Green Illusions - Wikipedia

Green Illusions - Wikipedia



Green Illusions
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Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism (ISBN 978-0-8032-3775-9), by Ozzie Zehner, 

was published in 2012 by the University of Nebraska Press. 

It discusses various approaches to "clean energy", and why they do not provide the desired benefits. The author writes: "We don’t have an energy crisis. We have a consumption crisis."[1] 

Green Illusions argues that perceived solutions to climate change, such as solar cells, wind turbines, and electric cars, are better understood as illusions that people and groups use to convince themselves that they can be sustainable without reducing material consumption and overall human numbers over time, especially in wealthy countries. [2] The book generated significant controversy upon its publication leading to sections being censored in the United State and resulting in death threats to the author. [3] [4] However, the book was chosen by Goodreads users as a top-ten non-fiction book. [5] It also won the Northern California Book Award and Nautilus Award. [6] The author is co-producing a film on the subject entitled, Planet of the Humans.[7]
Green Illusions is broken into two distinct parts. 

Part I is a current history and investigation into why people believe renewable energy technologies will benefit humanity and the planet, and why that belief system is highly suspect and even detrimental despite the fact that fossil fuels yield negative consequences as well. [8] 

Part II proposes several dozen first steps as alternatives to alternative energy, which the author sees as holding greater potential for addressing environmental challenges. [9] In successive chapters, it discusses solar cells, wind power, biofuels, nuclear power, hydrogen power, coal power, hydropower, alternative energy, green investment, population control, consumption, architecture, carbon taxes, environmental education.

Writing in the Huffington Post, Tom Zeller Jr. calls the author a provocateur. He cites Chris Meehan, who called his view of photovoltaics "alarmist" and "misleading", and he cites Nick Chambers, who called his view of electric vehicles "ridiculous". However, Zeller writes that Zehner cites a "2010 lifecycle analysis" by the National Academy of Sciences as a basis for evaluating the "aggregate environmental damage" from an electric car.[10]

Writing for The Tyee, Justin Ritchie points to a fundamental question: "in a world of limited decisions, is it really smart to subsidize marginally effective mitigation strategies of our car culture, suburbia and overpopulation without addressing the root causes?"[11]

All copies of the book sold in the United States were self-censored due to food libel laws that enable the food industry to sue journalists and authors who criticize their products.

See also[edit]

Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future (2006 book)
Fossil-fuel phase-out
References[edit]

^ Review by Ozzie Zehner at Goodreads
^ [1] by conscioused.org
^ [2] by University of British Columbia
^ [3] by Wikimedia Commons
^ [4] by Seattle Public Library
^ [5] by KQED
^ [6] by Non-Fiction Film
^ [7] by conscioused.org
^ [8] by conscioused.org
^ Review by Tom Zeller Jr. in the Huffington Post, July 27, 2012
^ Review by Justin Ritchie in The Tyee, September 27, 2012

External links[edit]

Website for the book
Categories:
2012 non-fiction books
Books about energy issues
Non-fiction books about consumerism
Renewable energy

Clean energy won’t save us – only a new economic system can | Working in development | The Guardian

Clean energy won’t save us – only a new economic system can | Working in development | The Guardian

Clean energy won’t save us – only a new economic system can
This article is more than 3 years oldJason Hickel


It’s time to pour our creative energies into imagining a new global economy. Infinite growth is a dangerous illusion
@jasonhickel

Fri 15 Jul 2016 21.00 AESTLast modified on Thu 15 Feb 2018 04.58 AEDT




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Comments377 ‘That 30% chunk of greenhouse gases that comes from non-fossil fuel sources isn’t static. It is adding more to the atmosphere each year.’ Photograph: Ashley Cooper/Global Warming Images/Alamy


Earlier this year media outlets around the world announced that February had broken global temperature records by a shocking amount. March broke all the records too. In June, our screens were covered with surreal images of flooding in Paris, the Seine bursting its banks and flowing into the streets. In London, floods sent water pouring into the tube system right in the heart of Covent Garden. Roads in south-east London became rivers two metres deep.

With such extreme events becoming more commonplace, few deny climate change any longer. Finally, a consensus is crystallising around one all-important fact: fossil fuels are killing us. We need to switch to clean energy, and fast.

This growing awareness about the dangers of fossil fuels represents a crucial shift in our consciousness. But I can’t help but fear we’ve missed the point. As important as clean energy might be, the science is clear: it won’t save us from climate change.


What would we do with 100% clean energy? Exactly what we’re doing with fossil fuels

Let’s imagine, just for argument’s sake, that we are able to get off fossil fuels and switch to 100% clean energy. There is no question this would be a vital step in the right direction, but even this best-case scenario wouldn’t be enough to avert climate catastrophe.


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Why? Because the burning of fossil fuels only accounts for about 70% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The remaining 30% comes from a number of causes. Deforestation is a big one. So is industrial agriculture, which degrades the soils to the point where they leach CO2. Then there’s industrial livestock farming which produces 90m tonnes of methane per year and most of the world’s anthropogenic nitrous oxide. Both of these gases are vastly more potent than CO2 when it comes to global warming. Livestock farming alone contributes more to global warming than all the cars, trains, planes and ships in the world. Industrial production of cement, steel, and plastic forms another major source of greenhouse gases, and then there are our landfills, which pump out huge amounts of methane – 16% of the world’s total.

FacebookTwitterPinterest Jeffrey’s Bay wind farm in South Africa. Photograph: Nic Bothma/EPA
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When it comes to climate change, the problem is not just the type of energy we are using, it’s what we’re doing with it. What would we do with 100% clean energy? Exactly what we are doing with fossil fuels: raze more forests, build more meat farms, expand industrial agriculture, produce more cement, and fill more landfill sites, all of which will pump deadly amounts of greenhouse gas into the air. We will do these things because our economic system demands endless compound growth, and for some reason we have not thought to question this.

Forget 'developing' poor countries, it's time to 'de-develop' rich countries
Jason Hickel

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Think of it this way. That 30% chunk of greenhouse gases that comes from non-fossil fuel sources isn’t static. It is adding more to the atmosphere each year. Scientists project that our tropical forests will be completely destroyed by 2050, releasing a 200bn tonne carbon bomb into the air. The world’s topsoils could be depleted within just 60 years, releasing more still. Emissions from the cement industry are growing at more than 9% per year. And our landfills are multiplying at an eye-watering pace: by 2100 we will be producing 11m tonnes of solid waste per day, three times more than we do now. Switching to clean energy will do nothing to slow this down.


If we keep growing at 3% a year, that means that every 20 years we need to double the size of the global economy

The climate movement made an enormous mistake. We focused all our attention on fossil fuels, when we should have been pointing to something much deeper: the basic logic of our economic operating system. After all, we’re only using fossil fuels in the first place to fuel the broader imperative of GDP growth.

The root problem is the fact that our economic system demands ever-increasing levels of extraction, production and consumption. Our politicians tell us that we need to keep the global economy growing at more than 3% each year – the minimum necessary for large firms to make aggregate profits. That means every 20 years we need to double the size of the global economy – double the cars, double the fishing, double the mining, double the McFlurries and double the iPads. And then double them again over the next 20 years from their already doubled state.
FacebookTwitterPinterest Current projections show that by 2040 we will more than double the world’s shipping miles, air miles, and trucking miles. Photograph: Feature China/Barcroft Images
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Our more optimistic pundits claim that technological innovations will help us to de-couple economic growth from material throughput. But sadly there is no evidence that this is happening. Global material extraction and consumption has grown by 94% since 1980, and is still going up. Current projections show that by 2040 we will more than double the world’s shipping miles, air miles, and trucking miles – along with all the material stuff that those vehicles transport – almost exactly in keeping with the rate of GDP growth.

The pope v the UN: who will save the world first?
Jason Hickel, Martin Kirk, Joe Brewer

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Clean energy, important as it is, won’t save us from this nightmare. But rethinking our economic system might. GDP growth has been sold to us as the only way to create a better world. But we now have robust evidence that it doesn’t make us any happier, it doesn’t reduce poverty, and its “externalities” produce all sorts of social ills: debt, overwork, inequality, and climate change. We need to abandon GDP growth as our primary measure of progress, and we need to do this immediately – as part and parcel of the climate agreement that will be ratified in Morocco later this year.

It’s time to pour our creative power into imagining a new global economy – one that maximises human wellbeing while actively shrinking our ecological footprint. This is not an impossible task. A number of countries have already managed to achieve high levels of human development with very low levels of consumption. In fact Daniel O’Neill, an economist at the University of Leeds, has demonstrated that even material de-growth is not incompatible with high levels of human well-being.

Our focus on fossil fuels has lulled us into thinking we can continue with the status quo so long as we switch to clean energy, but this is a dangerously simplistic assumption. If we want to stave off the coming crisis, we need to confront its underlying cause.

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The Green Power Illusion - Resilience

The Green Power Illusion - Resilience

THE GREEN POWER ILLUSION
By Bill Henderson, originally published by Energy Bulletin
April 8, 2009

America is finally showing leadership on climate change. But unfortunately the Obama Administration and the majority of US climate change activists haven’t learned very important lessons from the peak oil debate and look to be leading the world down an illusory path.

The climate-energy problem needs solution now – not by mid-century. Peakists know that green power – renewable energy: wind, solar, etc – will take many decades to scale up and will never replace fossil fuels to repower America as a consumer-based, car sprawl economy. Therefor green power – even promise of 100% of electrification generation with green power in ten years – is no more a climate change solution than clean coal. Green power and clean coal are lies we tell ourselves because we are in denial about our future and don’t want to even consider needed but daunting substantive change.

Powering down and relocalization are instead the key steps on the path to a healthy American future beginning an immediate reduction of fossil fuel use. Keeping dirty coal and oil sands dirty oil in the ground is the necessary first step to mitigating the emergency danger of going over a tipping point to runaway climate change.

But to even those who understand that we must get back under 350 ppm fast, the American lifestyle remains non-negotiable, and so the Obama Admin and the nations leading climate change activists and pundits have all been seduced by the dream of a technofix.

The Arctic is melting; the era of cheap oil is over; the Obama bounce will become a dead cat bounce as oil price spikes with renewed demand – time for a Secretary of Transition to get serious about the Energy-Climate Era.

In Confronting Its Biggest Foe, Green Movement Also Fights Itself
Jeffrey Ball, WSJ Power Shift Blog
The modern environmental movement is having an identity crisis. Staring down its biggest enemy yet, it’s fiercely divided over how to beat it.

The global challenge of climate change is tougher than the localized problems the green movement has spent decades fighting. To some environmentalists, it requires chucking old orthodoxies and getting practical. To others, it demands an old-style moral crusade.

The pragmatists have the upper hand. One sign is that the movement is moving beyond small-scale backyard wind turbines and rooftop solar panels. It’s calling for technological change at industrial speed and scale — sometimes to the detriment of local ecologies….

Nothing underscores the green movement’s soul-searching more than its conflicted view of coal, which provides about half the world’s electricity. Should society pour billions of dollars into trying to perfect a way to turn coal into electricity without emitting greenhouse gases? Or should it reject coal as inalterably dirty and try to replace it entirely with renewable sources like the wind and sun?
(3 April 2009)

Obama gives the best clean energy and global warming solutions job to Cathy Zoi
Joseph Romm, Climate Progress (also at Grist)

Cathy Zoi, CEO of Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, has been nominated by President Obama to serve as Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE) under Energy Secretary Steven Chu…

So we know Zoi gets energy efficiency. Here’s what she wrote last year about “ Embracing the Challenge to Repower America“:

Many Americans have a hard time thinking about our energy future, largely because their energy present is so challenging. With gasoline prices hovering near $4 per gallon and rising energy bills at home and at work, our economy is struggling with the burden of imported oil and reliance on fossil fuels. The need to satisfy the nation’s oil appetite has shaped our foreign and defense postures, and is a primary reason for our current entanglements overseas. Extreme weather here in the U.S. has us feeling uneasy. And the scientists remind us more urgently every week about the mounting manifestations of the climate crisis.

To solve these problems, we must repower our economy. Fast.

Vice President Gore has issued a challenge for us to do just that: Generate 100 percent of America’s electricity from truly clean sources that do not contribute to global warming ­ and do so within 10 years. It is an ambitious but attainable goal. American workers, businesses and families are up to it.
(28 March 2009)

Message To Cathy And Repower America: Green Power Is Not A Climate Change Solution
Bill Henderson, Countercurrents
I keep getting these e-mails from Cathy Zoi. They are all the same: green power is good, green power is jobs; clean electricity within 10 years; you can make a difference by joining our petition for clean cars or the green stimulus package or cap and trade, etc. But she always implies that green power, clean cars, or cap and trade are solutions to climate change and although I tried to e-mail her back asking why she is mis-educating Americans at such a crucial time she never replied. So:

Hey Cathy Zoi and Repower America,

Climate change is an immediate tipping point danger. There is no time to develop green power as a mitigation solution. 7% of the world’s population (us) are causing this humanity threatening problem. We need to get serious about climate change, seek treatment for our addictions and radically reduce our emissions. We can’t remain in New Denial. Why are you using weasel words like the coal industry? They pretend that we can use technology like carbon capture and storage (CCS) when it hasn’t been developed, won’t be practical for decades if ever, instead of doing what we have to do. Which is stop our use of coal and dirty oil like Alberta’s oilsands immediately. (And when CCS is a practical reality then we can burn these fossil fuels again.)
(17 March 2009)

The fierce urgency of now
Bill McKibben, Toronto Star (Also at Common Dreams)
Yes, windmills and dams deface the landscape but the climate crisis demands immediate action.

Watching the backlash against clean energy projects build in Canada has moved me to think about what Americans have learned from facing this same problem. I have been thinking and writing for several years about overcoming conflict-avoidance and the importance of standing up for “Big Truths” even at the price of criticizing fellow environmentalists.

It’s not that I’ve developed a mean streak. It’s that the environmental movement has reached an important point of division, between those who truly get global warming, and those who don’t.

By get, I don’t mean understanding the chemistry of carbon dioxide, or the importance of the Kyoto Protocol, or those kinds of things – pretty much everyone who thinks of themselves as an environmentalist has reached that point. By get, I mean understanding that the question is of transcending urgency, that it represents the one overarching global civilizational challenge that humans have ever faced.

In the U.S., there are all manner of fights to stop or delay every imaginable low-carbon technology. Wind, solar, run-of-river hydro – these are precisely the kinds of renewable energy that every Earth Day speech since 1970 has trumpeted. But now they are finally here – now that we’re talking about particular projects in particular places – people aren’t so keen.
(25 March 2009)

Bill McKibben and the Technofixers’ Tragic Myopia
Jan Lundberg, Culture Change

Like all the global-warming commentators who between them get almost all the press that’s not pro-fossil fuels, Bill McKibben is trapped in the faulty logic of the technofix. To understand the pseudo-green vision, read McKibben’s recent essay “The Fierce Urgency of Now” that appeared in the Toronto Star and the Common Dreams website (and below).

McKibben says in his March 25, 2009 essay, as he has repeated many times, that the number 350 (parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) is the goal of our time. Yes, if we don’t manage it we’re all cooked. But it’s in the implementation-scheme that we must not be manipulated and tragically misled.

McKibben says we must “reverse the fossil fuel economy”, but we must END the fossil fuel economy. Now — not in “ten years.” The fossil fuel economy is collapsing anyway, and since it has no future — due to the workings of petrocollapse (discussed in this column innumerable times) — it must be shut down by grassroots action. This will take the form of community survival strategies, not government policy initiatives or green venture capitalism.

For McKibben to advocate a “clean energy” transition to a green consumer economy without a fundamental culture change means several things. One is that he does not “get” peak oil or the impossibility of replacing the petroleum infrastructure. Another major error on his part is his corporate position of better cars being the answer; rather, they are the threat. If we waste time on this scam that does not promise to save energy or lives, then McKibben may as well be campaigning for 460 ppm instead of 350. Let us briefly excoriate the corporate news media that is much more friendly to the technofix trap than to fundamental change:
(30 March 2009)
Collapse promises serious emission reduction IF all the world’s economies collapse together but is that likely? In a world full of armaments and remaining fossil fuels a quiet descent to relocalized arcadia is more than a little naive. And what cultural treasures do we lose? A controlled descent is preferable to a spiral to chaos but not a choice so long as ‘Yes we can’ remains an ad for yesterday’s American Dream. -BH



UPDATE (April 19, 2009) Jan Lundberg writes:

Review of Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism by Ozzie Zehner

Review of Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism by Ozzie Zehner



Spring 2013 



Review of 

Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean
Energy and the Future of Environmentalism

by Ozzie
Zehner 



Jonathan Hladik
Center for Rural Affairs 



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Part of the American Studies Commons, and the Geography Commons
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It
has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences by an authorized administrator of
DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln.
Hladik, Jonathan, "Review of Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism by Ozzie Zehner"
(2013). Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences. 1291.
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsresearch/1291
82 



Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and
the Future of Environmentalism. By Ozzie Zehner. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2012. xx + 437 pp. Illustrations,
photographs, tables, notes, index. $29.95 paper. 



As we grapple with climate change and pollution, resource scarcity and rising prices, it's clear we need to make difficult choices
about our energy consumption. In the opinion of many, the solution begins and ends with increased investment in renewable
energy systems, an investment that will help us cut back on
emissions and lower prices-while creating economic opportunity here at home. Ozzie Zehner doesn't share that opinion.
His critique of modem American environmentalism in Green
Illusions maintains that many of us could be wrong.
Zehner begins by addressing the seductive nature of renewable energy systems, dissecting popularly circulated solutions,
and arguing that we are nowhere close to finding a technology
capable of moving us past the fossil-fuel-intensive lifestyle
we've chosen. From solar panels to wind farms, biofuels to clean
coal, he shows that each "solution" isn't a solution at all. In fact,
each is part of the problem.
His deconstruction of the industry helps to make sense of
our affinity for renewable energy. He points to popular media
Great Plains Research Vol. 23 No.1, 2013
and mainstream environmentalism as CUlprits busy selling the
renewable energy ideal to an unversed public while ignoring numerous options that could be far more effective in confronting
climate change. He points out that alternative energy production
expands energy supplies, placing downward pressure on prices,
which spurs demand, entrenches energy-intensive modes ofliving, and finally brings us right back to where we started-high
demand and so-called insufficient supply.
It takes some time to get there, but Zehner eventually begins
to spell out a series of options that help us look at energy in a
brand new way. He touches on energy-efficient lighting, walkable communities, and suburban sprawl. He offers practical
solutions readily available to average homeowners seeking to
minimize energy use in their day-to-day lives. He then points
to some of the many causes of our energy-intensive lifestyle that
aren't often discussed. Examples include commercials aimed at
children, corporate influence trumping citizen representation,
measurements of the nation's health in dollars rather than well
being, and media concerned with advertising over insight.
Green Illusions commendably illustrates the importance of
energy to our everyday lives. Almost every decision we makefrom where we live to where we work, to what we eat and how
we seek entertainment-provides an opportunity to choose
between an energy-intensive lifestyle and one more mindful of
consequences.
Zehner is right to suggest that this problem won't necessarily be solved by the same productivist mentality that got us here
in the first place. But it's fair to argue that he uses this opportunity to dismiss renewable technologies far too quickly. The need
to change the way we think about energy doesn't alter the fact
that we need at least some energy, both now and in the future.
And where will that energy come from? Should we give up on
renewable resources simply because they won't by themselves
solve our energy problems?
It's true we can focus on saving energy, or on better policies that will conserve energy, but we can't pretend that we can
quit consumption cold turkey. Our energy has to come from
somewhere. Zehner comes dangerously close to implying that
as long as we boost efficiency and create policies that lead to less
energy use and more conservation, the coal-intensive status quo
is acceptable.
But continually burning coal to meet our energy needs is
not acceptable. The conversation cannot be about replacing
conventional resources wholesale; it needs to be about diversification and moving away from those that are most harmful. We
may minimize our need for electricity, but we aren't going to
eliminate it entirely. Though they may not be perfect, renewable
energy technologies will play an important role in providing our
minimum energy needs. They can be improved upon, but they
can't be dismissed.
In the end, Green Illusions asks more questions than it answers, which is a good thing. It's imperative that we spend more
time considering the energy issues that really matter, not those
being foisted upon us through mainstream media and other
Book Reviews
facets of popular culture. As a nation, we have hard decisions
before us. We need to find actual, tangible solutions that will
make a real difference. Our path begins with critical thinking
and informed choices. This book helps us get started. 



JONATHAN HLADIK
Center for Rural Affairs
Lyons, Nebraska 

Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age: Richard W. Heinberg: 9780874775150: Amazon.com: Books

Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age: Richard W. Heinberg: 9780874775150: Amazon.com: Books






Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age Hardcover – April 1, 1989
by Richard W. Heinberg (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 7 ratings


Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Reading that Heinberg had edited two manuscripts by Immanuel Velikovsky might make one skeptical about this book, but Heinberg makes his arguments fairly and does not attempt to draw conclusions far afield from his data. Even if his arguments do not convince, they make one think. He posits that "the memory of Paradise represents an innate and universal longing for a state of being that is natural and utterly fulfilling, but from whichwe have somehow excluded ourselves." Drawing on ideas from Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade, he combines religion, literary criticism, anthropology, archaeology, and mythology into a New Age vision that makes the concept of Paradise meaningful in the modern world. 
Highly recommended for any library with New Age readers.
- Lucy Patrick, Florida State Univ. Lib., Tallahassee
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Product details

Hardcover: 282 pages
Publisher: Tarcher (April 1, 1989)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0874775159
ISBN-13: 978-0874775150



Customer reviews
4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
7 customer ratings


5 star 67%
4 star 33%





Top Reviews

S Graves
5.0 out of 5 stars A Unique and Insightful VoiceReviewed in the United States on September 12, 2014
Verified Purchase
This is a fantastic book and very well written. There is literally no other book like it, in this particular realm. It has been indispensable for my research. I would call it "the hero with a thousand faces" for garden paradise myths - it's that good. Hats off to Mr. Heinberg for his wonderful contribution to our collective consciousness...

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Didaskalex
4.0 out of 5 stars The Shadowy Realms of Past and FutureReviewed in the United States on October 20, 2006

"The fruit of that forbidden tree ... brought death into the world, and all our woe ... till one greater Man restore us." John Milton

Paradise Lost:

This above line from Paradise Lost, an epic by John Milton, gives an excellent summary of Genesis 3, which adds enhancing imagery, though a few unnecessary elements are included.

Many legends have paradise myths which even refer to a specific place, a lost Utopia land, a sunken island or a great isolated oasis as the lost paradise of humankind. Of which the author mentioned the lost Shambhala, as a mystical hidden kingdom protected behind snowy peaks, located somewhere to the north, as pictured in the Tibetan legend. Tibetan sages and Western discoverers have looked everywhere for Shambhala - from the Gobi Desert to the North Pole. Geoffrey Ashe alleges that the fantasy of a lost paradise began in northern Asia some 25,000 years ago, within a goddess-worshipping cult. The book is impressive, well researched, on a wide range subjects from Ancient Mediterranean mythology to Indo-European philology.

The paradise myths:

The account of Satan's (Lucifer's) rebellion and fall from heaven with all his followers takes up a major portion of the plot of Paradise Lost. The Biblical sources of this occurrence are brief, but early church writings had fleshed out these lines by the time Milton began composing his epic. The Great Traditions of which the paradise myth is a part tells us that there has been a succession of world ages. Our era is not the only one in which people have grasped at Promethean powers. Civilizations have come and gone; like the others, ours too will pass away. But the greater story continues.

Utopian Paradise?

If we are to imagine any paradise, at all, we should locate it in the future, not the past, argues the author. Other people object that, even if the paradise myth makes us feel good, it is pure wishful thinking; there is no evidence that such a condition ever actually existed. The assumption at the heart of this view is that paradise must refer to a perfect, unblemished state. Given that definition, I would agree. It is indeed preposterous to suppose that there was a time when there was no suffering of any kind, when whatever one wished for immediately became reality. The historical paradise, if it existed, was almost certainly not perfect in this absolute sense. There have been times when human society will strive more for material simplicity and spiritual depth than for wealth and power.

Visions of Paradise:
Heinberg, explores the realms of myth and prophecy, analyzing paradise tradition parallels, in the line of Eliade and Campbell's exploration of the mythical dreams, linking them to a state of recollection of infancy, or an accidental meditation through a near-death-experience. This lost homeland of a far forgotten civilization, a blissfull dream before the emergence of civilization. Each of these consciousness centered interpretations proposed by the author himself may seem to have some applicable validity. At lectures and in discussions, Heinberg mentions, he still often encounters the idea that it's psychologically, and philosophically wrongheaded to look back to an imaginary time in the past when life was somehow better. If we are to imagine any paradise, at all, we should locate it in the future, not the past. However he proposes that this thinking methodology is linked to modernism. The industrial civilization, disapproval of the paradise myth was essential to the purposes of which substituted for the universal, ancient belief in a lost Golden Age the idea continual progress from a primitive origins. Among traditional peoples, the paradise myth appears to implant a feeling of security and stability; it is perhaps the cultural equivalent of the memory of loving parents and a happy childhood. The human evolution from barbarism may well serve the purposes of a material civilization that continually destroys social bonds in order to rebuild a society that serves the interests of a capitalist elite.

A state of consciousness:

Heinberg combined religious mythology fables, applied literary criticism, with tools of both anthropology and archaeology, but arrived in the end at a New Age concept of Paradise.

Ten years ago, recalls Richard Heinberg, "I was hard at work on what would be my first book, Memories and Visions of Paradise. ... In the book, I explored how the paradise myth may refer to a state of consciousness ..., a recollection of infancy, a forgotten civilization, a time prior to devastating world cataclysms, a lost homeland, or the era before the emergence of civilization itself. It was published in 1989, and since then I have periodically looked back on it to see how my thinking has changed and how much I've learned."

An Expert's review:

"..., but Heinberg makes his arguments fairly and does not attempt to draw conclusions far afield from his data. Even if his arguments do not convince, they make one think. He posits that "the memory of Paradise represents an innate and universal longing for a state of being that is natural and utterly fulfilling, ..." Lucy Patrick, Florida State Univ.

8 people found this helpful

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Dr. Gushtunkinflup
5.0 out of 5 stars Phenomenal work!!!Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2014

Brilliantly written and incredible food for thought. Heinberg is an amazing writer.

It goes very well with Tony Wrights book, Return to the Brain of Eden, which documents how fruit biochemistry may have been a key part in this "golden age", and humanities subsequent decline in consciousness once we left this forest symbiosis.

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anonymous
4.0 out of 5 stars Unique, entertaining and interesting.Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2015

Many civilizations have had images of a lost paradise. Heinberg draws on history, anthropology and religion with inspiration from Immanuel Velikovsky and help from Jung and Joseph Campbell to pump meaning into the idea of a lost golden age.

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Roz Bachl
5.0 out of 5 stars What a beauty!Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2019
Verified Purchase
This book is such a treat, it takes you to the place we all remember, if we allow it, deep within our souls - that of Paradise. Written in four parts, Memory, Vision, Search and Return it flows without effort. This book is mentioned in Jeremy Griffith's book Freedom, which is why I brought it in the first place and although Freedom offers THE answer to how we can properly return to the Paradise we once knew as a species, Richard Heinberg's book gives amazing insight as to how this 'memory' is actually a world wide phenomenon. Its a well researched, well written book - in fact a beauty! Enjoy


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Chris Newman
5.0 out of 5 stars BrilliantReviewed in the United Kingdom on June 3, 2010
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Since writing this book, Richard Heinberg has become well known as a writer and speaker on environmental issues and on the consequences of endless economic growth. This earlier book is of a somewhat different but not disassociated genre. Instead of looking forwards towards the end of the fossil fuel age, Heinberg looks back towards the beginnings of human experience about which all that we know comes to us through myth and legend. 

However, instead of dismissing the value or relevance of these pre-historic relics as most of us tend to do, Heiberg discovers that almost every culture, present and past, and covering every continent of the world, carries with it similar legends, all telling a story about a paradisal world that humans once inhabited, and of a "fall" whereafter we were condemned to a life of labour and hardship. Each culture's legends differ in detail but all are based on the same consistent theme, causing Heinberg to question whether the human mind is simply programmed to think this way, or whether all human cultures carry a common inherited "memory" of a distant past. He speculates that perhaps these paradisal stores recall the time when humans were hunter-gatherers, free of notions about property or possessions and of the greed and jealousies that they inspire. Furthermore he presents evidence that the lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors may not have been so brutish and short as we nowadays tend to believe, and that their quality of life may have been much richer and fulfilling than we might imagine.

The book is full of fascinating insights and anecdotes. One of particular appeal is a quotation from Ovid written around 8AD which laments humanity's loss of its original Golden condition: "..... And the land, hitherto a common possession like the light of the sun and the breezes, the careful surveyor now marked out with long-drawn boundary lines. Not only were corn and needful foods demanded of the rich soil, but men bored into the bowels of the earth, and the wealth she had hidden and covered with Stygian darkness was dug up, an incentive to evil. And now noxious iron and gold more noxious still were produced: and these produced war - for wars are fought with both - and rattling weapons were hurled by bloodstained hands."

For me though, the concluding chapters offered the most remarkable insights where Heinberg looks forward to the future and how all human cultures share a belief in a return to paradise either on earth or after death. Heinberg's exploration of these beliefs reach some startling conclusions - startling to me, at any rate, in that they more effectively challenge my own thinking on such matters than any religious (or anti-religious) text has ever done.

The book is as valid today as it was when it was written and deserves to be republished.
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A New Covenant With Nature: Notes on the End of Civilization and the Renewal of Culture: Heinberg, Richard: 9780835607469: Amazon.com: Books

A New Covenant With Nature: Notes on the End of Civilization and the Renewal of Culture: Heinberg, Richard: 9780835607469: Amazon.com: Books






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A New Covenant With Nature: Notes on the End of Civilization and the Renewal of Culture Hardcover – November 25, 1996
by Richard Heinberg (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars 3 ratings




Editorial Reviews

Review
A New Covenant With Nature addresses such vital questions as "Has modern civilization really improved human life?"; "Is money evil?"; "Is government necessary?"; and "What can we each do to renew our connection with all that is wild, generative, and free?". Ecophilosopher Richard Heinberg"s A New Covenant With Nature is a radical and thought-provoking book providing perception and refreshing insight with wit, insight, and well articulated observations. Each culture, Heinberg shows, makes a covenant or agreement with nature. Our culture's agreement is obviously crumbling. If we are to create a new covenant, we must begin by rethinking the gives of society from the ground up, or even, quietly, desert the existing social system and help birth a better. one. A New Covenant With Nature is fascinating, thoughtful, and thought-provoking reading. A "must" for anyone concerned with the problems of the impact on ecology by 20th century industrial, cultural, and political values. -- Midwest Book Review


Product details

Hardcover: 230 pages
Publisher: Quest Books; 1st Quest ed edition (November 25, 1996)
Language: English
Biography
Richard Heinberg is the author of eleven books including:

Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future (2013)
The End of Growth: Adapting to our New Economic Reality (2011)
Blackout: Coal, Climate, and the Last Energy Crisis (2009)
Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (2007)
The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse (2006)
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 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.

More information about Richard can be found on his website: richardheinberg.com

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Top Reviews

Jeffrey Funk
5.0 out of 5 stars A new covenant with natureReviewed in the United States on November 30, 2008
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Richard Heinberg is perhaps better known for his work on Peak Oil and resource depletion, but this 1996 work which fits more broadly into the realm of cultural ecology is terrifically insightful and urgently important today, in 2008. It approaches the subject of civilization from anthropological and spiritual perspectives that are both moving and brilliant. Highly recommended.

5 people found this helpful

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ideas equate
5.0 out of 5 stars Broad-range discussion, totally grounded on fundamental questions.Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2005

So broad yet rightly detailed -- a rare combination in modern writing.

The book cannot be simplified into one idea, but the big question seems to be, are our cultural choices inhuman and even worse?

Clearly and sincerely written, so that anyone anywhere on the spectrum of opinion can appreciate the thoughts and motivations of the writer.

6 people found this helpful

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Matthew Kruvczuk
1.0 out of 5 stars More Hippie ClaptrapReviewed in the United States on December 12, 2007

This is just one more in a line of books that put forward no original ideas, but simply decries our interaction with the earth and suggests that something needs to be done. It suggests that the indigenous people of the world were right and we are all wrong.

It addresses serious problems, but does not provide any practical or novel contributions to the discussion.

In short, there are many books on this subject and this is not one of the best.

One person found this helpful

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Richard Heinberg - Wikipedia

Richard Heinberg - Wikipedia

Richard Heinberg

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Richard Heinberg
Heinberg discussing energy at University of Toronto, March 2013
Born	Richard William Heinberg October 21, 1950 (age 69)
Occupation	Writer, educator, environmentalist
Residence	Santa Rosa, California
Home town	St. Joseph, Missouri
Genre	non-fiction
Subject	peak oil, resource depletion, sustainability
Notable works	The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality
Spouse	Janet Barocco
Website
richardheinberg.com

Richard William Heinberg (born October 21, 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 13 books, and presently serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

Contents

• 1Early life
• 2Career
• 3Publications
• 4See also
• 5References
• 6External links

Early life[edit]

Heinberg grew up in St. Joseph, Missouri. His father, William Heinberg, was a chemist and high-school physics and chemistry teacher. Heinberg's interest in science came from his father, but at an early age, he rejected his parents' fundamentalist Christian beliefs. At one point he lived at Colorado's Sunrise Ranch, headquarters the " Emissaries of Divine Light" group, which Heinberg called "a sort of benign cult."^[1]

Career[edit]

Heinberg, after two years in college and a period of personal study, became personal assistant to Immanuel Velikovsky in November 1979. After Velikovsky's death, Heinberg assisted his widow in editing manuscripts.^[2][3] He published his first book in 1989, Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age,^[4] which was the result of ten years of study of world mythology. An expanded second edition was published in 1995.^[5] 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.^[6]

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."^[7]

His books from the later 1990s address the relationships between humanity and the natural world. In 1998, he began teaching at New College of California.^[8] in the "Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community" program, which he helped design. He remained a member of the Core Faculty until 2007, when the College closed its doors.

In 2003, Heinberg published The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies, one of the first full-length analyses on the issue of peak oil.

In 2004, Heinberg provided the closing address for the First US Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions. His title was "Beyond the Peak."

Heinberg in his garden in Santa Rosa, California. August 2011

In February 2007, Heinberg addressed the Committee on International Trade of the European Parliament and served as an advisor to the National Petroleum Council in its report to the U.S. Secretary of Energy on Peak Oil. In October 2007, the Green Party of Aotearoa organised a speaking tour of New Zealand for Heinberg, which included a presentation in the Beehive theatrette within the New Zealand Parliament building.^[9][10] In 2008 he was a Mayor's appointed member of the Oil Independent Oakland 2020 Task Force (Oakland, California),^[11] which was convened to chart a path for the city to dramatically reduce its petroleum dependence.

Heinberg is now the Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute in Santa Rosa, California. He is also a violinist, illustrator, and book designer. He is married to Janet Barocco.

Heinberg has proposed an international protocol to peak oil management with the aim of reducing the impact of the arrival of the peak.^[12] The adoption of the Protocol would mean that oil-importing nations should deal to reduce their importations in an annual percentage, while exporting countries should deal to reduce their exportations in the same percentage. The Uppsala Protocol^[13] has been focused in a similar direction.

Heinberg is the editor of MuseLetter,^[14] which has been included in Utne Magazine's annual list of Best Alternative Newsletters. He has appeared in the documentaries The End of Suburbia, The 11th Hour, Crude Impact, Oil, Smoke & Mirrors, Chasing God, What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire, The Great Squeeze, The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, A Farm for the Future and Ripe For Change.

Heinberg serves on the advisory board of The Climate Mobilization, a grassroots advocacy group calling for a national economic mobilization against climate change on the scale of the home front during World War II, with the goal of 100% clean energy and net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.^[15]

Heinberg is one of the more moderate commentators on peak oil (compared with others like James Howard Kunstler.^[16])

Publications[edit]

• Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age (1989; revised edition, 1995; British edition, 1990; Portuguese edition, 1991)
• Celebrate the Solstice: Honoring the Earth’s Seasonal Rhythms through Festival and Ceremony (1993; Italian edition, 2002; Portuguese edition, 2002)
• A New Covenant with Nature: Notes on the End of Civilization and the Renewal of Culture (1996; Portuguese edition, 1998) ISBN 978-0-8356-0746-9
• Cloning the Buddha: The Moral Impact of Biotechnology (1999; Indian edition, 2001; Japanese edition, 2001; Chinese edition, 2001)
• The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003; British, Italian, German, Spanish, and Arabic editions, 2004–2005; revised North American edition, 2005; Spanish edition, 2007; French edition, 2008 German Edition)
• Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World (ISBN 9780865715103) (2004; British edition 2005)
• The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse (2006, ISBN 978-0-86571-563-9),
• Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (2007, ISBN 978-0-86571-598-1).
• Blackout: Coal, Climate, and the Last Energy Crisis (June, 2009). (ISBN 9780865716568)
• The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century’s Sustainability Crises], edited by Richard Heinberg & Daniel Lerch (2010) ISBN 978-0-9709500-6-2
• The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, (2011) ISBN 978-0-86571-695-7
• Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future (2013) ISBN 978-0976751090
• Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels (2015) ISBN 978-0865717886
• Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy (2016) ISBN 978-1610917797, co-authored by Richard Heinberg and David Fridley

See also[edit]

• Energy descent
• Oil depletion
• Peak oil
• Petrodollar warfare

References[edit]

1. ^ Arnie, Cooper (July 2006). "The Age Of Oil Is Coming To An End – An Interview With Richard Heinberg" (PDF). The Sun. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 23, 2007. Retrieved August 9, 2017.
2. ^ Contributors. Kronos VI(2), Winter 1981.
3. ^ Sammer, Jan. The Velikovsky Archive. Aeon VI(2), Dec. 2001.
4. ^ Los Angeles, Calif.: Tarcher. 282 pp. ISBN 0-87477-515-9.
5. ^ Wheaton, Ill,: Quest Books. 294 pp. ISBN 978-0-8356-0716-2.
6. ^ Wheaton, Ill.: Quest Books. 199 pp. ISBN 0-8356-0693-7.
7. ^ Heinberg, Richard (June 15, 1995). "The Primitivist Critique of Civilization". A paper presented at the 24th annual meeting of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations at Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio. Retrieved June 9, 2012.
8. ^ Newton, David E. (2013). World Energy Crisis: A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO. p. 172. ISBN 978-1-61069-147-5.
9. ^ "Peak oil educator to visit New Zealand" (Press release). Green Party. 4 October 2007. Retrieved 9 June 2012.
10. ^ Fitzsimons, Jeanette (11 October 2007). "Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers, Questions to Members". New Zealand Parliament. Retrieved June 9, 2012.
11. ^ "Oil Independent Oakland (OIO) By 2020 Task Force". 2008. Archived from the originalon 2013-05-25. Retrieved 9 September 2013.
12. ^ "#182: The Oil Depletion Protocol: An Update". wordpress.com. 2 June 2007. Retrieved 9 August 2017.
13. ^ Protocol of Uppsala
14. ^ "Richard Heinberg's Museletter". Richard Heinberg's Museletter. Retrieved 9 August2017.
15. ^ "Advisory Board". The Climate Mobilization. Retrieved 30 August 2016.
16. ^ "Clusterfuck Nation – Blog Archives - Kunstler". Kunstler. Retrieved 9 August 2017.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Richard Heinberg.

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Richard Heinberg

• Official website
• Richard Heinberg on IMDb
• 2008 interview on Global Public Media Heinberg on Post Carbon Institute's Green New Deal
• Peak Everything lecture on YouTube
• The End of Growth: 2011 interview with Heinberg on YouTube on the Keiser Report