor PetroApocalypse Now? How Cuba Survived Peak Oil What a Way to Go Gashole Organizations ASPO The Oil Drum Energy Watch Group ODAC OPEC OAPEC IEA Post Carbon Institute Other "peaks" Peak car Peak coal Peak copper Peak phosphorus Peak gas Peak uranium Peak water Peak wheat Peak wood