In this week’s Off The Cuff I sit down with William Rees to discuss:
- Bill’s coining of the ‘ecological footprint’ concept
- Why he thinks humans have reached a ‘plague stage’ on the planet
- Why our leaders are unwilling to acknowledge the two problems that matter most
- Bill’s outlook for humanity’s future
We dive deep into the Environment/Ecology “E” of the Three E’s in this week’s Off The Cuff.
Highly-esteemed bio-ecologist and ecological economist William Rees returns to the program to reinforce his warning that the human population is badly in ecological overshoot. If we do not find a way to reduce our taxation of the planet’s resources, the consequences will be devastating.
And sadly, he notes that those “leaders” making policy decisions avoid addressing the issues that pose the greatest threat because they are politically “sensitive”. Because of this, Bill considers most of the current multi-national agreements focused on dealing with issues like pollution, climate change, species loss, etc are misdirected attempts that aren’t addressing the core problems in the manner or scope needed.
But hope does remain. Bill gave such great exposition on the challenges we face in this discussion that we didn’t have much time to get into that side of the story. So we’ll be having him back on again to address the agency we each and all have in altering our current dangerous trajectory.
by richcabot