When MuseLetter started in January 1992, it was a one-person operation. I wrote and edited every word of text (with the exception of one short essay in one issue), did the layout/typesetting, stuffed envelopes, and maintained the mailing list. It was a small list, and there was only a print version (I barely had email at the time, and this was before the World Wide Web existed as anything more than a concept). I enjoyed complete freedom to write on any topic, and to express any opinion, led only by my Muse.

As the years went by, volunteers began to help with mailings. Then I added the option of e-mail subscriptions. By 2006, Post Carbon Institute was generously aiding me with a paid part-time assistant who handled most of the administrative aspects of publication. Also by this time, the subject matter dealt with in MuseLetter had become focused almost entirely on issues related to energy and the environment. As of this writing, four books on Peak Oil and related topics have emerged through monthly MuseLetters: The Party’s Over, Powerdown, The Oil Depletion Protocol, and Peak Everything.

This January I was offered, and happily accepted, a paid position with Post Carbon Institute as Senior Fellow. The mission of Post Carbon Institute is exactly congruent with the work I have been doing independently for the past five years, so the match could not be better. If you are not already acquainted with the organization, please explore the web site, www.postcarbon.org.

Post Carbon Books is now handling production and administration for MuseLetter, thus enabling me to focus more on writing and public speaking.

Because MuseLetter serves the educational and research purposes of Post Carbon Institute, we have decided to make e-mail subscriptions free from now on. The print version will continue, with subscription costs unchanged, and likely improvements in the offing (larger print). Revenues from print subscriptions will support the Fellows program of Post Carbon Institute.

Current e-mail subscribers will of course have their subscriptions continued. With regard to the fees they have paid, they have three options:

• A pro-rated refund (one dollar per month of remaining subscription time)
• Application of remaining pro-rated e-subscription fee to a postal subscription (for example, a US e-mail subscriber who has just sent in a check for $12 would be able to switch to a print subscription for an additional $8)
• Donation of remaining e-subscription fee to the Post Carbon Institute’s Fellows Program. If we do not hear from you, we will assume that this is your preference.

Contact Post Carbon Books with your preference: store (at) postcarbonbooks.com.

For print subscribers:
For Paypal and credit card payments (preferred!), please go to PostCarbonBooks.com. Please make checks or international money orders payable to Post Carbon Books, and mail them to
Post Carbon Books, PO Box 1480,
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Many thanks for your support.

The Soil Association's Lady Eve Balfour Memorial Lecture 2007 was given by Richard Heinberg and chaired by Anna Ford, BBC Newsreader. The title of this year's event was ‘What will we eat when the oil runs out?’

A short summary of the event is available on YouTube.

Richard is interviewed in Leonardo DiCaprio's "The 11th Hour" a documentary concerning the environmental crises caused by human actions and calls for restorative action through a reshaping of human activity.

From Leonardo DiCaprio's 11thHourAction.com website:
"The mission of our community is to inspire action at every level: from individual action, up through our communities, to the state, national and international level. The actions are all shifting our civilization to a sustainable future. Let's work and take action together. The time is now. The hope is you. Let's begin."

Richard is a featured speaker in Crude Impact, an award-winning documentary film which Chris Vernon of TheOilDrum.com called " a terrific film... the best documentary I have seen on the subject." This feature film explores the interconnection between human domination of the planet, and the discovery and use of oil.

Go to www.CrudeImpact.com to read highlights and view trailers.

Richard Heinberg has been honored with the M. King Hubbert Award for Excellence in Energy Education by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (USA). The other recipient of the award this year was Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, chair of the Peak Oil caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Former US President Bill Clinton was reading about peak oil this summer, specifically, Richard Heinberg's book The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies.

This week in the New Yorker, David Remnick profiles Bill Clinton. Here, with Blake Eskin, Remnick discusses the ex-President’s legacy and Hillary Clinton’s political future. Specific excerpt posted below:

 

You write that Clinton rejected Gerald Ford as a model for the post-Presidency. But is Clinton at all a man of leisure?

He plays a hell of a lot of golf and he’s a voracious reader. His library’s got a lot of books about policy, a lot of history, a lot of Presidential biography, and a lot of books on religion—that’s a sincere interest. His taste in fiction, although I don’t think it’s limited to this, seems to be of a lower brow: he loves thrillers and police novels and stuff like that. I borrowed a book from him that he had just read—“The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies,” by Richard Heinberg, not exactly summer reading—and it was full of underlinings and what looked like the most serious undergraduate’s markings, with lots of exclamation points.