Prof. Rees first defined “Ecological Footprint” and “Overshoot” My colleague Alex Smith, host of Radio Ecoshock, put out a provocative statement on his weekly radio program. He announced: Who can question the Green New Deal and holy solar power? Guest Megan Seibert and super-scientist Bill Rees just published a scathing report. They say it’s time to shrink or die.” end quote. I was intrigued by the provocation and downloaded the 19 page paper – and an inspiring talk by Professor Bill Rees and will present excerpts of both on this program.
William Rees is a bio-ecologist, ecological economist, former Director and Professor Emeritus of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. Rees is perhaps best known as the originator and co-developer (with his graduate students) of ecological footprint analysis. Eco Footprint is a measure of the demands made by a person or group of people on global natural resources. Eco Footprint and Overshoot have become globally used terms used in personal pocket calculators and United Nations needs assessments. The expanding human eco-footprint has arguably become the world’s best-known indicator of the un-sustainability of techno-industrial society.
Rees is a founding member and former President of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics; a founding Director of the One Earth Initiative; and a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2006 … and elected a full member of the Club of Rome in 2014.
This recording of Bill Rees was made in October, 2019, at a conference on Lighter Living in his home town. It was organized by the city of Vancouver, Simon Fraser University and his own organization, One Earth.
The program ends with excerpts from very recent paper that Professor Bill Rees co wrote with Megan Seibert, the Executive Director of the REAL Green New Deal: “Through the Eye of a Needle: An Eco-Heterodox Perspective on the Renewable Energy Transition” was published July 26, 2021. It’s a well organized paper of 19 pages including 112 footnotes.
Megan Seibert and Bill Rees critique the mainstream energy transition narrative and re-define the climate crisis within its broader context of ecological overshoot, and numerous collectively fatal problems with so-called renewable energy technologies. They write that a contraction of the human enterprise is needed and … to achieve sustainability and salvage civilization, society must embark on a planned, cooperative descent from an extreme state of overshoot in just a decade or two.
Podcast (file2): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
