Interview of Professor William "Bill" Freudenburg about his accomplishments and thoughts about the present and future state of the environment. Filmed in November, 2010 at UCSB.

Filmed during the "Freudenfest" event held at UC Santa Barbara in November, 2010.

Over the past several decades Professor William Freudenburg's work in the areas of risk, disaster, and natural resource development, and most critically the political forces that define such events, has offered multiple seeds that has served as a catalyst for others to investigate such critical social, human and natural system studies across the world.

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year proved to be the worst offshore oil disaster in history. In his lecture given on Monday, November 15, 2010 William Freudenburg, Dehlsen Professor of Environment and Society at UC Santa Barbara, examined the factors –– political and otherwise –– that contributed to the environmental and economic catastrophe.

His talk, "Learning Lessons from Disaster? The BP Oil Spill and the Future of Energy in America," is based on the content included in his recently published book, co-authored with Robert Gramling, "Blowout in the Gulf –– The BP Oil Spill Disaster and the Future of Energy in America" (The MIT Press, October, 2010).

Professor, Activist, and Environmentalist Bill Freudenburg discusses the history of modern environmental theory at the AESS Conference, 2009

NOTE: You really need to Crank Up the volume on your computer to hear this lecture.