Helen Caldicott, M.D., pediatrician and internationally recognized author and lecturer, hosts a weekly, one-hour radio program titled If You Love This Planet. Produced by Scott Powell, Amanda Bellerby and Jasmin Williams. Edited by Jasmin Williams.
Richard Heinberg is the Director of the Post Carbon Institute, a non-profit organisation in California that conducts research, educates the public, and organizes leaders to help communities around the world understand and respond to the challenges of fossil fuel depletion and climate change. In this discussion with Dr Caldicott, Richard Heinberg explains the situation of Peak Oil, and reminds us just how reliant our society is on the finite resources of oil, coal and gas. We are reaching a state where the depletion of these fossil fuels will force us to undergo a major transition to low energy and re-localised societies. Heinberg describes how transportation will need to change - currently oil is responsible for 95% of transportation technologies in the United States. He also draws our attention to the industrialisation of food: only 2% of the population in the USA grow food for the rest of the country. This is a startling conversation about the energy crisis with one of the clearest thinking environmental commentators today.