CC Economics for a Planet in Peril

The combination of billions of people and the gargantuan quantities of materials used to enrich human lives is imposing a burden on the Earth's ecological systems that cannot be sustained. We are in Earth 'overshoot', imperilling the Earth as a home for our species and that of many others not because we want to, but because so far we have been unable to stop.

In this webinar we will look at some of the compelling evidence for overshoot and consider how economics can help us find a way out, drawing on ideas from famous economists, past and present, such as ecological economics, degrowth, circular economy, well-being economics, and donut economics. The focus will be on high income countries, which are disproportionately responsible for overshoot while the worst effects are borne by others.

Bio: Professor Emeritus at York University, Peter A. Victor received his Ph.D. in economics from UBC in 1971 and has worked for over 50 years in Canada and abroad on economy and environment as an academic, consultant and public servant. His work on ecological economics has been recognized through the award of the Molson Prize in the Social Sciences by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Boulding Memorial Prize from the International Society for Ecological Economics, and election to the Royal Society of Canada.

Peter was the founding president of the Canadian Society of Ecological Economics and is a past-president of the Royal Canadian Institute for Science. Prior to becoming Dean of the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University in 1996, he was Assistant Deputy Minister for the Environmental Science and Standards Division in the Ontario Ministry of the Environment.

His next book, Escape from Overshoot: The Economics of a Planet in Peril, will be published in 2023.