Population Balance

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The Biggest Risk to Humanity

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Ecological overshoot is the second largest risk to humanity. Not reacting to it is the biggest. Mathis Wackernagel, co-creator of the ecological footprint and co-founder of the Global Footprint Network, joins us. Highlights of the conversations include:

  • How ecological footprint is calculated as a measure of how much of nature’s regenerative capacity humanity is using;

  • Why the estimate that we’re using the natural regenerative capacity of 1.7 Earths is an underestimate of humanity’s actual ecological overshoot;

  • Why shrinking our ecological footprint needs to be framed as an opportunity for resource security, not just noble and charitable but absolutely necessary if humanity hopes to end overshoot more by design and less by disaster;

  • Why international development schemes that emphasize GDP growth and not resource security won’t work for the ¾ of humanity stuck in the ‘ecological poverty trap’ of depleted resources and insufficient income to buy those resources from other countries; 

  • Why countries not putting resource security at the center of their economic development plans is suicidal;

  • Why peoples’ motivation to end ecological overshoot will be driven by desire, agency, and curiosity - not by trying to command and control peoples’ behavior. 

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

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