{"id":66293,"date":"2023-12-02T16:40:49","date_gmt":"2023-12-02T21:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=66293"},"modified":"2023-12-02T16:40:49","modified_gmt":"2023-12-02T21:40:49","slug":"todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh-xxxiii-overlooking-ecological-overshoot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=66293","title":{"rendered":"Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh\u00a0XXXIII–Overlooking Ecological Overshoot"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh\u00a0XXXIII<\/h3>\n

November 25, 2021<\/p>\n

Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by\u00a0author<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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Overlooking Ecological Overshoot<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s thought was prompted by an Andrew Nikiforuk article<\/a> in The Tyee and my recent rereading of William Catton Jr.\u2019s Overshoot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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I just finished rereading William Catton\u2019s Overshoot. One of the things I\u2019m coming to better appreciate is Catton\u2019s idea that the \u2018Age of Exuberance\u2019 (a time created by human expansion in almost all its forms and mostly facilitated by our extraction of fossil fuels) has so infiltrated our thinking that we tend to view the world through almost exclusively human-created institutional lenses, especially economic and political ones. We have come to think of ourselves as completely removed from nature: we sit above and beyond our natural environment with the ability to both control and predict it; primarily due to our \u2018ingenuity\u2019 and \u2018technological prowess\u2019.<\/p>\n

This non-ecological worldview is still very much entrenched in our thinking and comes through quite clearly in mainstream narratives regarding our various predicaments. Usually it goes like this: our ingenuity and technological prowess can \u2018solve\u2019 anything thrown our way so we can continue business-as-usual; in fact, we can continue expanding our presence and increase our standard of living to infinity and beyond (apologies to Buzz Lightyear).<\/p>\n

What are by now increasingly looking to be insoluble problems appear to have been solved in the past by two different approaches that Catton describes: the takeover method (move into a different area via migration or military expansion) or the drawdown method (depend upon non-renewable and finite resources that have been laid down millennia ago). On a finite planet, there are limits to both of these approaches.<\/p>\n

But because of our tendency towards cornucopian thinking, most analyses overlook the idea of resource depletion or overloaded sinks that can help to cleanse our waste products that accompany growth on a finite planet. It\u2019s all about economics, politics, technology, etc..<\/p>\n

Our traditional \u2018solutions\u2019, however, have probably surpassed any sustainable limits and instead of being able to rely upon our \u2018savings\u2019 we have to shift towards relying exclusively upon our \u2018income\u2019 which, unfortunately, doesn\u2019t come close to being able to sustain so many of us. To better appreciate the increasing need to do this we also need to shift our interpretive paradigm towards one that puts us back within and an intricate part of ecological systems. Ecological considerations, especially that we\u2019ve overshot our natural carrying capacity, are missing in action from most people\u2019s thinking.<\/p>\n

The first thing one must do when found in a hole you want to extricate yourself from is to stop digging. Until and unless we can both individually and as a collective stop pursuing the infinite growth chalice, we travel further and further into the black hole that is ecological overshoot with an eventual rebalancing (i.e., collapse) that we cannot control nor mitigate. Our ingenuity can\u2019t do it. Our technology can\u2019t do it (in fact, there\u2019s a good argument to be made that pursuing technological \u2018solutions\u2019 actually exacerbates our overshoot).<\/p>\n

It is increasingly likely that a \u2018solution\u2019 at this point is completely out of our grasp. We\u2019ve pursued business-as-usual despite repeated warnings because we\u2019ve viewed and interpreted our predicament through the wrong paradigm and put ourselves in a corner. It is likely that one\u2019s energies\/efforts may be best focused going forward upon local community resilience and self-sufficiency. Relocalising as much as possible but especially procurement of potable water, appropriate shelter needs (for regional climate), and food should be a priority. Continuing to expand and depend upon diminishing resources that come to us via complex, fragile, and centralised supply chains is a sure recipe for mass disaster.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh\u00a0XXXIII November 25, 2021 Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by\u00a0author Overlooking Ecological Overshoot Today\u2019s thought was prompted by an Andrew Nikiforuk article in The Tyee and my recent rereading of William Catton Jr.\u2019s Overshoot. I just finished rereading William Catton\u2019s Overshoot. One of the things I\u2019m coming to better appreciate is Catton\u2019s idea […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4,5,6,7],"tags":[150,30371,8576,22093,2327,2328,20243,680,1453,5833,30370,33947],"class_list":["post-66293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-collapse","tag-collapse-cometh","tag-community-resilience","tag-ecological-overshoot","tag-finite-planet","tag-infinite-growth","tag-relocalisation","tag-resilience","tag-resource-depletion","tag-steve-bull","tag-todays-contemplation","tag-todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66294,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66293\/revisions\/66294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}