‘You Dirty Orange Maniac!’: The President of Ultimate Destruction

Sadly, as crazed as Donald Trump may be — and he clearly is a deeply disturbed (and, of course, disturbing) human being — when it comes to war and the burning of fossil fuels, he’s been anything but alone as president of the United States.


Orange blow-up garbagemen Donald Trump speaks at Green Bay airport
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Tom Engelhardt
Apr 21, 2026

TomDispatch


When he’s on full blast, Donald Trump (not so long ago the “drill, baby, drill” candidate for president) is distinctly a furnace. And he seems intent on turning this planet, our only world, into a version of the same. But here’s the strange thing, when it comes to almost anything — from Iran to suddenly firing two key women, Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem, in his government (but certainly not the no-less-chaotic men) — there’s no minute, it seems, when he’s not flipping himself on his head and then spinning or stumbling or catapulting off in a new direction. There’s only one exception I’ve noticed and, all too sadly, that’s climate change, where everything he does — every single thing — is guaranteed to be a disaster for our children and grandchildren.

Recently, of course, he’s launched a nightmarish war, by definition a gigantic producer of greenhouse gases, that’s literally been all about oil and natural gas, thanks in part to the now chaotic, largely blocked Strait of Hormuz through which a quarter of humanity’s sea-borne oil and a fifth of its natural gas used to pass. And if you don’t believe me about it being a nightmare, just check out the most recent prices at your neighborhood gas station. Consider it an irony, then, that his disastrous Iranian war will undoubtedly lead in a direction — to the use of more green energy globally — that, if he ever thought about it, he would hate more than just about anything else. He has, of course, referred to environmentalists as “terrorists.” (“They are terrorists. I call them environmental terrorists.”) And in this country, over his two presidencies, he’s done his damnedest to attack and try to block wind and solar power projects in every imaginable way, even though, globally, green power is growing fast and getting ever cheaper.

And here’s the reality of our moment for which we do need to give Donald Trump credit: once upon a time, you couldn’t have made any of this up — or, of course, have made up Donald Trump as president of the United States (twice!). If you had, it would have seemed like the least believable science fiction novel ever written. Not that I drive a car in New York City (the subway and buses work fine for me), but as I was writing this piece, of course, the price of gas had also edged up in my city to almost four dollars a gallon and a (possibly global) recession is on the horizon. (Thank you, Donald Trump!)

Of course, in launching his recent war against Iran, however incoherently, “the PEACE PRESIDENT” (and yes, he’s into CAPS when it comes to himself) was, all too sadly, in good company, historically speaking. Since victory in World War II, from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq and now to Iran (to mention only the big conflicts of that all-American era), our presidents have had quite a knack (if such a word can even be used) for starting wars, none (not a one!) of which has ended in anything faintly like victory. And it’s already obvious — you don’t need to have the slightest knack for seeing into the future to know this — that Donald Trump’s version of the same in Iran will prove to be a global disaster, made worse by the fact that, in the process, whether he faintly grasps it or not, he’s also launched another brutally losing war against Planet Earth.

And the worst thing is that I feel I’ve written all of this before. And before Trump — well, “leaves” is far too mild a word for it — abandons (??) the presidency, I could end up writing it again and again, and we would still be in the world — all too literally his world — from hell. Of course, for all we know, Donald J. Trump could decide to crown himself president and try to launch a third term in office that would, if successful, turn the constitution into an historical relic.

“The Only Orange Monarch I Want Is a Butterfly.”

The other week, feeling as I do about “our” president, I went to New York City’s “No Kings” rally. It was gigantic (though you wouldn’t have known that, had you read my hometown paper, the New York Times, in the days that followed). It started on 59th Street where Central Park ends, with masses of marchers on both Seventh and Eighth Avenue, heading for 34th Street. By getting there early, I made it to the front of the crowd on Seventh Avenue at the head of that vast mass of protesting humanity and, once it started, I wove my way in and out of the crowd, back and forth, downtown and uptown again, jotting in a little notebook some of the thousands of homemade signs people were carrying.

When I finally reached Broadway and 42nd Street, I stepped up on the sidewalk and looked back. To my amazement, I could see all the way to 57th Street where we had begun, and that significant-sized avenue was still totally — and I mean totally — packed right back to Central Park. And mind you, this old man was just one of an estimated more than eight million Americans who turned out at more than 3,000 rallies across the United States that day, in communities huge and microscopic, to protest the world Donald Trump has dumped on, spilled all over, and is continuing to roil and broil.

And, yes, it did seem like every third person (even the two demonstrators dressed as plastic tigers) was carrying a homemade sign. I doubt I had ever seen so many of them at any past demonstration. I was scrawling a number of them down in a little notebook, and they ranged from “Fight Truth Decay” and “Grandma says, ICE is not nice!” to “It’s a good thing Congress isn’t alive to see this” and “The only orange Monarch I want is a butterfly.”

And then there was the one carried by a bearded man that caught my attention: “You dirty ORANGE maniac! You blew it all up! Damn you to hell!” And I thought to myself, boy, is that painfully accurate. In his own fashion, among all the things he hasn’t succeeded in accomplishing, he has indeed been blowing it all up in a striking fashion and, unfortunately, potentially damning my children and grandchildren (and yours) to a literal planet from hell.

And sadly, as crazed as Donald Trump may be — and he clearly is a deeply disturbed (and, of course, disturbing) human being — when it comes to war and the burning of fossil fuels, he’s been anything but alone as president of the United States. After all, in these decades, war has been this country’s middle name and we’ve been burning fossil fuels to fight them as if… well, as if there would indeed be no tomorrow(s). And in his two terms in office, Trump and crew have gone with a passion after any form of clean, renewable energy that wouldn’t blister us all. Only recently, for instance, the Guardian (which is superb when it comes to climate-change coverage) was the only publication I saw that reported on new research in Nature magazine showing that this country has caused “an eye-watering $10tn [yes, that’s trillion!] in global damages to the world over the past three decades through its vast planet-heating emissions, with a quarter of this economic pain inflicted upon itself.”

Consider it something of an unintended irony, then, that the crew President Trump and his administration have put so much of themselves into goes by the acronym ICE. In fact, wouldn’t you have thought that “ICE” would be a curse word for President Trump and that, when it comes to creating an immigration hell on earth, his crew of manic enforcers would have been known as “HEAT”? Which reminds me that, at the No Kings rally, I noted an older woman carrying a homemade sign all too appropriately saying: “Deport Trump! Make ICE useful.”

And thanks to his brutal assault on Iran, this planet is only going to get hotter yet, as war releases staggering amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere! Honestly, back in 2016, even if you had let your mind run in wild and unbelievably crazy directions, you simply couldn’t have made up Donald Trump’s planet as it is now, could you? Who could have imagined that the president of the United States, after launching a war with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, would attack European countries for not joining him, saying, “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us.”

And remind me, who has Donald Trump been there for, other than the major fossil fuel companies that backed him so radiantly in the 2024 election and are now getting a remarkable return on their investment?

Giving Decline New Meaning

Of course, to put all of this in some kind of perspective, sooner or later great imperial powers do go down and the United States has been the number one imperial power on this planet since the end of World War II, with its only true competitor (until China rose well into this century), the Soviet Union, which collapsed in a heap in 1991. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that this country, which, singularly in human history, once reigned more or less supreme on Planet Earth, should finally have begun its own decline, while turning over investment in present and future green energy to China.

But of course, there’s decline and then, in ICE terms, there’s DECLINE!!! And Donald Trump is threatening to turn imperial decline, something known throughout history, into a distinctly new phenomenon. Even declining imperial powers haven’t usually had such a mad ruler or leader. And he does seem remarkably intent, in his own increasingly confused way, on taking this country down with him. The difference, historically, is that until now no imperial ruler had the chance to take down not just his (almost never her) country, but (after a fashion) our planet (at least as a livable place for us), too. And he does seem remarkably intent on continuing to fossil-fuelize our world in a disastrous fashion.

Of course, at this very moment, we’re all watching his approval ratings generally (and particularly on the economy) begin to tank. (Oh wait, my mistake! A tank is a war vehicle, and right now that reference only applies to Israel, which recently lost a remarkable number of tanks in southern Lebanon.) But “our” president has also focused a significant part of his administration on ending anything that could benefit the climate, while burning fossil fuels in a fashion that should be considered beyond incendiary. That includes recently agreeing to offer almost a billion dollars to a French energy company to abandon a project to construct wind farms off the East Coast of this country (as long as it was willing to reinvest that sum in future oil and gas projects here instead).

Yes, someday he could well be seen not just as the president of decline but potentially of ultimate devastation and that flaming red tie of his could end up having a symbolic significance that, once upon a time, no one might have imagined. No wonder that sign I saw on the No King’s Day march — and let me repeat it here one more time: “You dirty ORANGE maniac! You blew it all up! Damn you to hell!” — sticks in my mind. It predicts the very future that, unbelievably enough, 49.8% of American voters tried to usher in again in 2024.

Once upon a time, who could ever have imagined either Donald Trump as president of these (increasingly dis-)United States or such a possible fate?


© 2023 TomDispatch.com


Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Type Media Center's TomDispatch.com. His books include: "A Nation Unmade by War" (2018, Dispatch Books), "Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World" (2014, with an introduction by Glenn Greenwald), "Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050"(co-authored with Nick Turse), "The United States of Fear" (2011), "The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's" (2010), and "The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond" (2007).
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Why a Feminist and Just Energy Transition Is the Only Way Out of the Climate Crisis

As we look toward Santa Marta, the message is both simple and profound: We cannot solve the climate crisis with the same logic that caused it.


Thousands of people take part in the so-called “Great People’s March” in the sidelines of the COP30 UN Climate Change Conference in Belem, Para State, Brazil on November 15, 2025.
(Photo by Pablo Porciuncula/ AFP via Getty Images)

Theiva Lingam
Apr 21, 2026

Common Dreams


Wars, invasions, blockades, and genocide from Venezuela and Iran to Palestine have ripped the curtain off the inherent volatility and violence of the fossil energy system. We need a rapid and just scale-up of socially controlled renewables to end the era of fossil fuels. But ensuring a just transition requires deeper conversation. Who benefits from the energy transition? Who bears the cost? Who gets a say in how energy is produced? These are also feminist questions about power, labor, care, and whose lives are valued.

To answer them, grassroots leaders, Indigenous communities, trade unions, and environmental justice activists will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia for the Peoples’ Summit and First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels this week. For many of us in environmental and social justice movements, this gathering represents both urgency and possibility. This will be a critical space because, without justice, the energy transition will reproduce the same systems of extraction, control, and violence.

So We Must Ask: an Energy Transition for Whom?

The transition narrative sold by corporations and rich countries today tells us we can scale up corporate, market-led renewable energy technologies without questioning who controls them, who benefits, and who bears the cost. This risks the transition becoming nothing more than the old model in greener packaging. In Malaysia, for example, the energy transition policy largely rebrands the old growth-and-extraction model. It uses green rhetoric, prioritizing corporate-led false solutions like carbon capture and storage and carbon capture, utilization, and storage. Copying Western-style developments through corporate-driven trade and investment patterns sustains fossil fuel dependence and continues to entrench structural inequalities both nationally and internationally. Without systemic change, the transition becomes another chapter in a long history of resource plunder, particularly in the Global South.

Consider the surge in demand for minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements. These are essential components of batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. Governments and corporations in the Global North are racing to secure these materials, often greenwashing extraction as necessary for climate action, while diverting these minerals into military, aerospace, AI, and data centers. For communities across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, this rush is already translating into land grabs, water depletion, labor exploitation, and violence. Lithium extraction threatens fragile ecosystems and Indigenous Peoples’ livelihoods; cobalt mining has been linked to dangerous working conditions and child labor. As with oil before them, critical minerals are becoming objects of geopolitical competition—backed by military power and strategic control.

If this transition is not rooted in justice, it will not be a solution. It will be the next phase of the crisis.

The military is among the world’s largest consumers of fossil fuels, yet its emissions are routinely excluded from national reporting. At the same time, states and corporations work together to secure control over oil, gas, and critical minerals—profiting from war and devastation from Lebanon to Venezuela and Cuba.

These are the very predictable outcomes of a system that prioritizes profit over energy as a right for people. A just transition must go far beyond emissions reductions. It must actively confront inequality, redistribute power, and wealth, and repair historical and ongoing harms. It must center those who have been marginalized and exploited—not as victims but as leaders.

A Just Transition Must Be Based on Peoples’ Sovereignty and Energy Sovereignty

At the heart of this vision are peoples’ sovereignty and energy sovereignty: the right of communities to control their lands, resources, and energy systems, and to shape the decisions that affect their lives. This means treating energy as a common good that is managed for collective well-being rather than private profit, while building energy democracy, where communities have real decision-making power over how energy is produced and used. It also requires energy sufficiency, prioritizing meeting people’s needs over excessive and wasteful energy use. Together, these principles challenge the concentration of power in corporations and wealthy countries, and point toward energy systems that are locally rooted, democratic, and aligned with social and ecological needs.

Achieving this also requires that we confront imperialism. The current global order allows wealthy countries to externalize the social and environmental costs of their consumption to the Global South, while maintaining control over finance, technology, and trade. This imbalance shapes the terms of the energy transition, devastating communities and often locking countries in the Global South into roles as raw material suppliers rather than equal partners.

Policies that ignore power dynamics may deliver short-term emissions reductions, but they will ultimately fail as communities resist exploitation and inequity deepens. A transition rooted in justice, however, can build the broad-based support needed for transformative change.

Around the world, communities are already practicing energy sovereignty, from managing decentralized renewable systems in Palestine to asserting their rights against extractive projects in Mozambique. Alternatives are not only possible, but underway.

A feminist and just energy transition must challenge the structures that perpetuate dependency and inequality, including unfair trade agreements, debt regimes, and corporate impunity. It must also recognize and address the intersecting forms of oppression based on gender, race, class, and colonial history that shape how the climate crisis is experienced and resisted.

As we look toward Santa Marta, the message is both simple and profound: We cannot solve the climate crisis with the same logic that caused it. If this transition is not rooted in justice, it will not be a solution. It will be the next phase of the crisis.

The path forward will require confronting entrenched interests and reimagining our economies and societies. From Santa Marta and beyond, communities are showing us the way. The task now is to listen, to act, and to ensure that the transition ahead is truly just—for people, for the planet, and for future generations.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Theiva Lingam is chair of Friends of the Earth International, the world’s largest grassroots environmental federation. She is also a public interest lawyer, environmental activist, and legal adviser to Sahabat Alam Malaysia-Friends of the Earth Malaysia, as well as a legal consultant at Third World Network.
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Graphitized biochar rewires soil microbes to accelerate pollutant breakdown in rice paddies

Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University

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Geoconductor function of graphitized biochar redirects microbial Fe(III) reduction and stimulates hydroxyl radical production in paddy soil

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Credit: Hua Shang, Chao Jia, Song Wu, Ning Chen, Yujun Wang & Xiangdong Zhu

A new study reveals that a specially engineered form of biochar can dramatically enhance the natural ability of soil microbes to break down pollutants in rice paddies, offering a promising strategy for cleaner and more sustainable agriculture.

Researchers have developed a highly conductive “graphitized biochar” that acts as an electronic bridge in soil, enabling faster and more efficient interactions between microorganisms and iron minerals. This process boosts the formation of highly reactive molecules that can degrade harmful contaminants such as antibiotics.

“By improving the electrical properties of biochar, we found a way to fundamentally change how electrons move through soil systems,” said the study’s corresponding author. “This allows microbes to work more efficiently, ultimately accelerating pollutant removal in agricultural environments.”

Rice paddies are known to accumulate organic pollutants, including antibiotics from manure and irrigation water. These contaminants can persist in soils at levels exceeding natural degradation capacity. One key pathway for breaking them down involves hydroxyl radicals, highly reactive molecules that can rapidly oxidize pollutants. However, the production of these radicals depends on microbial processes that are often limited by inefficient electron transfer.

To address this challenge, the research team used a rapid heating technique known as flash Joule heating to transform conventional biochar into a more graphitized structure. This modification increased the material’s electrical conductivity by more than twofold, enabling it to function as a “geoconductor” that facilitates long-range electron transport in soil.

Laboratory experiments showed that this graphitized biochar significantly enhanced microbial iron reduction, a key step in generating reactive species. Compared to untreated conditions, the modified biochar increased the production of reactive iron species by nearly 19 percent and boosted hydroxyl radical formation by more than 50 percent.

As a result, the degradation rate of the antibiotic sulfamethoxazole improved substantially, with removal efficiencies reaching complete degradation under experimental conditions. In contrast, soils without the modified biochar showed much lower pollutant removal.

The study also found that the material reshaped soil microbial communities. Beneficial bacteria capable of reducing iron became more abundant, creating a positive feedback loop that further enhanced electron transfer and pollutant breakdown.

Importantly, the effectiveness of the graphitized biochar varied across different soil types, depending on the native microbial community and soil properties. Soils with more active microbial populations showed the greatest improvements, highlighting the importance of biological factors in environmental remediation.

Beyond its immediate application in pollutant removal, the research challenges long-standing assumptions about how biochar functions in soil. Traditionally, biochar has been viewed as an “electron reservoir” that stores and releases electrons through surface chemical groups. This study demonstrates that its role as an electron conductor may be even more critical.

“Our findings suggest that facilitating direct electron transfer, rather than simply storing electrons, is the key to unlocking biochar’s full potential in soil remediation,” the authors noted.

The results open new avenues for designing advanced carbon-based materials that work in harmony with natural microbial processes. Such approaches could help reduce contamination risks in agricultural systems while supporting sustainable soil management practices.

As global concerns grow over soil pollution and antibiotic residues in food production, innovations like graphitized biochar may offer scalable solutions that harness the power of both materials science and microbiology.

 

=== 

Journal Reference: Shang, H., Jia, C., Wu, S. et al. Geoconductor function of graphitized biochar redirects microbial Fe(III) reduction and stimulates hydroxyl radical production in paddy soil. Biochar 8, 92 (2026).   

https://doi.org/10.1007/s42773-026-00597-w   

=== 

About Biochar

Biochar (e-ISSN: 2524-7867) is the first journal dedicated exclusively to biochar research, spanning agronomy, environmental science, and materials science. It publishes original studies on biochar production, processing, and applications—such as bioenergy, environmental remediation, soil enhancement, climate mitigation, water treatment, and sustainability analysis. The journal serves as an innovative and professional platform for global researchers to share advances in this rapidly expanding field. 

Follow us on Facebook, X, and Bluesky.  

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Journal

Biochar

DOI

10.1007/s42773-026-00597-w 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Article Title

Geoconductor function of graphitized biochar redirects microbial Fe(III) reduction and stimulates hydroxyl radical production in paddy soil

Article Publication Date

17-Apr-2026

Turning microalgae into high-value fuels: biochar-based catalyst unlocks cleaner aromatic production

Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University

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In-depth into the mechanism of aromatic production from catalytic pyrolysis of wet-torrefied microalgae with HZSM-5 coated biochar

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Credit: Jinye Hu, Yunpu Wang, Haiwei Jiang, Jiabo Wu, Ting Luo, Qi Wang, Yuhang Hu, Kaisong Hu, Wenguang Zhou & Liangliang Fan

Researchers have developed a new strategy to transform microalgae into high-value fuel chemicals more efficiently and cleanly, offering a promising pathway toward sustainable energy production.

Microalgae are widely recognized as a next-generation renewable resource because they grow rapidly, capture carbon dioxide efficiently, and do not compete with food crops for land. However, converting microalgae into usable fuels has long faced a major challenge. The bio-oil produced from algae typically contains high levels of oxygen and nitrogen compounds, which reduce fuel quality, stability, and energy content while contributing to harmful emissions.

In a new study, scientists designed a composite catalyst that significantly improves the quality of bio-oil derived from microalgae. By combining biochar with a well-known zeolite catalyst called HZSM-5, the team created a hybrid material that enhances the production of valuable aromatic hydrocarbons while minimizing unwanted byproducts.

“Our goal was to overcome the limitations of traditional catalysts and better understand how to efficiently remove oxygen and nitrogen during biomass conversion,” said the study’s corresponding author. “This work provides both a practical solution and a deeper insight into the reaction mechanisms.”

The researchers began by applying a pretreatment process known as wet torrefaction to microalgae. This step partially removes oxygen and nitrogen before further processing, improving the feedstock for fuel production. The treated material was then subjected to catalytic pyrolysis, a high-temperature process that breaks down biomass into smaller molecules.

The newly developed HZSM-5 coated biochar catalyst demonstrated remarkable performance. Under optimized conditions, the process achieved up to 96 percent selectivity toward aromatic hydrocarbons, including key compounds such as benzene, toluene, and xylene. At the same time, the proportion of oxygen- and nitrogen-containing compounds dropped dramatically from over 80 percent in non-catalytic conditions to just a few percent.

Equally important, the catalyst showed strong resistance to deactivation. Traditional zeolite catalysts often suffer from carbon buildup that blocks their pores and reduces efficiency. In contrast, the biochar component in the new composite helps break down large molecules before they enter the zeolite structure, preventing clogging and extending catalyst lifespan. Experiments confirmed stable performance over multiple cycles with minimal carbon deposition.

To better understand how the process works, the team conducted detailed mechanistic studies using advanced analytical techniques and model compounds representing proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates. These experiments revealed how oxygen- and nitrogen-containing functional groups are progressively removed and converted into simpler hydrocarbons, which are then transformed into aromatic compounds through catalytic reactions.

The findings highlight the complementary roles of biochar and zeolite within the catalyst. Biochar provides a porous structure and adsorption capacity that facilitates initial reactions, while HZSM-5 supplies strong acidic sites that drive deoxygenation, denitrogenation, and aromatization.

By integrating material design with mechanistic insights, the study offers a new direction for improving biomass-to-fuel technologies. The approach could help advance the production of cleaner, higher-quality biofuels and reduce reliance on fossil resources.

As global energy demand continues to rise, innovations like this may play a crucial role in developing sustainable and scalable alternatives.

 

=== 

Journal Reference: Hu, J., Wang, Y., Jiang, H. et al. In-depth into the mechanism of aromatic production from catalytic pyrolysis of wet-torrefied microalgae with HZSM-5 coated biochar. Biochar 8, 91 (2026).   

https://doi.org/10.1007/s42773-026-00612-0   

=== 

About Biochar

Biochar (e-ISSN: 2524-7867) is the first journal dedicated exclusively to biochar research, spanning agronomy, environmental science, and materials science. It publishes original studies on biochar production, processing, and applications—such as bioenergy, environmental remediation, soil enhancement, climate mitigation, water treatment, and sustainability analysis. The journal serves as an innovative and professional platform for global researchers to share advances in this rapidly expanding field. 

Follow us on Facebook, X, and Bluesky.  

---

Journal

Biochar

DOI

10.1007/s42773-026-00612-0 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Article Title

In-depth into the mechanism of aromatic production from catalytic pyrolysis of wet-torrefied microalgae with HZSM-5 coated biochar

Article Publication Date

17-Apr-2026

Bill Rees: Ecological Footprint Analysis Grew from a Boy’s Contemplation of “Soil and Sun”

Robert Jensen

April 17, 2026

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Hayden Valley, Yellowstone. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Bill Rees likes to say that ecological footprint analysis began with an epiphany—when he was 10 years old.

Sitting down to lunch on his grandparents’ Ontario farm with relatives he had worked with that morning, the sweaty kid realized he had played a small part in raising everything on the table—beef, chicken, potatoes, carrots, and a few other items the farm had produced so far that season.

Rees remembers the moment as thrilling. “You know the expression, ‘You are what you eat’? As a child, I realized I am what I eat, and that I grew what I ate,” said the renowned ecological economist, now 82. “I knew deep in my bones that farm work and food made me a product of soil and sun.”

That may seem simple, but how many people think about the importance of soil? Today’s high-energy/high-technology culture too easily obscures our dependence on ecosystems. Rees has spent his career trying to alert people to the consequences of ignoring ecological realities.

With his coauthor and former student Mathis Wackernagel, Rees in 1996 published Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth. Perhaps today’s most well-known sustainability metric, Ecological Footprint Accounting (EFA) estimates human demands on the carrying capacity of Earth. Comparing human consumption of bio-resources with Earth’s regenerative capacity, EFA shows that we are in overshoot—consuming resources faster than they can be replenished and generating wastes faster than they can be absorbed.

Rees retired from teaching at the University of British Columbia in 2012 but continues to sound the warning: Modern techno-industrial (MTI) society is unsustainable. Humanity’s total biological resource consumption and waste production exceed ecosystems’ regenerative and assimilation capacities.

Developing an Ecological Worldview

When Rees got to college, those farm experiences led him to the Life Sciences program in biology and ecology at the University of Toronto, where he went on to earn his Ph.D. in population ecology in 1972. He landed a faculty job in UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning, where the director asked him to develop an interdisciplinary program on the ecological basis of economic development.

In planning meetings with economists, engineers, hydrologists, and geographers, Rees offered his early thoughts on carrying capacity. Senior colleagues assured him that globalization and free trade could alleviate the problem of local ecological limits and that free markets would stimulate development of substitutes for depleted resources. The not-too-subtle caution was that challenging the conventional wisdom that population growth and economic expansion could continue indefinitely would not help his career.

Rees’ deference to elders didn’t stop him from rethinking the standard definition of carrying capacity. Yes, trade and technology can ease local resource constraints, temporarily, but Rees’ farm-based awareness of our dependence on the land helped him invert the framing. Instead of asking how large a population a given area can support in an existing economic system, we should be asking how large an area is needed to support a given population, regardless of the location of the land providing sustenance. For example, the question isn’t “How many people can a city’s infrastructure support (subsidized by the sleight-of-hand tricks of trade and technology)?” but “How much distant land is needed to support the city’s residents?” Urbanites’ ecological footprints extend far beyond the city limits.

EFA uses consumption data from numerous sources to answer two questions. First, in any given year, how much of Earth’s bio-productive land and water (such as cropland, grazing land, forests, fishing grounds) are used to support a population, including the ecosystems needed to assimilate its emissions? Second, how much productive bio-capacity is available for that population to draw on? EFA shows that the human enterprise today is in overshoot, drawing down stocks of so-called natural capital and over-filling nature’s waste sinks.

The Problem of Overshoot

Most people treat climate change as the greatest ecological threat posed by MTI society. Rees offers a friendly but crucial amendment: Climate destabilization is a derivative of overshoot.

In 2024, 8.2 billion people had a total ecological footprint of approximately 21.4 billion global hectares (gha), an average of 2.6 gha per person. Available global bio-capacity was 12 billion hectares, or 1.5 gha per person. Not everyone consumes the same amount, of course, but as a species we are exceeding the planet’s regenerative capacity by about 75 percent. If we could replace all fossil fuels with alternative energy—but with the same number of people and the same aggregate consumption—we would still be in overshoot.

In other words: MTI society is unsustainable. Overshoot is, by definition, a terminal condition.

(A footnote: EFA is based on varied data sources and can’t be precise, given the margin of error in large-scale estimates. Critics suggest that this makes it unreliable as a sustainability metric. Rees argues that, if anything, EFA assessments underestimate humanity’s eco-predicament. Data from the Food and Agriculture Organization and other UN agencies, for example, reflect yields and productivity but not the depletion of the soil and water on which those yields depend. Also, EFA estimates only human demand for productive ecosystem area (bio-capacity); not all human demands on nature, such as toxic pollution, are captured by the method.

What’s Necessary?

A stable human presence on Earth will require far less consumption. Rees estimates that living within planetary bio-capacity would mean reducing economic throughput (energy and resource consumption, and pollution) globally by half. But to safeguard 85 percent of bio-diversity, half of global bio-capacity would have to be reserved for nature, which suggests that humanity’s current ecological footprint may be three times too large and require up to a 70 percent reduction. And sustainability with justice—greater equality of access to economic and bio-physical wealth—would mean that those with above-average wealth would have to reduce their consumption even more dramatically.

That leads to a question that has no definitive answer: How many people can Earth support, at what level of consumption?

Based on ecological footprint data, Rees suggests Earth might support up to 2 billion people living at Western European material standards. That roughly matches the estimates of other ecologists but may be optimistic, he said. Given non-renewable resource depletion and the degraded state of the ecosphere today, a human population compatible with long-term sustainability might be in the tens or hundreds of millions.

“’What’s the optimal population?’ really is an unanswerable question because of the known unknowns and unknown unknowns,” Rees said. “How would the fractious, competitive, sometimes warring, and grossly unequal global community agree on an adequate material standard of living? What is the trajectory of climate change, especially if we use all economically accessible deposits of fossil fuels?  And if we do that, how do we maintain food production and supplies of other crucial resources? How would we provision megacities that are dependent on diesel-fueled transportation?”

But we do know enough to recognize the outlines of humanity’s eco-predicament, Rees said. “We have a fairly firm grasp of the bio-physical trends that threaten the ecosphere and humanity’s future, and we are coming to understand the most significant anthropogenic drivers of overshoot. This means that we actually know what must be done to change our relationship with nature to reverse threatening trends. The problem is that all the effective whats involve a smaller economy with greatly reduced energy and material throughput, and lower populations.” Collective action is essential, but difficult.

“After two centuries of explosive growth, MTI societies have enormous cultural and population momentum fueled by bio-physically unrealistic material expectations,” Rees said. “Any significant structural changes are vigorously opposed by corporate entities—some more powerful than many nations—that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. So, while science tells us what to do, we do not yet know the how of making the necessary civilizational-level shifts in beliefs, values, attitudes, behaviors and power structures. We’re flying in the face of culturally entrenched habits and innate behavioral barriers.”

What’s Possible?

Rees said that social policy should be shaped by data, logic, and a love for others and nature. But political and economic institutions find it easy to ignore the overshoot predicament. In his cultural analysis, Rees remains an ecologist, thinking about humans as products of evolution, not creatures with magical capacities. Overshoot can’t be blamed on a few bad actors but rather is the product of understandable human tendencies.

Like other species, humans are capable of exponential population growth and tend to harvest all accessible resources as rapidly as their technology allows. Unfortunately, for the past 200 years—thanks largely to improved population health (falling death rates) and fossil fuels (making rapid growth possible)—our species has been embracing our expansionary potential, Rees said.

Unlike other species, we create complex stories and behavioral norms that guide both individual and group behavior. These social constructs are powerful enough to obscure ecological reality and encourage self-destructive behaviors.

Almost all humans now live in social arrangements dramatically different from the smaller, more cooperative groups in which we evolved, when we inhabited limited territory and extracted far less energy from the landscape, Rees said. With the rise of competitive and hierarchical civilization, humanity expanded over the entire Earth. Here are a few more evolved human characteristics that he said keep us from facing overshoot.

+ Most people are temporal, social, and spatial discounters, favoring the here-and-now, close relatives, and friends—to the detriment of the future, foreign places, and strangers.

+ Most nations are reluctant to share their wealth or sacrifice comfortable lifestyles for the general welfare, present or future, particularly if they think few others will do the same.

+ Because human societies are competitive, open-access resources such as deep-sea fisheries or the atmosphere that are “rivalrous and nonexcludable” (not owned by anyone and accessible to everyone) can be overexploited.

Rees said the reason to be honest about today’s “genetically induced cultural lethargy” is not to promote apathy but to be clear about impediments. There is little immediate incentive for individuals or nations to act alone in ways that are consistent with sustainability science, and insufficient agreement and mutual trust to motivate collective action to reduce the human footprint.

What’s Left to Do?

Given what Rees knows from more than a half-century of research, why does he still spend so much time advocating change that seems unlikely?

“I suppose it’s what I do to keep my internal fires burning,” he said. “And there is some small reward in hearing from former students, some from decades ago, who say they were skeptical about issues we studied in class but now see it all unfolding just as we discussed way back then.”

Does he resent being ignored by colleagues for so long, or by the public even today?

“I got used to being ignored, mostly by traditionally trained economists, geographers, and planners,” he said. “For many years, I was barely tolerated by certain colleagues, maybe because students who took my courses started asking difficult questions in courses taught by growth- and development-oriented colleagues.” Change came only as it became harder for even conventional scholars to ignore ecological degradation.

Rees said he is grateful for the recognition that eventually came his way—the Blue Planet Prize with Wackernagel, along with other awards in the field of ecological economics, and being named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

“The success of the ecological footprint concept meant that students who worked with me could find good jobs, which is a personal boost”, he said. “But policy wonks, politicians, and other major decision-makers give no more credence to findings based on EFA documentation of gross eco-overshoot than they did to The Limits to Growth report [a presciently accurate account of overshoot published in 1972]. Fifty-four years later, the human enterprise is on track for significant contraction later in this century, just as Donella and Dennis Meadows and their coauthors projected and our work affirmed.”

Rees hasn’t slowed down, continuing to publish in scholarly journals, write for popular publications, update his Substack, speak on countless podcasts, and advise advocacy groups.

“I suppose I have to admit to a minor human failing,” Rees said, “one articulated by an ecologist friend who told me that he took pleasure in being able to say to former doubters, ‘I told you so!’”

Given the stakes, Rees would love to be proved wrong. But an honest conversation requires that we set aside fantasies such as colonizing Mars and work to get it right here, Rees said.  “Earth is likely the only home H. sapiens will ever know.”

We also have to recognize that our relationship to Earth is asymmetrical.

“The ecosphere is totally indifferent to whether human civilization, or even our species, survives,” Rees said. “On the other hand, humans cannot be indifferent to maintaining the functional integrity of the ecosphere. Without that, we’re toast.”

Robert Jensen is an emeritus professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin and a founding board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. He collaborates with New Perennials Publishingand the New Perennials Project at Middlebury College. Jensen can be reached at rjensen@austin.utexas.edu. To join an email list to receive articles by Jensen, go to https://www.thirdcoastactivist.org/jensenupdates-info.html. Follow him on Twitter: @jensenrobertw