Bill Rees – Towards Sustainability: Does Science Matter?
Recently, we had an opportunity to host a variety of great talks for science teachers. One of the talks was by Dr. William Rees. It was a nice little introduction into the conundrum of our reliance on “progress” to fix things. In any event, here is the link that will lead you to a 25 minute talk he gave.
If you do watch it, I’d be interested to see what you think. In many ways it suggests that human behaviour is currently not well suited to dealing with an issue of this magnitude.
Interestingly, one of the questions that came up after the talk, (that I thought really nailed the going feeling in the room) was “Do you think it’s important to teach students to hope?”
Thoughts?
3 Responses to “Bill Rees – Towards Sustainability: Does Science Matter?”
An interesting talk. It’s really one of those that says a major paradigm shift is needed (where the whole consumerism jaunt needs to shut down somehow).
As Dr. Rees suggests, maybe this is something that the youth can take charge of – although judging by the popularity of things like Gossip Girl and High School Musical, it’s not looking too hopeful if you ask me.
The bigger question, of course, is how can one get this paradigm shift to occur.
Is it more scary weather to shock us, or is it’s putting forth a stigma on being environmentally irresponsible?
Or maybe it’s starting already? Green is the new hip isn’t it? So perhaps we’re not far off – maybe we just need to keep going with a whole lot of (grassroots) nudges.
Thanks for linking to the talk. The mismatch between consumer culture and sustainability was stated fairly clearly in Bruce Sterling’s Veridian Design Manifesto (the article that launched WorldChanging.) There has been significant progress since then. What is needed now is for the greening trend to make further inroads into daily life, to the point where it becomes the norm.