Remembering Richard Heinberg: ‘Forever the empathetic observer and thinker’

David and Richard at The Yellow House, Kinsale, Ireland, June 2005. It is with great sadness that I acknowledge the death of a man who has perhaps done more than anyone else to alert the world to the predicament of declining oil and other fossil fuels in the fate of industrial civilisation. Richard Heinberg, aged 75, succumbed to pancreatic cancer two weeks after diagnosis, no doubt a shocking experience for his wife Janet Barocco and his colleagues at the Post Carbon Institute where Richard has been the senior fellow for nearly 20 years. My thoughts go out to those who were closest to Richard. I first met Richard in Kinsale, Ireland in 2005 where we both invited speakers at a small conference organised by local permaculture teacher and activist Rob Hopkins (who later became well known as the co-founder of the Transition Towns Movement). That conference ‘Fuelling the Future’ included local luminaries such as Colin Campbell, the retired petroleum geologists who helped trigger the wave of awareness about Peak Oil that itself peaked a few years later, after the Global Financial Crisis. David Holmgren is best known as the co-originator of the permaculture concept. He lives with his partner Su Dennett at Melliodora, their permaculture demonstration site in Hepburn, Central Victoria. Tags: Richard Heinberg Related Articles 'SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.ID FROM wp_posts LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships ON (wp_posts.ID = wp_term_relationships.object_id) WHERE 1=1 AND wp_posts.ID NOT IN (4033921) AND ( wp_term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id IN (5,8990) ) AND wp_posts.post_type = \'post\' AND ((wp_posts.post_status = \'publish\')) GROUP BY wp_posts.ID ORDER BY wp_posts.post_date DESC LIMIT 0, 3' Fake shopping apps, anti-vaxx dating sites and business as usual through climate disasters are stark reminders of the surreal lengths we’ll go to preserve a sense of normality, and how readily corporations will profit from it. I’ll never forget it. My family and I had just arrived in San Francisco in 2024 to begin a long tour with my podcast. I immediately reached out to Richard and was welcomed with the kindness that characterised him as much as his work.