Name Ernst von | Role German Politician | |
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Party Social Democratic Party of Germany Books Factor four, Factor 5, Factor Five: Transforming the Globa, Earth politics, Ecological Tax Reform: A | ||
Ernst ulrich von weizs cker how to deal with disappearing resources
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker (born 25 June 1939 in Zürich, Switzerland) is a German scientist and politician (SPD). He was a member of the German Bundestag and currently serves as co-president of the Club of Rome jointly with Anders Wijkman.
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The club of rome prof ernst ulrich von weizsa cker co president club of rome
Family
A member of the prominent Weizsäcker family, he is the son of physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and nephew of former German president Richard von Weizsäcker. Since 1969, he is married to Christine von Weizsäcker. Together, they have five children, including Jakob von Weizsäcker.
Youth and education
Weizsäcker spent his childhood in Zurich and Göttingen. In 1966, he graduated from Hamburg University with a Diplom in physics. In 1968, he obtained his PhD in biology from Freiburg University.
Career
In 1972, he was appointed full professor of biology at Essen University. In 1975, he was recruited as president of the then newly founded University of Kassel. In 1981, he joined the United Nations in New York as director at the UN Center for Science and Technology. From 1984 to 1991 he headed the Institute for European Environmental Policy in Bonn. In 1991, Weizsäcker became founding president of the Wuppertal Institute, soon establishing itself as a leading environmental think tank.
In 1998, he was elected a member of the German Bundestag for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and re-elected in 2002. As a legislator, he chaired the select committee on globalization (2000-2002) and the environment committee (2002-2005). After his decision not to run in the 2005 election, he became Dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He returned to Germany in 2009 where is his an honorary professor at Freiburg University.
A bestselling author in Germany, his English language books include Earth Politics (1994), Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use (1995), Factor 5 (2009) and Limits to Privatization (2005).