What's eating the economy? - web chat
3 years on from the worst economic crisis since the great depression and things are looking...well worse really. What is going on, and what actions should we be taking? Read our web chat with Nate and Richard.
Nate Hagens
Nate is a well-known authority on global resource depletion. Until recently he was lead editor of The Oil Drum, one of the most popular and highly-respected websites for analysis and discussion of global energy supplies and the future implications of energy decline. He is a board member of the Post Carbon Institute.
Nate's presentations address the opportunities and constraints we face in the transition away from fossil fuels. On the supply side, Nate focuses on biophysical economics (net energy) and the interrelationship between debt-based financial markets and natural resources. On the demand side, Nate addresses the evolution-derived underpinnings to conspicuous consumption, valuation of the present over the future, and habituation to resource overconsumption, and offers suggestions on how individuals and society can better adapt and mitigate to what's ahead.
Nate has appeared on PBS, BBC, and NPR, and has lectured around the world. He holds a Masters Degree in Finance from the University of Chicago and is currently completing his PhD in Natural Resources at the University of Vermont. Previously Nate was President of Sanctuary Asset Management and a Vice President at the investment firms Salomon Brothers and Lehman Brothers.
Richard Heinberg
Richard Heinberg is the author of ten books including:
- The End of Growth: Adapting to our New Economic Reality (June 2011)
- Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (2007)
- Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World (2004)
- The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003)
He is Senior Fellow-in-Residence of the Post Carbon Institute and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost Peak Oil educators. He has authored scores of essays and articles that have appeared in such journals as Nature, The Ecologist, The American Prospect, Public Policy Research, Quarterly Review, Z Magazine, Resurgence, The Futurist, European Business Review, Earth Island Journal, Yes!, Pacific Ecologist, and The Sun; and on web sites such as Alternet.org, EnergyBulletin.net, TheOilDrum.com, ProjectCensored.com, and Counterpunch.com.
He has appeared in many film and television documentaries, including Leonardo DiCaprio’s 11th Hour, and is a recipient of the M. King Hubbert Award for Excellence in Energy Education.
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