Introducing Richard Heinberg: Atlanta October 11th, 2006

Welcome to Peak Oil: Challenges and Opportunities at the end of Cheap Petroleum--a presentation by Richard Heinberg. My name is Liz Logan, and I am the Organizer for Atlanta Beyond Oil.

If you would have told me eighteen months ago that I would be standing here introducing Richard Heinberg, I would have said you were crazy. When my friends first told me about peak oil, I stuck my fingers in my ears and said "la, la, la, I can't hear you!" I was totally resistant to the idea.

Since I started my peak oil journey, I discovered that people had all kinds of crazy reactions. People told me that they sat at the computer for months reading everything they could find about it, or they began to obsessively make lists of all the supplies that they would need to stock up on.

As we shared our stories, something became obvious to us. Learning about peak oil can have a profound effect on your life. It requires you to rethink things that you may have taken for granted.

It is not a comfortable process. For some of us it meant dusting off our critical thinking skills and learning to read graphs and get comfortable with numbers. For others it meant going through an emotional upheaval.

And ultimately, we are all faced with the question: what can we do to prepare for the energy transition?

No matter where you are in your journey, whether this is your first introduction or you have been grappling with this for a while, you will get something out of Richard's presentation tonight. He will explain the problem, but also offer a solution.

Richard has dedicated his life to increasing the energy literacy of our nation. He has written seven books that have been translated into seven languages. We are offering three of them for sale. They include:

1 The Party's Over: War and the Fate of Industrial Societies. This gives some scientific background about peak oil. The latest edition has been substantially revised.

2 Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, which lays out the paths that are before us and the consequences of each choice. It is his most political book.

3 His latest book is The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism, and Economic Collapse. It explains the Oil Depletion Protocol, which he will tell you about tonight.

Richard is not only an author, he is also a journalist, educator, editor, lecturer and a Core Faculty member of New College of California. He teaches a course on "Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community."

He is featured in the film The End of Suburbia, which is many people's introduction to peak oil. He's appeared on national radio and television in eight countries, and has been quoted in Time Magazine, Reuters, and the Associated press. Last month, in a profile in the New Yorker, Bill Clinton told the reporter that he was reading Richard's book The Party's Over.

Richard is also my hero. We are thrilled to have him here and delighted that you could attend.

Please join me in welcoming--Richard Heinberg.