EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Enjoy this blast from the past from the EarthX Archives. #OvercomingOvershoot was one of the first shows we produced and aired back in 2020. EarthX Media has grown a lot since then, but we still like to look back on these insightful conversations and see how far we've come.
Activists inspire emotion about climate change, and the world must face facts about energy, growth, and governance and the challenges to productive response.
About #OvercomingOvershoot:
#OvercomingOvershoot takes a deep look at the myriad symptoms of ecological overshoot by way of thoughtful conversations with experts and visionaries exploring not only what’s going wrong but also what solution pathways are available to overcome overshoot. Moderated by eco-rockstar, Gary Wockner, this show will serve as an essential hub to connect people from around the world on this most pressing concern.
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At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
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Enjoy this blast from the past from the EarthX Archives. #OvercomingOvershoot was one of the first shows we produced and aired back in 2020. EarthX Media has grown a lot since then, but we still like to look back on these insightful conversations and see how far we've come.
Activists inspire emotion about climate change, and the world must face facts about energy, growth, and governance and the challenges to productive response.
About #OvercomingOvershoot:
#OvercomingOvershoot takes a deep look at the myriad symptoms of ecological overshoot by way of thoughtful conversations with experts and visionaries exploring not only what’s going wrong but also what solution pathways are available to overcome overshoot. Moderated by eco-rockstar, Gary Wockner, this show will serve as an essential hub to connect people from around the world on this most pressing concern.
EarthX
Love Our Planet.
The Official Network of Earth Day.
About Us:
At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Follow Us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthxmedia/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/earthxmedia
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EarthXMedia/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@earthxmedia
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EarthXMedia
How to watch:
United States:
- Spectrum
- AT&T U-verse (1267)
- DIRECTV (267)
- Philo
- FuboTV
- Plex
- Fire TV
#EarthDay #Environment #Sustainability #EcoFriendly #Conservation #EarthX
Category
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TVTranscript
00:30Hi, I'm Gary Wachner, and you're watching Overcoming Overshoot on EarthX TV.
00:45With me today is Professor William Reese.
00:49William Reese has had a long career as one of the world's leading ecological analysts
00:54and is the originator of the ecological footprint concept that we're going to talk about a little
01:00bit more today.
01:01It is the global standard for measuring overshoot.
01:06Among many accolades, William is the recipient of the Blue Planet Prize given out by the
01:11Society for Ecological Economics.
01:15Welcome to the show, William.
01:16Thank you very much, Gary.
01:18It's a pleasure to be here.
01:21We're going to title this episode, A Climate Realist's Take on Overshoot.
01:28And William is a self-described climate realist.
01:33In past episodes, we've looked at the global footprint network, and now we're going to
01:37get kind of a behind-the-scenes look at the story.
01:41And also just want the viewers to be aware that we're going to talk about some hard truths
01:47on this episode.
01:48So grab your life jacket, because we're jumping into the deep end of the swimming pool with
01:53Dr. William Reese.
01:56So Mr. Reese, could you tell us sort of right off the bat, like, why you call yourself a
02:02climate realist?
02:03It's sort of a self-described name that you give.
02:07So what do you mean by that?
02:08Well, there's several dimensions to it.
02:11First of all, climate is a major problem, and we have to face that head on.
02:17But the deeper issue here is that climate change itself is merely a symptom of the much
02:23larger problem, which is ecological overshoot.
02:28And by ecological overshoot, I mean that human beings, the human economy, all 7.8 billion
02:34people and all of our technical expertise and so on and so forth, is now consuming the
02:41biological output of the ecosphere, all the products of ecosystems, much faster than nature
02:48can regenerate.
02:49And we're dumping wastes back into those systems much faster than natural systems can recycle
02:55and otherwise take care of that waste.
02:58So we're in a situation now where the growth of the human enterprise is literally being
03:03financed by the consumption of the very ecosystems that sustain us and are necessary for the
03:11future of civilization.
03:12And as I say, climate change is just one manifestation of that problem.
03:17It's a very important one.
03:19But in one sense, and in the way we're talking here, climate change is a waste management
03:23problem, because the principal anthropogenic driver of climate change is carbon dioxide.
03:29And carbon dioxide is the single largest waste product by weight of industrial economies.
03:36So start thinking of climate change as a huge issue, but merely symptomatic of a whole range
03:42of other issues ranging from collapsing biodiversity to ocean pollution.
03:48And so, you know, you're just throwing me softballs here for a sort of topics I want
03:53to get into.
03:54And one of them I want to talk about, we'll probably touch on in a few different ways.
03:59I would say that most governmental institutions, not all but most, and also most environmental
04:04groups are singularly focused on climate change, as if it is the sole problem.
04:13And it's a problem kind of in and of itself.
04:15Now, that's not completely true, I know, but it's like you hear about it all the time.
04:18But the way you just described it as a symptom of a broader problem of overshoot is different.
04:25And so, you know, why do you think everyone's so focused on, you know, climate change, and
04:32doesn't always and often see the broader problem of overshoot?
04:38Again, it's a very good question.
04:41And it's a complicated answer.
04:43The obvious, I suppose in on this is that the human mind has not evolved to think of
04:50complexity.
04:52No human being is capable of wrapping his or her mind around the full extent of the
04:57ecological problems confronting us at the present time.
05:01So, you know, we evolved in a situation where problems came at us one at a time, relatively
05:06small scale, easy to solve.
05:08And so we tend to have a singular focus on the most immediate thing.
05:13And I think climate change is one of those issues that more and more people are becoming
05:18personally aware of, because it's personally affecting them.
05:22And we're also seeing it more on television, and so on.
05:26So other problems, such as ocean pollution, or plunging biodiversity, land degradation
05:31are much less dramatic, they're occurring at an accelerating pace, they're just as important
05:37if not more important than climate change, but out of sight out of mind.
05:41So there it is, the human mind is not really capable of grasping complexity, we tend to
05:47focus on the single most immediate problem.
05:50And that happens at the expense of everything else.
05:54So what I want to do in this episode is kind of run through a series of images, and most
05:59of them are figures or graphs, because I think they, I found these very compelling.
06:05And there are slides that you give in your talks.
06:08And I've also shared some of these on social media, because I saw them, and I was just
06:11like, aha, to me.
06:13And so I like, I really think these are compelling.
06:16The first one I want to look at is called, the title is Governments Incapable of Implementing
06:23Their Own Negotiated Climate Agreements.
06:27Did you see that image there?
06:28Yes, I do.
06:30And this is an image you sent me.
06:32And I would just want to talk about this in the context of Joe Biden, as well as all sorts
06:37of you know, political people, elected representatives and US senators, etc, are super excited about
06:45the new president is going to get us back into the Paris Agreement.
06:50Now, this slide suggests that that that is not exactly a panacea.
06:56So kind of just talk us through this slide, because you've been involved in some of these
07:00agreements, and you track them and follow them.
07:02So talk us through this slide and give us your own spin on it.
07:06Well, basically, the slide shows two things.
07:09The first and most important is the continuous uptick in the atmospheric concentration of
07:15carbon dioxide, which is now approaching 414 parts per billion or million rather, that's
07:22up about 45%.
07:23I can't remember the number on the slide from pre industrial times.
07:29So humans have had a massive effect on changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
07:34The second thing this slide shows is that, you know, we've been aware of this, of climate
07:39change and the problems, but certainly since the potential change since the middle of the
07:4419th century.
07:46But sciences have been warning us for at least 50 or 60 years of how this is beginning to
07:52accelerate and should be taken care of.
07:55And accordingly, we've had something like 26 or 30 meetings, international conferences
08:01on climate change, and a half dozen major international agreements, the Paris Accord,
08:07being the most recent.
08:09But as you notice on this slide, you cannot detect even a dimple in the uptick of that
08:17carbon dioxide level that corresponds with any of the events that have taken place in
08:23terms of our attempts to regulate this.
08:25So we've signed all these agreements, we've had all of these conferences, there's been
08:29all kind of high sounding political chatter about how we must engage with this problem,
08:35but none of it has had any significant effect.
08:38Carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise.
08:41Now, COVID, the pandemic is going to reduce emissions in 2020, probably by about 7 to
08:4910%.
08:50But beyond that, the levels are still rising.
08:52In fact, I just read a paper this morning that suggests carbon dioxide levels won't
08:57even show a dimple from the pandemic.
09:01So the effect is simple, Gary.
09:04We can now say that 2020, the year just ended, is tied with 2016 as the hottest year in the
09:12instrumental record.
09:14The six hottest years, that's a half dozen hottest years in the instrumental record have
09:19been the last six years.
09:24All 10 of the world's hottest years have occurred since the beginning of this century.
09:29So this is an accelerating event.
09:33Temperatures are now about a degree to a degree 0.2 Celsius above the pre-industrial average,
09:39and the direction is upward.
09:41So I don't think there's any chance whatsoever that we can successfully achieve the minimum
09:48increase of 1.5 Celsius degrees warming that the most optimistic of the Paris subtitles
09:57would bring us to.
09:59We are going to overshoot 1.5 degrees, and highly likely, if we remain on this current
10:04tack, we'll overshoot two degrees, which could be catastrophic.
10:09And so that's actually a nice segue to the second image I want to talk about, and that
10:15one is called CO2 mitigation curves for 1.5 C. Do you have that one up?
10:23Yeah, I can see what we're talking about here.
10:26I saw this one on, it came across social media maybe about a year ago, and it was maybe a
10:33year and a half ago I first saw a version of this, and I've seen it updated a few times
10:36since then.
10:37And it was one of the slides that really started, I would say, moving me in what I would call
10:44your camp, which is more of a climate realist.
10:48Because, you know, in my mind, it depicts the difficulty of moving that black line,
10:59which is all the way near the top to get all the way to the bottom.
11:02So kind of talk us through this slide a little bit, and tell us what it's doing.
11:09Yeah, basically, it's a slide to show how rapidly we have to decarbonize or stop using
11:15fossil fuels over the next little while.
11:17I think there's an exaggeration there.
11:19I think 7% per year beginning last year would have got us to the Paris Agreement, which
11:27basically says we need to be about 48% to 50% less carbon emissions by 2030, and essentially
11:35full carbonization by 2050.
11:37Now, on a compound reduction rate, I think 7% per year would probably do that.
11:44But look, look at the catastrophic impact that the COVID pandemic has had on the global
11:52economy. And yet that impact will only reduce carbon emissions by about the amount
11:57required to meet the Paris target.
12:00So this is an inordinate task.
12:03To reduce our emissions by 7% would, by the way, if we assume a constant energy supply,
12:11would require in one year that we build an equivalent amount of wind power and solar
12:20photovoltaic power about three times greater than the total global installation that has
12:27accumulated of those technologies over the last 30 years.
12:30So it's a simply not a physically possible task.
12:34We cannot achieve the Kyoto target or not the Kyoto target.
12:39Sorry, I've got Kyoto on my mind here.
12:41The Paris Accord target of 7% or thereabouts reductions in carbon dioxide while
12:48maintaining our global energy supply by any known alternative means.
12:53I think there's a couple of other things that we need to point out here, Gary, that our
12:58economy, or at least I suppose the global community, is so fixated on maintaining the
13:05illusion of perpetual economic growth facilitated by technological advances that the
13:12only legitimate things on the table to talk about here are developments in technology
13:19that involve the massive investment of capital, again, photovoltaics, gigantic wind
13:26turbines. One that's, I think, very scary is the idea that we need to not only develop
13:34more energy supplies, but extract vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
13:39Again, massive capital investment in totally unproved technologies.
13:43We don't really know how to do that yet.
13:46But the bottom line here is that everything that we're allowed, in a sense, to discuss
13:50about officially at the international level involve massive capital investment with the
13:56promise of billions or trillions of dollars flowing through the economy to maintain high
14:01levels of unemployment and keep economic growth going.
14:06And you can't do both.
14:08You cannot have massive investment in high tech things that I've mentioned and
14:16maintain. You know, all of those developments require the consumption, combustion of
14:21carbon fuels.
14:23OK, so it's a fantasy to think that we can go forward along the current track.
14:29And yet the obvious solution, such as massive investments in energy efficiency, massive
14:35reductions in trivial uses of fossil fuels, a conservation of energy in ways that we can
14:41reserve the remaining fossil supply for essential uses such as intercity transport or
14:48agriculture. Those things simply aren't being discussed.
14:51It's all about finding substitutes to maintain the growth track so that we can have at
14:56least the equivalent amount of energy to maintain the status quo.
15:01And I think that's a it just cannot be done.
15:06And again, you're just throwing me softballs here because these are some of my favorite
15:12topics. You know, at one point I wrote a little bit about this, but I also want to write a
15:17piece about the green in the United States.
15:20They call it the Green New Deal, because as I read the Green New Deal, it looks like a
15:27massive construction project for the most part, you know, highways, bridges, roads,
15:32buildings, massive housing, all of which call causes, you know, requires enormous amounts
15:39of concrete, which emits enormous amounts of greenhouse gases, et cetera, et cetera.
15:44Now, I say that in part because I know that you're on the board of a new organization
15:49called the Real Green New Deal, I think.
15:51I think it's called something like that.
15:53And yes, yeah.
15:55You're trying to bring attention to this issue that the Green New Deal might not be so
16:02green. What's the name of that new organization?
16:04Tell me. Well, it is the Real Green New Deal.
16:06And we're again trying to point out that the Green New Deal, the mainstream Green New
16:12Deal, is a fantasy.
16:15It's just another version of so-called green growth.
16:18And green growth itself is an oxymoron.
16:21It's a contradiction in terms.
16:23And let me put this a little bit in context.
16:26If you look at the throughput, that is to say the total amount of energy and material
16:30moving through the global economy, we extract all of that material and energy from
16:35nature and we dump all of it back into nature eventually.
16:39And we're currently doing that at about 60 to 70 percent, you can give or take a little
16:44bit here, faster than those natural systems can produce, particularly the biomass part
16:50of that energy and assimilate the wastes.
16:53So the world is already in a state of overshoot.
16:56Even if we stopped right now at current levels of material and energy consumption and
17:00throughput, we're simply consuming the planet and will go down.
17:04It eventually will implode and take us with it.
17:08So we've got an enormous existing problem.
17:12Any program such as the Green New Deal, which, as you described it quite adequately,
17:18depends on massive investment in new technologies, will require the combustion of vast
17:24quantities of fossil fuel.
17:26And in any case, let's be clear here that massive wind turbines, solar photovoltaics,
17:33electric vehicles, all of these things are currently constructed and we don't see any
17:38way out of this in the short term using fossil fuels.
17:42All of the infrastructure required to use them requires the use of fossil fuels.
17:47It is not really renewable technology at all.
17:49When you think of a wind turbine, the actual life expectancy in real use is somewhere
17:55between 15 and 20 years.
17:58So the turbine and much of the existing infrastructure has to be replaced after that
18:03time. Voltaic panels may last a little longer, 20, 25 years, but they too have to be
18:11replaced. And there's already, if you look, anybody can check this out online, the waste
18:17being created from the disposal of wind turbines and photovoltaics is already becoming
18:23massive. And yet it's we're only at a fraction of what would be needed to come close to
18:27substituting for fossil fuel.
18:29So to summarise, they're not really renewable forms of energy.
18:33They're replaceable forms of energy.
18:35They're replacement and manufacture in the first place, plus all of the background
18:40infrastructure that is required to transport and erect them and so on, all generated
18:45using fossil fuel.
18:47So it's a dead end street.
18:48And we have to recognise that this would be a profligate waste of fossil fuel.
18:53On the one hand, we do have to use fossil fuels for the foreseeable future.
18:57But why not redirect the remaining fossil budget as a limited carbon budget if we really
19:02want to avoid massive climate change to those essential uses of fossil fuels until we
19:08can come up with a plan of some kind to let us descend slowly into the state of
19:14sustainability that we would all like to achieve eventually?
19:19And one of the other graphs I want to look at, because it was it was somewhat of an aha
19:25moment for me, is titled The Annual Increase in Demand for Electricity Exceeds the
19:32Entire Output of Foldable Take Electricity Installations.
19:38And this was in one of your columns that you wrote.
19:43So talk us through this one.
19:47Like, what is the blue line?
19:48What is the yellow line?
19:49And what does it mean?
19:52OK, well, basically, yeah, that was using data from, I think, 2018.
19:57So in 2018, we had a situation was a great leap forward in the application of wind and
20:05photovoltaics. No question about that.
20:08But the increase in demand for electricity and keep in mind that wind power and
20:13photovoltaics produce electricity.
20:16And what we really need is cheap, portable liquid fuels.
20:21But the electricity produced by wind and photovoltaics jumps up in double digits every
20:27year. But because it's starting from such a small base, if we have even a 2 percent
20:33increase in global energy demand, and this is what that slide shows, that in 2018, the
20:39global increase for electricity demand around the world exceeded the entire output of
20:47all the photovoltaic installations in place over the last 30 odd years.
20:53So as long as you have an economy, a global economy whose demand for energy is
20:57increasing at 2 percent or 3 percent per year, it's almost impossible to conceive that
21:03photovoltaics will catch up.
21:06And eventually, you, of course, run up against the fact that most of the uses of
21:11energy, people forget that we're still about 80, 84 percent dependent on fossil fuels.
21:17And many of the current uses of fossil fuels are not substitutable by electricity.
21:23You won't soon see, for example, airliners flying on electricity or highway trucks, for
21:29that matter, despite all the hype that we're seeing.
21:31The battery weights, at least with current technologies, it takes up most of the cargo
21:36space. So we've got some enormous technological problems here.
21:40And I'm not suggesting we should solve them because that would imply maintaining the
21:44growth trajectory, which is really the major problem that we're talking about.
21:48We have to back off thinking about we can solve these problems and maintain our current
21:54growth trajectory.
21:56And so that slide basically is showing that growth itself is defeating even the
22:03remarkable progress that has been made in photovoltaics and wind power.
22:10And, you know, part of the part of what we're trying to do on the show is talk about, I
22:15would call some hard truths that the public don't always hear.
22:20And people who are environmentalists don't always hear, too, at least here in the United
22:25States. And I can speak, you know, from some level of authority here in the state of
22:29Colorado, because we got a new governor and he's kind of a green governor, but he's pro
22:36growth. And he's also like pushing electric cars like crazy.
22:41And we're trying to phase out the coal fired power plants.
22:44But the emissions are continuing to rise faster than the increment of, you know,
22:53renewable energy that's being created.
22:55And, you know, the number of cars are going up so fast that even if you make more of
23:02those electric, you're still going backwards in terms of the amount of emissions
23:07caused by far as if you actually use the life cycle emissions of an electric car.
23:14I mean, it's just one example.
23:15And so I guess my point is, it's such a popular and easy story to tell.
23:20And the environmental groups, of course, are just, you know, got their cheerleading
23:24efforts and they're shaking their pom poms, you know, right.
23:27And I'm not trying to degrade the governor, but everybody's shaking their pom poms like
23:30this is it, this is it, this is it.
23:32And no one wants to hear what you just said.
23:36I mean, no one, not the media, no one wants to hear it.
23:40Absolutely. And this goes back to what I meant by saying I'm a climate realist, because
23:45what you're describing is the unrealistic prospect, very politically popular, because
23:52the unrealistic perspective of the Green New Deal, for example, is that all we need to
23:56do is shift technologies and carry on pretty much as before.
24:01So if you take you've mentioned it, I didn't bring it up, but the electric vehicle, an
24:07enormous quantity of very rare minerals and metals have to be mined in order to build
24:16electric vehicles.
24:17Now, these are extremely rare ores that are very dilute.
24:21So you may have to mine several tons of material to get a few grams of a particular rare
24:28mineral. All of this is done, 90% of it with fossil fuel.
24:33And of course, you have in addition to the mining is the refining, the high heat
24:38processing and manufacturing and on and on and on.
24:42And by the time we're done just to produce the battery of a standard middle sized
24:47electric vehicle, I'm told it takes as much carbon dioxide just to build or will produce
24:54as much carbon dioxide as building an entire internal combustion engine vehicle.
24:59And then you could drive that internal combustion engine vehicle for a couple of
25:04years before you've produced in total the amount of carbon dioxide generated by making
25:10just the battery for the electric vehicle.
25:12And of course, then there's the rest of the electric vehicle.
25:16So again, electric vehicles are a technological quick fix that don't fix anything.
25:22Three billion or 10 billion electric vehicles on the highways are going to be just as
25:27destructive as perhaps a slightly lesser number of fossil fuel vehicles.
25:33But nevertheless, this is not a technology that reduces the human ecological footprint.
25:39And as I say, and well, you've emphasized as well, most of the other technical fixes
25:44we're talking about here make people feel good, that they don't have to change very
25:50much. We can continue to maintain our current high end material lifestyle without
25:56interruption because the technology is there to move us through.
26:01And I think this is very rapidly proving to be a grand myth that will unfortunately set
26:07a lot of people back.
26:10The next slide I'm bringing up and I'm going to segue from something you just said is
26:14called Proximate Driver Population and Economic Growth Fueled by Fossil Energy.
26:22And of course, this is the classic hockey stick population curve.
26:29And but I want to say something a little bit deeper about it, because, you know, you just
26:36said that people want to feel good.
26:40And that is such an important thing to recognize and sort of an important problem,
26:47because, you know, I used to be much more involved in the mainstream environmental
26:51movement. And it's sort of like in order to attract funders and keep the public somewhat
26:57excited and to, you know, get people to show up to rallies, you got to do something that
27:03makes them feel good.
27:04And if you tell them that the electric cars are not the ticket, they're like, well, that
27:11just doesn't make people feel good.
27:12It doesn't attract funders. It doesn't attract publicity, et cetera.
27:15And so, you know, part of what we're dealing with and I think it's something you've
27:20written about, too, is just like the challenge of the human mind to kind of deal with bad
27:25news and face it in a realistic perspective.
27:29And of course, this, you know, the proximate driver of the graph we're looking at now
27:34about population growth kind of gets to the heart of that issue.
27:39So let me talk about that curve a little bit, because I think it is it really emphasizes
27:47what we've been talking about, that climate change is only symptomatic of the bigger
27:51issue. And I think the bigger issue is very well illustrated by this slide.
27:55Now, again, people have a fairly short attention span.
28:00If we look at this slide, we could have extended that population access back 200,000
28:05years. So for the most of the 200 or 300,000 year history of our species, Homo sapiens,
28:13growth was not an issue.
28:15We simply fluctuated in the vicinity of carrying capacity at very low levels of
28:21population, almost everywhere we lived on the planet.
28:24It wasn't until the last two or three hundred years when the Industrial Revolution got
28:29underway that growth became fairly evident.
28:33In other words, up until a couple of hundred years ago, you could live your entire life,
28:37say, in rural Europe and not notice anything change because technology was pretty
28:44stagnant and certainly the population was fluctuating.
28:47In fact, if you live during a plague, you might see your population locally drop by 50
28:52percent as a result of a massive plague.
28:55So we've got a rather interesting situation here in that for the first 200,000 years of
29:03human history, no population growth.
29:06Then in one one thousandth as much time, we've seen this massive explosion in human
29:12numbers. It took 200,000 years or so to reach, what, one billion in the early part of the
29:1919th century.
29:20But in just 200 years, we went up to six billion by the end of the 20th century.
29:27So that's an utterly unprecedented explosion in human numbers.
29:31And of course, since the end of the 20th century, we've gone up another billion and a
29:35half. So we're now at, what, one point or seven point eight billion people on planet
29:40Earth, most of whom have evolved or emerged in just the last couple of hundred years.
29:47So here's what I'm trying to really get at.
29:49Only eight generations of thousands of generations of human beings have experienced
29:56enough growth in population and enough technological development in their lifetimes
30:02even to notice it.
30:04And yet we take this recent period of time as the norm.
30:10So everybody today thinks of growth at the rate of two or three percent per year is the
30:15norm when we are actually talking about a period which is the single most anomalous or
30:21abnormal period in the history of our species.
30:24Here's something else most people today find remarkable.
30:28It wasn't until the 1950s, you know, just 50, what, 70 years ago now, that governments
30:35even recognized that growth was occurring.
30:39So growth did not become a formal part of the official developmental program of any
30:45governments until the 1950s.
30:48That's how quickly this has come upon us.
30:50It was a total surprise.
30:52So again, I have to underscore that what young people today and all our business people
30:57think of as the norm is the single most abnormal period in human history.
31:02And let's talk a little bit about exponential growth, because that's really what we're
31:07talking about here.
31:08Exponential growth means that there's a constant doubling time.
31:12And at two percent per year, you will double everything in 35 years.
31:19Did you hear what I said in 35 years?
31:22Now, we're in a period of exponential growth.
31:24Now, what this means is and it's easy to show with real numbers that 50 percent of all
31:31the fossil fuel ever burned by human beings has been burned since 1980.
31:36Ninety seven percent of all the fossil fuels ever burned has been burned since about
31:421940.
31:44So really, this enormous fossil burden that we've imposed on the planet is a product
31:50of my lifetime.
31:52In my lifetime, 90 percent of all the fossil fuels ever burned by humankind has been
31:59burned. If we double the economy based on fossil fuels, we're going to have a
32:05global economy. If we double the economy based on fossil fuels, we will use in the
32:10next 30 years the equivalent of all the fossil fuels ever burned to date, essentially.
32:15So that's the nature of exponential growth.
32:19And we can say the same thing about just about everything.
32:22Most of the rare earth minerals used in high tech have been consumed in the last 30
32:29years just because of this enormous power of exponential growth.
32:35And it's all around the fact that that growth, this enormous increase that we have
32:39seen, is occurring on a finite planet that is not growing.
32:44So while our demands on nature have been doubling roughly every 35 years or so, the
32:50planet itself is constant in size and capacity.
32:54We've increased the productivity of some ecosystems through artificial means like
32:59fertilizer. But in the process, we've destroyed the living ecosystems of the soil, for
33:04and displaced most of nature.
33:06So our growth is being purchased, as I said, right at the outset by the elimination of
33:12the ecosystems, the species and even some of the life support processes upon which
33:18civilization depends for its survival.
33:23So the real question is, is it realistic on a planet that is already 60 to 70 percent
33:30in overshoot to expect to increase the population by another 30 to 50 percent and more
33:37than double? Most economists expect the economy to double by, you know, mid-century.
33:43If that doubling implies a doubling of throughput of energy and material consumption,
33:48then I don't think this can happen without destruction of the ecosphere, collapse of
33:54the climate system, collapse of ecosystems, collapse of fisheries and ocean systems that
33:59will take civilization down.
34:01One of our previous guests on the show talked about the issue of population growth.
34:11And, you know, and you've been around because you're not a young person like me.
34:16But, you know, in 1970, at an Earth Day in the United States, one of our guests pointed
34:23out that the environmental movement and the population movement was the same thing.
34:30In fact, you know, what a lot of the genesis for Earth Day in the United States came from
34:35a guy named Gaylord Nelson.
34:38And overpopulation in 1970 was one of his big issues, sort of why he founded, partly
34:45why he founded Earth Day and why he moved it forward.
34:49And in his biography, he laments the fact, of course, that environmentalism has stopped
34:57in the United States for the most part, stopped focusing on population growth.
35:00So there's been like this balkanization where the population movement has kind of
35:06gone off in a zone and the environmental movement, like almost all of it, refuses to
35:10touch the population or we call it the P word.
35:13It's like it's like the word that you cannot mention.
35:17So, you know, and you've watched it and lived it.
35:20I mean, and I think it's happened somewhat in Canada also.
35:23And so why do you think that is?
35:26Why can't environmentalists grapple with the population problem?
35:33Well, the bottom line is that for the last 40 or 50 years, anyone who gets serious in
35:40discussing population is accused of being racist because we see in the world a great
35:46divide here. We have the 20 percent of the world's people who use 70 or 80 percent of
35:52the world's resources.
35:54They're the over consumers.
35:56And by the way, they've essentially used up all of the terrestrial carrying capacity.
36:01On the other hand, we see very large numbers, say four billion of relatively impoverished
36:06people where the highest population growth is occurring.
36:11And so if those of us who are high end consumers talk about population control, we are
36:17seen to be suppressing the rights of people in the third world to grow however they would
36:23like and to achieve the same levels of material life that we would have.
36:28So this is a long debate.
36:30It goes back. The first international meeting on population and environment or
36:35development held by the United Nations was 1992.
36:40And I happen to be part of the what we call the pre-conference preparation
36:45meetings here in Canada.
36:48And I presented an early version of our ecological footprint model that showed that the
36:54major environmental problems on Earth were caused by the product of population times
37:00per capita consumption.
37:02And we had some very elegant graphs and data to illustrate what I was getting at here.
37:07Now, keep in mind, we're leading into the very first major conference held by the
37:13United Nations on environment and development.
37:17So development on the one hand, environment on the other hand.
37:20We recognize there was a conflict to some extent between these.
37:24And I was trying to highlight the fact that that conflict originated in too many people
37:29consuming too many resources.
37:31Now, I was taken aside by an official after that first meeting and told that that was
37:37all very interesting, but we really couldn't talk about the population question at this
37:42meeting. And for that matter, we really couldn't talk about overconsumption.
37:47So can you imagine a situation where the world is getting together to talk about
37:52environment and development, but there was a kind of under the table preliminary
37:57agreement not to overemphasize consumption or population.
38:03And it was an agreement that if the first world didn't press too hard on the population
38:08question at this conference, then the third world of the so-called developing world would
38:13not chide the far north in high income countries for their overconsumption.
38:21So the two factors driving the problem were withdrawn from discussion right off the
38:26top. And if I'm not mistaken, it was the first George Bush president of the United
38:32States at the time who stood up and said that the United States way of life was not up
38:38for negotiation, which was a perfectly good illustration of the mentality operating at
38:44that time. So you don't talk to us about our population problem.
38:47We won't bug you about the fact that you've overconsumed and are inhibiting.
38:52So we eliminated any meaningful discussion of the problem.
38:57So that that conference came up with a definition of sustainability that would satisfy
39:02everybody. It was development to satisfy current needs or present needs without
39:08compromising the ability of future generations to satisfy their own needs.
39:13Well, who wouldn't like that?
39:15Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a mode of development that we could all enjoy today
39:19and it wouldn't affect anybody in the future?
39:22But it was an automatic entry for the technology set to say, yeah, all we need to do
39:29is develop new technologies that will enable us to maintain our current lifestyles and
39:34extend those same lifestyles to future generations.
39:37Then we can all be happy.
39:39And so it kind of paved the way for the current mentality around green growth.
39:45So the environment development problem was seen as a technological issue and an
39:51efficiency issue.
39:52So the main thrust of that conference was to get governments out of interfering too
39:57much in the economy, to allow the private sector and new technologies to emerge that
40:02would be more environmentally and ecologically friendly.
40:05And hence, we could clear the path for additional growth that would satisfy not only
40:11current generations, but enable future generations to grow into our current lifestyle.
40:18Now, the end result of all that is the problems we're confronting today.
40:22It's simply not a possible thing to do in any real biophysical world.
40:27So, again, climate realist, ecological realist.
40:31Let's be real and recognize that eight and a half billion people going toward 10 or 11
40:37billion people on a finite planet is simply not possible, particularly if all of those
40:45billions are seeing their material lifestyles increase constantly and expected to do so
40:53with great regularity.
40:56You know, you created the ecological footprint model, and I actually find it to be
41:06rather groundbreaking.
41:09And it comes back to my mind pretty often because one of the other things I'm involved
41:14in in Colorado is just a lot of growth wars and, you know, trying to point out the
41:21ecological footprint of various types of growth continues to be a struggle, you know,
41:27because and then run into the same problem I ran before because the environmental groups
41:33and the boosters of green growth and sustainability are just convinced if we just, you
41:41know, build more houses and pack them in tighter and create these little walkable
41:45neighborhoods and then give everybody electric cars that we're going to solve the
41:50problem. What they don't get is the concept of an ecological footprint that your
41:57footprint can actually be much bigger than your than the footprint of your house, you
42:04know, things like that. And in fact, that you can become more affluent and and still
42:12stay in a nice little two bedroom condo.
42:15But your affluence itself has a big ecological footprint to it because you're flying
42:19around the world, you're doing this, you're doing that.
42:21This first came out with the concept of the Netherlands fallacy, which I think you've
42:27written about and talked about in the past.
42:29So describe how that this what the Netherlands fallacy is and sort of why it's, you
42:35know, kind of hooked into the history of this concept of ecological footprint.
42:40OK, let's define the eco footprint, first of all, and it's important for people to
42:44realize that each one of us is kind of tied to Mother Earth with an umbilical cord.
42:50That umbilical cord is the means by which we extract resources from the planet and dump
42:55our wastes back into the earth.
42:57And the idea I came up with way back in the 70s and 80s was that we could probably
43:04quantify that.
43:05Just the question I ask myself, just lie in my bed looking at the ceiling and ask just
43:10how much of the earth's surface is necessary in constant production and waste
43:15assimilation to support just me in the lifestyle to which I am accustomed?
43:21And by the way, yes, I came up with that idea, but it's been developed by a group of
43:26very, very talented Ph.D.
43:28students and in particular Matisse Wackernagel, Dr.
43:30Wackernagel, who now runs the Global Footprint Network and is one of my top students.
43:36So, yes, the idea has taken off and we did develop a way to quantify how much of the
43:42earth's surface is needed to sustain and support indefinitely an individual, a city,
43:48a country, indeed the whole planet.
43:51Now, one of the first countries we looked at in detail was the Netherlands.
43:56And I was invited after we had developed this little model of the Netherlands to a
44:02conference in Amsterdam.
44:05And it was a conference put on by the Dutch government for a very large group
44:11delegation of representatives from developing countries.
44:14And the question was, is the Netherlands a model for the developing world to follow?
44:21And many people thought that it was because the Netherlands seemed to be a miracle.
44:27It was a country with, I think at the time, the highest density of population in Europe,
44:32a very small land base.
44:34It was one of the highest income countries, so they had a very high standard of living.
44:38So how is it that a country with almost no land and resources could be among the
44:42wealthiest and best off on planet Earth?
44:45And wouldn't that be a good model for all of these developing billions of people to
44:50follow? And indeed, the individual who preceded me on the podium was a Dutch economist,
44:55a very well-known individual I knew a little bit.
44:58And he argued, yes, Holland is a perfect example because it showed that how through
45:03resource efficiency and technological ingenuity, a small land poor country could rise
45:09to the top. And then he made what's at the time just stunned me, an error, which and
45:16he said that not only do we have a very small land base, but we're so good that we
45:22can we have a surplus in agricultural exports.
45:26So here was this tiny country with almost no land bragging that it had a surplus of
45:31agricultural exports.
45:32Well, I was sitting on this huge pile of data to show exactly the opposite.
45:37What our information showed was that to sustain the Dutch population at the time
45:43required. I can't remember the exact number of something like five to seven times as
45:48much land outside of the Netherlands as was contained within the Netherlands.
45:53Moreover, we showed that Dutch agricultural exports, by the way, are usually in the form
45:58of highly processed meats and cheeses.
46:02You can buy Dutch cheese in any store in Colorado, I'm sure.
46:05And the point is that the fodder used in Holland to produce the milk and the meat and
46:12the chickens and so on that they then package is all grown elsewhere.
46:17So that Dutch agricultural exports, especially food exports, are high value added
46:22products. So that what the economist was talking about was the value of Dutch exports
46:28exceeded the value of Dutch imports.
46:31And to them, that's the balance of trade.
46:33Here was Holland exporting more agricultural goods and food products than it was
46:38importing. But if you look at the raw materials, completely the opposite was the case.
46:43So the Dutch agricultural footprint was several times larger than the entire country of
46:48Holland. So the fallacy is that if you just think of the space you occupy by sitting in
46:55your chair as the amount of space you need on Earth, then you're just delusional.
47:00You know, the Cato Institute in Washington used to talk about the planet being hugely
47:05underpopulated. The Cato Institute folks at the time, I suppose one of their leading
47:10acolytes was Julian Simon.
47:13He argued, you know, the greatest human resource is the human mind.
47:19He pointed out, I think it was him that said even petroleum wasn't a resource until the
47:23human mind figured out how to use it.
47:25So it's human technological ingenuity that is really the greatest resource that humans
47:31have. And there's a great deal of truth to that.
47:34They used to argue that you could put the entire global population in the state of Texas
47:39living in single family homes and still have space left over.
47:44So clearly, as anybody who looks out the window of an airplane can see, the Earth is
47:50mostly uninhabited.
47:52It's simply ridiculous to talk about a population problem if you could put everybody in
47:57Texas and have all that land left over.
48:00But if you add to each of those people in Texas, the if they're typical Americans, if we
48:06got them all up to them, they'd need about 15 acres or four or eight hectares.
48:11So that would be 20, 20 acres at least of land per capita to produce all the
48:18biological products that they consume and to assimilate just their carbon wastes.
48:23Suddenly the Earth is full, even though everybody's living in Texas, because each of us
48:28has an ecological footprint as much as 20 acres.
48:32If you're a North American, larger, just 20 acres, which is a hell of a lot larger than the
48:37space you occupy.
48:39So that's really the problem here that people do not understand that they are attached to
48:46the planet. They have a placenta, as it were, on the planet of over 20 acres from which
48:53they extract all the nutrients needed to keep themselves in good shape and to export their
48:59wastes. And when you add up all of those human placentae, they more than cover the Earth
49:06by about 70 percent.
49:08Do you get what I'm talking about, Gary?
49:10Absolutely. It is an overcrowded planet, whether we are visually able to see it or not.
49:17And, you know, as we wind down here, I want to I want to hit one more image and then also
49:22talk about a piece you wrote about 11 key steps we need to take to to fix the problem or
49:28try to work in the right direction.
49:30And one of the one image is called Managing the Plague.
49:33And I sent this to you just a little bit ago.
49:36And, you know, because I like this image because we've spent so much time here now on
49:41Earth in Canada, the United States, talking about bending the curve of the of the
49:47coronavirus epidemic.
49:49And this one uses the same sort of curve concept about how we need to bend the curve
49:55towards sustainability.
49:58And so, you know, what are your thoughts on that one?
50:03Well, again, if you look at the huge explosion of human numbers and it's not
50:10population, keep in mind that the population has grown by a factor of six or seven in just
50:16200 years, but the economy has grown by a much larger factor than that.
50:21So we've become an enormous issue on the planet.
50:27But if we stick just to the population as surrogate for everything else for the time
50:31being, in nature, various species sometimes undergo population outbreaks.
50:39It usually happens when they are suddenly introduced to a new environment which has a
50:45plentitude of resources or perhaps there's a couple of very good years.
50:48So lots of food is produced and the population responds to that by growing very
50:53rapidly. Going back to something I said earlier, for most of human history, our
50:58population hasn't grown.
50:59We've been kept down by disease, by resource shortages, by war, by food shortages
51:05and so on and so forth.
51:07But with fossil fuel, something happened.
51:12It literally pulled the cork off our population bottle.
51:15We have a natural capacity to expand exponentially.
51:20Normally that's suppressed by ecological conditions.
51:24But with fossil fuel, we suddenly in the 19th century began to explore various means
51:31to acquire all the other resources, the food, the materials, all the stuff that we
51:36build our homes and our cities with are all products of fossil fuel.
51:41So we saw this enormous expansion almost entirely attributable to fossil fuel.
51:47Now, it's true that medicine had a great impact, that it increased longevity and all
51:52of that. But those people couldn't have lived without the resources provided by
51:56fossil fuel. So if you look at the human population explosion curve here, it
52:02resembles a population outbreak in other species, including plagues of locusts or
52:09even the pandemic.
52:10In fact, I've just written a paper comparing the pandemic to the human population
52:15issue. And they're all motivated or driven by this exponential growth function.
52:20Now, in nature, an outbreak like this invariably depletes its environment or becomes
52:28disease ridden or is otherwise slammed back.
52:32No species in nature has a population that expands indefinitely and humans are going to
52:39be no different. So what I'm arguing is that if you look at that population curve in
52:44that slide we saw a moment ago, it resembles a one off plague phase outbreak of any
52:53other species in nature.
52:55And it will end by collapsing, by coming down, either because we decide it's time to
53:00get this population question under control or nature will slam it down by climate
53:05change, an increase in disease.
53:07Look, the pandemic is a product of population.
53:11It's too many people living in high concentrations of the disease spreads rapidly.
53:18But it's also a transmission from animals.
53:21We're now eating bushmeat and bringing animals into markets that are there's hundreds
53:28of thousands of potential viruses that could infect the humans and some of them will.
53:33There will be two or three more plagues by the end of this century if we carry on at
53:37the present rate. So even the plague.
53:40Of coronavirus is a factor of human overpopulation and our own population resembles
53:48exactly the curve of the growth of the coronavirus.
53:51So what I'm arguing in that last slide is that if we get serious about solving our
53:56problems, the pop, the curve that we want to curve bend down is the human population
54:03curve. We have to reduce the human population below the long term carrying capacity of
54:10planet Earth. There's no way around this.
54:13If we don't do so by definition, by remaining above carrying capacity, we continue to
54:19destroy the biophysical basis of our own existence and will implode anyway.
54:24So we have a choice, Gary.
54:26In my view, it's to, first of all, recognize the nature of the problem and either let
54:32nature take its course and that will be kind of grisly or come together as a global
54:39community, exercise the intelligence and our analytic capabilities to plan a controlled
54:47descent of human numbers and the scale of the human enterprise so that we can learn to
54:53live with greater equity well within the means of nature.
54:59That is a perfect way to end the show.
55:03You know, we do call it overcoming overshoot.
55:05And so I know you've made a career about sort of measuring overshoot.
55:09And but in the last decade or so, you've been writing more about overcoming overshoot.
55:13And one of the pieces you wrote was 11 key steps to try to fix the problem.
55:18And I think you hit on a few of those there in the last sentence.
55:22William, thank you very much for being on the show here.
55:25We really appreciated your comments.
55:28And again, for me personally and professionally, a lot of aha moments in your slides and
55:34everything you say.
55:35Well, it's been a pleasure being here and I hope that we do a little bit of good.
55:38Thank you so much, Gary.
55:40I'm Gary Wachner.
55:41I just want to thank you all for watching Overcoming Overshoot here on EarthX TV.