Ecological Overshoot

This week, William Rees, on “Ecological Overshoot: The Existential Issue of Our Time?, September 2021

There’s been much discussion in recent years about the climate emergency being the existential issue of our time. And, to be sure, there’s no scientific doubt that human extraction and burning of fossil fuel is the principle cause of the climate emergency that poses an existential threat to all life on the planet.

At the same time, a growing number of earth-system scientists view the climate emergency as but one of a series of symptoms of a much larger problem in the relationship between humans and earth’s life-sustaining biosphere – ecological overshoot.

This episode of Planet Haliburton features an interview with Professor William Rees, the co-inventor of the “Ecological Footprint” index of human impact on the earth’s carrying capacity, about the root causes of human-caused ecological overshoot and what we can do about it.