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William Rees

Measuring Our Ecological Footprint

Date:August 2010
Location:Canada

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.”

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