Collection search - Rees, William. Measuring our ecological footprint

Record information – Brief
1
Rees, William. Measuring our ecological footprint

Hierarchical level:

File

Date:

August 2010

Reference:

R16853-84-6-E, Volume number: 2, File number: 16

File no. (creator):

16

Type of material:

Moving images, Textual material, Sound recordings

Found in:

Archives / Collections and Fonds

Item ID number:

5858774

Context of this record:

Show detail Hide detail

The Green Interview fonds

Interviews

Rees, William. Measuring our ecological footprint
Link to this record

Add to My Research

Link to this record

This link identifies the web page describing this particular record. Unlike the temporary link in your browser, this link will allow you to access, and reference, this page in the future. To link to this descriptive record, copy and paste the URL where ever needed (wiki, blog, document).

Sign in

Sign in to start saving records using My Research

Sign in
Record information – Details

Date(s):

August 2010

Place of creation:

Canada

Extent:

1 video file (.mov).
1 closed caption file (.vtt).
1 textual document (.pdf).
1 sound file (.mp3).
1 folder of textual records.

Language of material:

English

Scope and content:

Show detail Hide detail

File consists of an interview with William Rees titled "Measuring our ecological footprint." The interview was conducted by Silver Donald Cameron as part of The Green Interview. File includes video of the interview, printed transcript, sound recording, and closed captioning file.

From the interview with William Rees: "Well, the ecological footprint is a very simple measure. It is intended to measure one thing, and that is, how big would the little planet required to support just Silver Donald Cameron be? So if you think for a moment-obviously you eat food, you drink water, you deposit waste back into the environment. And if you multiply that by the thousands of products that we consume, each of us, every year, it's quite clear, and we can show this now, but everything we consume has an origin somewhere on the Earth. And every waste that we produce has to be assimilated somewhere on our planet. And for this to happen sustainably, there has to be a continuous capacity to produce the things we consume and to assimilate those things that we waste. So the question for you is, how much land would be needed to grow food? How much to produce the wood fibre that you'd consume? How much is carbon -assimilation land for the carbon dioxide that you would net? And soon and so forth. If you added all that up, that's your personal planetoid. And that becomes, in effect, the footprint you have on the Earth.

"So every one of us, whether we are conscious of it or not, requires a certain land area, a productive ecosystem area. It is producing everything we consume and assimilating the wastes that we produce on a continuous basis, It's an exclusive area, in that the land growing your food can't grow my food; I mean obviously Saskatchewan grows food for a lot of people, but you could apportion it square metre by square metre. The point is, then the ecological footprint is designed simply as a measure of the productive ecosystem area required to sustain any specified population, at any specified material standard. It's the area that the population uses on a continuous basis all over the planet to produce the resources it consumes and to assimilate some of the important wastes."

Finding aid no.:

Show detail Hide detail

MSS2736

Additional information:

Show detail Hide detail

General note:

From The Green Interview website: "Topic: Counting what counts."

From The Green Interview website: Dr. William Rees, who devised the famous "Ecological Footprint," which measures the proportion of the earth's resources any group of people is using - a single person, a village or region, or the entire human race.

Dr. William Rees has been a professor at the University of British Columbia's School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) since 1969. He founded SCARP's 'Environment and Resource Planning' concentration and from 1994 to 1999 served as director of the School.

Born December 18, 1943, Bill Rees grew up on a farm in in southern Ontario, and dates his environmental awakening to a boyhood day when "I happened to glance down at my plate full of young new carrots, little potatoes, fresh lettuce, and I realized that there wasn't a single thing on the plate that I hadn't had a hand in growing. I suppose it was like an epiphany kind of experience."

Related material:

For audio-visual recordings of this interview, see IDCISN 607778.

Source:

Private
Ordering and viewing options

Conditions of access:

Show detail Hide detail

Moving images (video): electronic

[Consultation90 Open]

Textual records: electronic

[Consultation90 Open]

Sound recordings : electronic

[Consultation90 Open]

Textual records

[Consultation90 Open]

Volume [R16853]

[Consultation 90 Open]

2 File number 23

[Consultation 90 Open]

You can order materials in advance to be ready for you when you visit. You will need a user card to do this.

Cannot visit us on site? You can purchase a copy to be sent to you. Some restrictions may apply.

Report a problem on this page

Date modified:: 2024-06-12