Ernst U. von Weizsäcker (b.1939) is a German scientist and politician, co-president of The Club of Rome since 2012, and former co-chair of UNEP’s International Resource Panel.  He served as director of the UN Center for Science and Technology in New York (1981), headed the Institute for European Environmental Policy (1984-1991), and was a member of the German Bundestag (1998-2006).  In 1991, he became the founding president of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, and Energy, a think tank on energy efficiency and material flows and headed the organization until 2000.  His various academic positions include professor at Essen University, president of the University of Kassel, and Dean of the Graduate School of Environmental Studies and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara.  In addition to many German books, he has authored Earth Politics (1994) and Limits to Privatization (2005), and co-authored Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use (1997, with Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins), Factor 5: Transforming the Global Economy Through 80% Improvements in Resource Efficiency (2009, with Karlson “Charlie” Hargroves and three others), and Come On! Capitalism, Short-termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet; A Report to the Club of Rome (Jan 2018, with CoR co-president Anders Wijkman).  His current thinking on various topics can be found at www.ernst.weizsäcker.de.