Start here – set up by Wackernagel
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/
Global Footprint Network but connects to crappy calculator below
Bill Rees on radio
http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/lifeboat_show_our_ecological_footprint
30 min show can be downloaded or streamed recorded April 17, 2006 on the Lifeboat Show on Global
Public Radio - yechy, as they talk their way through an ecofootprint calculator he starts about 6:31 min
into it
UBC ecofootprint calculator – simple questions, no interesting graphics, clear choices
http://www.sustain.ubc.ca/eco-survey/
The one I like to use
www.myfootprint.org
Web site with info from a 1998 green building design
http://www.greenbuilding.ca/gbc98cnf/speakers/rees.htm#ECOFOOT
- easy READ IT clear and simple
You Tube
The End of the Growth Ethic (6 min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evJuzFARDJk
We need to reduce our Ecological Footprint (9:57 min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sxPCE3wLY0&feature=related
Consuming the Ecosphere (9:08)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAQtLrNBsbc&feature=related
Climate Change is one Symptom (7:28)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MkegkM_3sU&feature=related
Solutions for Climate Change (6:58)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQmFaJKQir8&feature=related
Interdisciplinary Education needed to address Complex Issues (10:04)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptchX_eZUm4&feature=related
What will the Future Look Like? (3:57)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brOeNHDlvlg&feature=related
http://www.scarp.ubc.ca/users/bill-rees
UBC web site
Short Biography:
William Rees has taught at the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional
Planning (SCARP) since 1969-70. He founded SCARP’s ‘Environment and Resource Planning’
concentration and from 1994 to 1999 served as director of the School. Prof Rees’ teaching and
research focus on the public policy and planning implications of global environmental trends and the
necessary ecological conditions for sustainable socioeconomic development. Much of this work is in the
realm of human ecology and ecological economics where Prof Rees is best known as the originator of
‘ecological footprint analysis.’ Dr Rees’ book on this method, Our Ecological Footprint (1996, coauthored with then PhD student Mathis Wackernagel) is now available in English, Chinese, French,
German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Latvian and Spanish. He is presently supervising several ecofootprint projects ranging from the sustainability implications of globalization to getting serious about
urban sustainability.
Prof Rees is also a founding member and recent past-President of the Canadian Society for Ecological
Economics; a co-investigator in the ‘Global Integrity Project,’ aimed at defining the ecological and
political requirements for biodiversity preservation; a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute and a
Founding Fellow of the One Earth Initiative. Drawing parts of his answer from various disciplines, Prof
Rees’ current book project asks: “Is Humanity Inherently Unsustainable?” A dynamic speaker, Prof
Rees has been invited to lecture on areas of his expertise across Canada and the US, as well as in
Australia, Austria, Belgium, China, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Japan, Mexico, the
Netherlands, Norway, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, the former Soviet Union, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden and
the UK. In 1997, UBC awarded William Rees a Senior Killam Research Prize in acknowledgment of his
research achievements and in 2000 The Vancouver Sun recognized him as one of British Columbia’s
top “public intellectuals.” In 2006 Prof Rees was elected to the Royal Society of Canada and in 2007
he was awarded a prestigious 3-year Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellowship.
Major Areas of Expertise in Sustainability Planning
1) Human bio-ecology and the ecological basis of civilization
Modern techno-industrial society is a product of the ‘enlightenment project’ and is deeply rooted in
what philosophers refer to as ‘Cartesian dualism.’ This perspective sees humans as somehow separate
from the biophysical world, assumes we are masters of nature and enables us to act as if society is
not subject to serious ecological constraints. Dualism, and its companion expansionary-materialist
worldview, are arguably the major source of many of the so-called ‘environmental problems’
confronting humankind today. Much of my work, by contrast, adopts a bio-ecological perspective that
recognizes that humans are part of nature (in fact, we are the dominant consumer organism in all
major ecosystems on the planet), that we cannot assert effective control over critical ecosystems and
that the future development of civilization is seriously constrained by natural limits. My research on
the means for achieving sustainability therefore leads to policies and planning that is cognitive of
potentially dangerous biophysical trends. My approach argues for managing human demand rather
than resources.
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Most relevant course: PLAN 504
Other closely related courses in SCARP: PLAN 596, PLAN 548Y
Other closely related courses at UBC:
2) Ecological economics: Biophysical realities in resource allocation and distribution
Mainstream neo-liberal economic theory is rooted in concepts borrowed from Newtonian analytic
mechanics. This paradigm fosters the development of simple, reductionist, linear, deterministic, single
equilibrium-oriented models that are highly abstracted from biophysical reality. Conventional
economists also tend to see the human economy as a distinctly separate system, all but independent
of the ecosphere. This frees the discipline to emphasize efficiency and continuous economic growth. By
contrast, the emerging ecological economic perspective is derived from political science, ecology, farfrom-equilibrium thermodynamics and complex systems theory. Its models are characterized by realworld complexity, including non-linear behaviour (surprise) and multiple equilibria. From their more
holistic perspective, ecological economists see the economy as a dependent, growing, fully-contained
sub-system of a non-growing finite ecosphere. Ecological economics therefore emphasizes steady
state dynamics, biophysical limits and social equity. My major contribution in this domain is the
development of ‘ecological footprint analysis’ (EFA), a quantitative tool based on energy and material
flows that estimates the area of productive ecosystems required to sustain any specified human
population or economic activity. EFA has done much to re-open the debate on human carrying
capacity—we’d need four additional Earth-like planets to raise just the present world population to
North American levels of consumption—and suggests novel interpretations of key planning ideas such
as what constitutes ‘urban’ land.
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Most relevant course: PLAN 596
Other closely related courses in SCARP: PLAN 504, PLAN 548Y
Other closely related courses at UBC:
3) Global change and the dynamics of societal collapse
In 1995, anthropologist Joseph Tainter wrote: “what is perhaps most intriguing in the evolution of
human societies is the regularity with which the pattern of increasing complexity is interrupted by
collapse…” Ominously, modern, complex global techno-industrial society exhibits many symptoms
similar to those that heralded previous societal collapses. More ominous still, contemporary decisionmaking processes seem incapable of responding creatively to the gathering evidence of potential
crisis. While science is advancing a coherent understanding of the proximal conditions and
mechanisms that precipitate collapse, I am most interested in the ‘distal’ factors that drive human
societies to expand and complexify to the point where implosion seems inevitable. Is the cycle of
human society similar to the “never-ending adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring
[collapse] and renewal” that we find in nature? Most important, is our more knowledge-intensive
modern society capable of breaking free of the cycle of collapse that characterized earlier civilizations?
http://www.ec.gc.ca/seminar/WR_e.html Address by Bill Rees
http://www.iisd.ca/consume/brfoot.html
Ecofootprint calculator – kids version simple answers, really unresponsive to clicking in various places
and slider doesn’t slide, useful summary at end
http://earthday.net/footprint/flash.html
The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture
http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/