Richard Heinberg's significance and his horrifying anti-humanism.

Richard Heinberg is a Stealth Fascist Who Epitomizes What the “Peak Oil” Philosophy is All About


Who is Richard Heinberg?

Richard Heinberg is an extremely popular author of two popular books supporting the “Peak Oil” theory, “The Party’s Over” and “Powerdown.” Heinberg is an open supporter of massive de-population. He says that de-population will be necessary in the face of a coming oil crash. He currently speaks all around the country to large crowds, usually in politically liberal and leftist areas.


Why is Heinberg Important?

Richard Heinberg has become one of the primary, if not the primary, supporter of the “Peak Oil” theory in the U.S. today. His views and claims are nearly 100% in line with the views of the other major “Peak Oil” authors, such as Colin Campbell, Matthew Simmons, Michael Ruppert and Kenneth Deffeyes. Heinberg is endorsed by the entirety of this crowd, and, indeed, they and their doomsday prediction of “Peak Oil” is gaining considerable attention both in the mainstream media these days and in political activist circles. “Peak Oil” is gaining a lot of acceptance with relatively little challenge across the western world, despite the fact that there is much disagreement amongst geologists and oil industry forecasters, and despite the fact that the “Peak Oil” people have declared “Peak” to be imminent many times before, and have been repeatedly wrong. Understanding who Richard Heinberg is sheds great light on understanding what “Peak Oil” is really all about.



Heinberg Supports Mass De-population

While Heinberg does not endorse a specific eugenics program, per se, he loudly calls for mass de-population. He favorably quotes Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel: “[I]f all people are to be fed adequately and equitably, we must have a gradual transition to a global population of 2 billion. A population policy ensuring that each couple produces an average of only 1.5 children would be necessary (The Party’s Over, page 226).
For anyone who sees this belief as possible benign, or does not understand mass de-population as part of the fascist agenda, it does not take many “degrees of separation” to see Heinberg’s connection to open eugenics.
On page 227 of The Party’s Over, Heinberg quotes Garret Hardin, an ecologist whom Heinberg endorses in multiple places in his book. Hardin is a famous de-population advocate, who is, tellingly, a grantee of the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund is an aboveground eugenics foundation that funds some of the most egregiously racist scientists in the world.
On its web site the Pioneer Fund qualifies: “The fact that the origins of the Pioneer Fund lie in the Darwinian-Galtonian evolutionary tradition, [sic] and the eugenics movement has guaranteed us our share of controversy,” and “we have supported behavioral genetic studies which have shown that the genetic component in human behavior is about 50% and, even more controversial, that it is more likely than not that there is a genetic component to between-group (sex, socioeconomic, and racial) IQ differences.” There is a genetic difference between the rich and the poor, that is what we are to believe, according to the funders of Richard Heinberg’s protege Garret Hardin. Far from dismissing the beliefs of the people who pay him, Hardin has based his career on this racist ideology. So, too, has Richard Heinberg.
Heinberg’s connections only get more extreme.


One Degree of Separation: Heinberg Supports an Open White Separatist!

On page 228 of The Party’s Over and at the very end of the following interview,  http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/transcripts/220, Heinberg endorses Virginia Abernathy, another population reductionist. Most notably, Abernathy’s “population reduction” stance fits within the rubric of her *white separatism.* Professor Abernathy writes for Occidental Quarterly ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occidental_Quarterly), a white supremacist publication.
Do alliances with eugenicist and white supremacist types necessarily make Heinberg a bad egg? Well, yes, but the story doesn’t end there. Heinberg closely associates with eugenics philosophy and does not disown it, while cloaking his own garb in eco-conservatism. Never supporting social justice or systemic political solutions or even acknowledging the power of the corporate and political ruling class, and always emphasizing individual and small-scale save-yourself-from-apocalypse measures, Heinberg is best understood as an *anti-humanist.* However, he’s being taken seriously in academia, and such is the threat of the modern eschatological horror show; it’s going mainstream.


Heinberg Denies That Clean Alternative Energies Such as Solar and Wind Can Replace Oil

Richard Heinberg never acknowledges the long history of oil industry suppression of viable (and cleaner) alternatives to oil, espec ially solar and wind energy, as documented in the book “Who Owns the Sun,” among other sources. Solar and wind power are the most natural, efficient and clean power sources, and their incorporation into mass usage is practical on both a humanistic and environmental level. Heinberg, in “The Party’s Over,” essentially dismisses solar altogether. Regarding wind he says, “Just to produce 18 quads of wind power in the U.S. by 2030 (never mind the 60 quads of theoretical potential) would require the installation of something like half a million state-of-the-art turbines, or roughly 20,000 per year starting now. That is five times the present world production capacity for turbines. This feat could be accomplished, but it would require a significant reallocation of economic resources.”
One is left wondering why Heinberg is not calling for that allocation of resources- it doesn’t seem like much in the big picture, does it?- rather than drumming up Armageddon.

Heinberg Says No to Hope

“When I talk about this stuff to audiences, people immediately say, 'can't you give us some hope'... well I think hope is actually part of the problem.”


Heinberg is not the only “Peak Oil” advocate with fascist ideology. Colin Campbell is another. Matthew Simmons is another. What is the effect of these people and what they say?
Their effect is anti-political. At a time when political action is most needed, at a time of Bush economic attack on the poor, unions being attacked, rising fascism- they are hear to say, save yourself. Which is very nice and all if you’re rich.
A large base of the potential supporters of a strong movement for progressive change- and those with the economic resources to even be thinking of “saving themselves”- is being derailed into Armageddonist and eugenicist ideology based on pseudo-science.

By Adam Hurter

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