Overshooting Earth's Boundaries | Bill Rees
Overshooting Earth's Boundaries | Bill Rees
What we've done to the planet
Appears in this episode
“Half of the fossil fuels ever used on planet Earth by human beings has been consumed in just the last 35 years. This is the power of exponential growth. So hugely important things have happened in 50 years, including the first book that warned us of limits to growth. We've seen the evidence before the US Congress on Climate Change. We've had 27 COP meetings on climate change, a half a dozen formal agreements to reduce carbon emissions. There's been several formal scientists’ warning to humanities. This has all taken place in the last 50 years.
“Yet, during that past 50 years, the pace of negative change has accelerated. So, despite the best of our science, despite the best evidence you can possibly come up with in terms of climate activity and so on and so forth, the mainstream has not budged.”
Humankind’s footprint threatens to squash life under its heel.
Our impact on the planet cannot be understated. We have thrust Earth into a new geological period, destroyed the majority of the world’s wildlife, razed her forests, and rendered innumerable species extinct. We are expert consumers with no limits to our appetite, it seems. Unless the climate becomes so unstable our own systems break down. This, of course, is what we’re already seeing.
Bill Rees, bio-ecologist, ecological economist, and originator of the ecological footprint analysis, joins me to discuss this breakdown—how we got here, where we’re going, and why he has little hope for humankind to make it through. We discuss systems change, potential outcomes, and how to create “lifeboats” in a crisis. We also go head-to-head on the framing of some of these issues before finding common ground towards the end of the episode.
Overshooting Earth's Boundaries | Bill Rees
I've thought a lot about this episode this afternoon. I enjoyed the interplay between Rachel and Bill. Both were saying fundamentally the same, but language and its use is important and can lead to interpretive challenges. My belief is that, on top of all the other challenges of the so-called polycrisis, the crux of it all is a crisis of values and a crisis of meaning. What do we (collectively, individually) value? Where and in what do we find or derive meaning? The word "mainstream" has been and is used to define or label fairly broad groupings and is often pejorative. I think within the conversation, it was akin to status quo. And it felt like Rachel's questioning of and challenges to mainstream were related to status quo while Bill's definition of mainstream was more about who's driving the bus in terms of governance and control - the gatekeepers or, perhaps, technocracy, if you will. But - and admittedly this is very much anecdotal - when you ask folks who are either challenging the status quo or are raging against the gatekeepers and technocrats what they are willing to sacrifice in order to effect change, you generally find that they do not wish to sacrifice anything, at least anything of substance, and least of all comforts or conveniences. And therein lies the problem. We - socially, culturally - have acquiesced to governments and "the market" to show and tell us how to live our lives (and be our best selves) and they did so by driving consumption and defining the good life through comfort, convenience and material possessions. Now, faced with multiple impending disasters, of which climate change is likely the most acknowledged if not the eye of the storm, we want these same groups and organizations to fix the problem while we go about living in the same manner with no disruption. I suspect that even the people whom Rachel highlighted within her network who were making subtle (relatively speaking) changes have not confronted the reality of what will ultimately be required (and could there also be an aspect of virtue signalling incorporated within? I don't know.) At end of the day, I, myself, am still trying to sort it all out and understand it (and accept it beyond the intellectual level) and these kinds of conversations are of immense help in that regard.
On a related not - and not to draw attention away from Planet Critical - there is also some great conversation with Bill Rees and others on the Great Simplification substack which I recommend - https://natehagens.substack.com/p/deeper-ecology-reality-roundtable
Thank you for another great episode, such important work and ideas being discussed as usual. I'm commenting because I think I understand a bit about what Bill is saying about the mainstream. Living in Los Angeles the average citizen is not at all concerned about climate change, it's quite the opposite with how they live their lives, multiple natural born children, big pickup trucks, wasteful habits, meat diets, travel, etc. In addition, I think anecdotally of my own brother whom I'm not on speaking terms with because despite how much he and his spouse expound about their cares about social issues and climate change their actions show the exact opposite. From having two natural born children, to eating meat, to flying across the country multiple times a year, they aren't changing their behavior one bit to make a change. I think this is the point that Bill is making. I believe there are a lot of people out there who like your listeners are trying and willing to make the changes necessary but are unfortunately dwarfed by how many status quo mainstream people there are that will almost always choose short term comfort over long term problem solving. For me it's just so hard to see a way out of this besides a massive societal/ecological/global collapse and it breaks my heart every day.