Beyond Copenhagen – Now what?

By Richard Heinberg, originally published by EON – Ecological Options Network

February 8, 2010

Are current corporate-dominated international institutions inadequate to the task of meeting the multiple planetary survival challenges they themselves have helped create? As headlines proclaim that COP15 was a ‘catastrophe,’ that a global climate deal is ‘all but impossible in 2010,’ and progressive NGOs,’ “The forces trying to tackle climate change are in disarray, wandering in small groups around the battlefield like a beaten army,” according to one diplomat, Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute (postcarbon.org), talks about the factors contributing to the stalemate in the Copenhagen climate summit, the other ‘game ending’ challenges confronting the current economic system, and the bottom-up steps necessary to move to a post-carbon economy. Interviewed by EON’s James Heddle.

Richard Heinberg

Richard passed away unexpectedly in July 2026. Read this rememberance by Asher Miller.

Richard Heinberg was regarded as one of the world’s foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels. He was the author of fourteen books, including some of the seminal works on society’s current energy and environmental sustainability crisis. Richard was Senior Fellow of Post Carbon Institute for nearly twenty years.

Richard authored hundreds of essays and articles that have appeared in such journals as Nature and The Wall Street Journal; delivered hundreds of lectures on energy and climate issues to audiences on six continents; and was quoted and interviewed countless times for print, television, and radio. His monthly MuseLetter was published for 400 consecutive months starting in 1992, and was included in Utne Magazine’s annual list of Best Alternative Newsletters.

Full bio at postcarbon.org.

Tags: Building Community, Coal, Culture & Behavior, Electricity, Energy Policy, Fossil Fuels, Media & Communications, Natural Gas, Oil, Renewable Energy, Resource Depletion

Walter P. Reuther Library

Preserving labor history in the present, for the future

By Marianne Dhenin, YES! magazine

Labor activists take steps to preserve the documents and strategies they use today, so future organizers will have a practical guide.

September 8, 2026

labor union organizing

Unions have been down before, history shows how they can come back

By George Lakey, Waging Nonviolence

Two ways we can honor unions at this time of trial are to ask others to join union picket lines and to learn from their innovations and successes for whatever campaigns we are committed to today.

September 7, 2026

A realistic ‘energy transition’ is to get better at using less of it

By Richard Heinberg, Independent Media Institute

We must develop a realistic plan for energy descent, rather than clinging to naive fantasies of endless consumer abundance powered by alternatives to fossil fuels.

May 15, 2026

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