Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Despite three decades of COP climate talks and a boom in renewables, global emissions continue to rise, rooted in capitalism’s relentless drive to expand energy use. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations helps explain why clean energy has grown without pushing fossil fuels out.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) are being promoted as cheaper, safer, and faster to build than older nuclear plants, winning support from some environmentalists and a more pro‑nuclear public. Amid an energy crisis and soaring AI‑driven electricity demand, SMRs seem promising, but many critics, rightly, still see them as a dangerous dead end.
In the final part of this three-part interview series, Richard Heinberg reflects on decades of ignored warnings about energy descent and economic collapse, calling for a voluntary relocalization of economics and politics.
The war in Iran has made the paradox inescapable. The pursuit of energy security through fossil fuels produced the very disruption it was meant to prevent. Instead, the transition to renewables offers the genuine insulation that oil never can: from global price shocks, from the geopolitical risks embedded in that dependence, and from the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis.
In this interview with 15/15\15 magazine, Richard Heinberg argues that current transition strategies ignore a central reality: replacing fossil fuels is not enough without reducing overall energy use.
Twenty years after a global proposal to limit oil extraction, Richard Heinberg revisits its relevance in this interview and argues that equitable rationing may be key to reducing conflict and managing resource decline.
Join us for the free, online event “Chokepoint: The New Urgency of Ending Fossil Fuel Addiction” on May 6, 2026 with panelists Nate Hagens and Kumi Naidoo, and guest moderator, Gaya Herrington.
As sweeping deregulation accelerates under Donald Trump, long-standing nuclear safety regulations are being rolled back with little public scrutiny, raising new concerns about risks to both human health and the environment.
Would you rather have abundant and affordable energy or a clean, healthy planet where wildlife can flourish? It sounds like an either/or choice, but it doesn’t have to be.
Oil price manipulation is taking many forms after the closure of one of the world’s major choke points for oil transport sent oil prices higher.
Hence, the severe restrictions in the flow of oil though the Strait of Hormuz, resulting from the recent US-Iranian attacks, may be seen as a stark rehearsal for the consequences of a severe shock in the global oil supply, as might be experienced from a “peak oil” crisis, with volatile price spikes and supply chain disruptions.
This is the paradox both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are now navigating. The grey war they are waging — economically, culturally, through regional proxies — is a race to secure the post-oil future before the other does.
