Richard Heinberg (born 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 twelve books. He serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.
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. He published his first book in 1989, Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age, which was the result of ten years of study of world mythology. An expanded second edition was published in 1995. 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.
In June 1995, speaking to the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations in Dayton, Ohio, Heinberg provided "A Primitivist Critique of Civilization" and discussed the ways in which "We are, it would seem, killing the planet."
I'm not sure that I will be very well-suited
To the new post-climate change society
It bothers me
I'm not sure that I have the tools to deal
With the complete collapse of the modern world
I'd be rooted
I burn easily
And my feet get sore when I walk barefoot
It's pathetic
I'd last two seconds
I'm not sure that I'd have a chance in a half-drowned,
post-technological world
I'm not sure that I know enough about bush tucker
Or how to get water from cactuses
Aren't they prickly or something
I've got no Indigenous friends
And I'm sure they'd get sussed
If I tried to buddy up to them at this late stage
They'd be onto me
I get bored quickly
If I couldn't stare at a screen all day
I'd have no purpose
I'd be a vegetable
I'm not sure that I'd have a chance in a DIY, make-
your-own-fun world
Even allowing for the possibility
That it might not be exactly like Mad Max
You can be sure that there'd still be a healthy amount
Of fighting marauders off
And I'm not much good
At fighting marauders off
I learnt this at my year twelve formal
I'm not sure that I have the upper body strength
To cope with all the rowing in an ocean-based world
I'd be completely at sea
And my word-smithery would fall on deaf ears
With the people with hats made of sheep skulls
Then they'd kill me
I'm not sure that there'd be a place for a fey, bookish
technophile
In a physically challenging, nomadic, foraging,