William E. Rees: "The Fundamental Issue - Overshoot"
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 555 Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2023
⏱️ 119 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode, Nate is joined by systems ecologist William E. Rees. Professor Rees outlines why most of the challenges facing humanity and the biosphere have a common origin - ecological overshoot. Bill also unpacks "the ecological footprint" - a concept that he co-created, that measures the actual resources used by a given population. Bill also describes his experience as a leading thinker in public policy and planning based on ecological conditions for sustainable socioeconomic development, and the challenges he's faced working in a system which (so far) rejects such premises. Is it possible for a different way of measuring the system to set different goals of what it means to be successful as a society?
About Bill Rees:
William Rees is a population ecologist, ecological economist, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the University of British Columbia's School of Community and Regional Planning in Vancouver, Canada. He researches the implications of global ecological trends for the longevity of civilization, with special foci on urban (un)sustainability and cultural/cognitive barriers to rational public policy. Prof Rees is best known as the originator and co-developer with Dr Mathis Wackernagel of 'ecological footprint analysis' (EFA), a quantitative tool that estimates human demands on ecosystems and the extent to which humanity is in 'ecological overshoot.' Dr Rees is a founding member and former President of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics; a founding Director of the OneEarth Living Initiative; a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute and an Associate Fellow of the Great Transition Initiative.
For Show Notes and More visit https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/53-william-rees
To watch this video episode on Youtube → https://youtu.be/LQTuDttP2Yg
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to The Great Simplification with Nate Higgins. |
| 0:06.0 | That's me. |
| 0:07.7 | On this show, we try to explore and simplify what's happening with energy, the economy, |
| 0:14.3 | the environment, in our society. |
| 0:17.3 | Together with scientists, experts, and leaders, this show is about understanding the bird's |
| 0:23.0 | eye view of how everything fits together, where we go from here and what we can do about |
| 0:28.6 | it as a society and as individuals. |
| 0:32.9 | Oh, how do I introduce my next guest? |
| 0:36.0 | Let me count the ways. |
| 0:44.6 | Bill Reese is a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia. He was the former director of the School of Community and Regional Planning at UBC. He is the originator of the |
| 0:51.9 | ecological footprint concept and the co-developer of the method. |
| 0:55.9 | He is a systems ecologist long known in circles of scientists talking about global ecological overshoot of the human endeavor. |
| 1:09.7 | He is very involved in conversations about sustainable socioeconomic |
| 1:14.7 | development of our culture and the challenges, uh, that we face, uh, as a global, |
| 1:22.1 | uh, human species in the 21st century. |
| 1:26.9 | Um, this is a rapid fire conversation. |
| 1:31.4 | Bill is older than me, but has much more energy and I did all I could do to keep up with him. |
| 1:36.9 | I think many of you will take away some, some core insights of our planetary situation from this conversation with Professor Bill Rees. |
| 1:47.0 | Greetings Bill. |
| 2:02.1 | How do you do, Nate? |
| 2:03.0 | Good to see you again. |
| 2:04.4 | Good to see you again. I was thinking about when preparing for this when I first met you in person. |
... |
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