July 28 is Earth Overshoot Day. As of that day, for the rest of 2022, human economic activity will be using the planet’s resources beyond its capacity to renew them. Humans now consume things like wood, water, and soil at nearly twice the rate the planet can support.

We’re also fast approaching climate overshoot, beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, by 2030. The Climate Overshoot Commission will meet several times this year to discuss ways to keep that from happening. Meanwhile the World Meteorological Organization calculates a 50 percent chance of touching the 1.5 degree threshold by 2026. Recent intensified storms, fires, floods, and droughts are all symptoms of the fever.

The dominoes are falling. Resource consumption drives climate change, and the biggest driver of consumption is population growth. Strategies for perpetual economic growth demand ever increasing consumption, requiring more and more people, pushing us into overshoot.

National economic growth policies rely on a pyramid scheme—stoking GDP growth with population growth. Population growth brings more people into the economy, and a larger economy creates an illusion of wealth and prosperity, when the reality is there are only a few big winners. Like the classic Ponzi scheme, the originator and those at the head of the line benefit; late entrants get left holding the bag.

In the 1960s, the idea of obvious unsustainability of population growth leading to world famine and a crash in the 1970s and 1980s was known as “The Population Bomb.“…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…