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Tag Archives: overshoot
What Will It Really Take to Avoid Collapse?
What Will It Really Take to Avoid Collapse? Fifteen thousand scientists have issued a dire warning to humanity about impending collapse but virtually no-one takes notice. Ultimately, our global systems, which are designed for perpetual growth, need to be fundamentally restructured to avoid the worst-case outcome. For a moment, the most important news in the entire […]
Systemic Change Driven by Moral Awakening Is Our Only Hope
Systemic Change Driven by Moral Awakening Is Our Only Hope Our core ecological problem is not climate change. It is overshoot, of which global warming is a symptom. Overshoot is a systemic issue. Over the past century-and-a-half, enormous amounts of cheap energy from fossil fuels enabled the rapid growth of resource extraction, manufacturing and consumption; […]
Earth Overshoot: How Sustainable is Population Growth?
Earth Overshoot: How Sustainable is Population Growth? For decades people have been predicting overpopulation would wipe out energy resources if not the entire planet. Every year the population bomb and peak oil crowd have been proven wrong. But how long can the status quo of generating growth by population explosion last? Every year the population bomb […]
He’s told us not to blow it
He’s told us not to blow it Hopefully you’ve seen the recent movie, The Martian, a film directed by Ridley Scott and adapted from the online book by Andy Weir. If you have not seen the movie or read the book, both of which I highly recommend, there will be some spoilers for the movie in this […]
The Boundaries and Future of Solution Space – Part 5
The Boundaries and Future of Solution Space – Part 5 Solution Space To use the word ‘solution’ is perhaps misleading, since it could be said to imply that circumstances exist which could allow us to continue business as usual, and this is not, in fact, the case. A crunch period cannot be avoided. We face […]
Earth Overshoot Day and Not-For-Profit Enterprise
Earth Overshoot Day and Not-For-Profit Enterprise In 2015, 13 August is Earth Overshoot Day. The day marks the estimated calendar date when humanity’s demand on the planet’s ecological services (which produce renewable resources and assimilate wastes) outstrips what the Earth can supply. This means that for the rest of the year, we are taking more than […]
If everyone lived in an ‘ecovillage’, the Earth would still be in trouble
If everyone lived in an ‘ecovillage’, the Earth would still be in trouble We are used to hearing that if everyone lived in the same way as North Americans or Australians, we would need four or five planet Earths to sustain us. This sort of analysis is known as the “ecological footprint” and shows that even the so-called […]
Commentary on Bounding the Planetary Future: Why We Need a Great Transition
Commentary on Bounding the Planetary Future: Why We Need a Great Transition “Planetary boundaries” research constitutes an important advance in our ability to identify and quantify the components of global overshoot. Permit me to suggest that all presentations on planetary boundaries should include a discussion of Liebig’s Law—an ecological truism that can be boiled down to “a […]
OVERdevelopment, OVERpopulation, OVERshoot
OVERdevelopment, OVERpopulation, OVERshoot William Ryerson’s introduction to the new book OVERdevelopment, OVERpopulation, OVERshoot. MOST CONVERSATIONS ABOUT POPULATION begin with statistics—demographic data, fertility rates in this or that region, the latest reports on malnutrition, deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change, and so on. Such data, while useful, fails to generate mass concern about the fundamental issue affecting the future […]
Lord Man Parable
Lord Man Parable This video replica of the “Lord Man” parable in the book Overdevelopment, Overpopulation Overshoot sets the stage for the provocative photo essays that are the essence of OVER. …click on the above link to view the video…
William Catton’s warning
William Catton’s warning William Catton Jr., author of the seminal volume about our human destiny, Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, died last month at age 88. Catton believed that industrial civilization had sown the seeds of its own demise and that humanity’s seeming dominance of the biosphere is only a prelude to decline. His […]
