Ecological Overshoot and Urban Footprints

My guest this week is William E. Rees.

There’s this quote attributed to Charles Kettering that goes “A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.” When surveying the immensity of the interdependent crises we face: climate change, soil desertification, biodiversity loss, pollution, microplastics, war, and so on, simply stating the problem can feel impossible. But, as I’ve learned from Bill, at the highest level, it’s extremely straightforward (though I don’t mean to confuse that with it being easy to solve!). It’s something called ecological overshoot.

Overshoot occurs when the demands on an ecosystem exceed its regenerative capacity. Suffice to say that human beings are in extreme overshoot, and pushing further every single year. According to the Ecological Footprint Analysis, and I’m quoting from one of Bill’s papers here, “we would need the bio-capacity equivalent of three additional Earth-like planets to supply the demands of just the present population sustainably.” And the population continues to grow on this one precious planet. The neoliberal demand for “infinite growth” is literally unsustainable.

All the problems listed above, along with the myriad others in the polycrisis, stem back to the simple fact that humanity has created systems and incentives that are causing us to use up more than the Earth can regenerate, ultimately destroying those systems entirely and decreasing the chances that the the planet can sustain our species (as well as the many the other Earthlings who have no say in the matter). Of course, responding to this problem is where the complexity kicks in. Different folks approach this problem differently. Bill advocates for reducing the human population from today’s 8.2 billion to closer to 2 billion people. You can imagine this has led to no small degree of backlash and critique, with proponents of population control often vilified as neo-Malthusian, anti-human, eco-fascist, and racist.

Population control of course has a problematic history, and can easily turn into a racist, fascist, anti-human project. We should never forget that. But there’s another version based on collective action and wisdom: understanding that we are embedded within ecologies. Rather than continuing to believe we’re separated from them, we can work to realign ourselves with them, to bring systems back into balance and open up possibilities of healing and restoration. 

In the West, we’ve been conditioned to blindly believe in narratives of onward-and-upward economic “progress,” which is why so many think of our current context as normal. It’s anything but. As Bill points out, these expectations are based on one of the most anomalous 200-ish year periods in the history of the world. Given the current pace of technoindustrial society, and the data we have about the state of the Earth, our species is driving itself toward extinction. 

We like to believe that human ingenuity will step in to address any problem, but our understanding of what humans can accomplish is predicated on the one-time infusion of magic that is carbon energy. As we literally burn through that supply, with no actual substitute on the horizon—renewables are vital but they’re nowhere near meaningful replacements yet—  that ingenuity will run up against the limits of increasing costs. If energy costs more, everything costs more. Meanwhile, the associated systems of Modernity have decreased our resilience in the name of efficiency—something we witnessed firsthand in the 2021-23 supply chain crisis. So yes, it’s of course possible that humanity will pull more tricks out of the hat, but the obstacles are increasing in scope and scale. Neoliberal economics isn’t equipped to handle this; the environment doesn’t even factor into the schema. To quote Yeats: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” 

It is in this context that Bill advocates for collectively working to humanely reduce the human population to closer to 2 billion people. Of course, this isn’t a solution without externalities. Some folks, famously Elon Musk, believe the inverse threat of population collapse is a bigger problem. And even those who don’t subscribe to that way of thinking might get uncomfortable at the conversation about population control because of historical efforts that were violent and anti-human. But if we’re as ingenious as we’ve claimed, I have to believe it’s possible to coordinate interventions that are humane and ultimately liberatory.

I find Bill’s arguments that we need to do this incredibly persuasive, but even for those who don’t agree, I think it’s critical that we at least confront the ideas—they ask us to take more nuanced, rigorous, and ecological approaches to crisis. One way or another, it’s imperative for our safety and wellbeing that we bring our species back into alignment with the ecologies in which we live. And Bill Rees is one of the world’s foremost experts in demonstrating why.

BIO:

William Rees is an ecologist, ecological economist, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. He researches global ecological trends with special interests in cities as vulnerable components of the human ecosystem and in psycho-cognitive barriers to societal change. Prof Rees is the originator and co-developer (with his graduate students) of ‘ecological footprint analysis’ (EFA). He has authored hundreds of peer-reviewed and popular articles on EFA and the above topics.  A Fellow of Royal Society of Canada, Prof. Rees is also a founding member and former President of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics, a founding Director of the One Earth Living Initiative and a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute. Internationally recognized, Prof Rees is a recipient of a Trudeau Foundation Fellowship and both the international Boulding Prize in Ecological Economics and a Blue Planet Prize (jointly with Dr Mathis Wackernagel). He also received the 2015 Herman Daly award from the US Society for Ecological Economics and, in 2016, a Dean’s Medal of Distinction from UBC’s Faculty of Applied Science. Prof Rees was a full member of the Club of Rome from 2014 - 2019.

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