Richard Heinberg

Richard Heinberg traces the intellectual throughline of post-growth concepts and the history of degrowth and related economic movements. He takes a systemic approach that touches on Indigenous economics, ecology, physics, archaeology, energy, cultural history, philosophy, and climate science.

Post Carbon Institute colleagues Richard Heinberg and Rob Dietz discuss the history of economic growth, the rise of ecological economics, the aftermath of the economic turmoil of 2008, and how to go from obsessing over growth to embracing a right-sized economy.

Richard Heinberg reviews the growth-versus-degrowth debate, explores the wide range of degrowth objectives and strategies, and lays out why advocating for voluntary degrowth makes sense now, even if nature-imposed contraction will come first.

Peter Victor is one of the world’s foremost post-growth theorists. In this Q&A article, Richard Heinberg gathers insights from Peter about what will be needed to downsize the economy toward a sustainable scale.

Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow and author Richard Heinberg interviews David Stasavage, author of The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today. David summarizes polarization and capacity to deal with crises in democracies and autocracies, discusses the challenge of scale in modern democracies, and shares how past democracies like Athens and the Iroquois Confederacy dealt with polarization.

Richard Heinberg explores why societies become polarized and traces the causes and history of polarization in the U.S. He unpacks the dangers of polarization and the ways it tears societies apart, before seeing what can be done to reverse polarization.