When crossing the ocean by sea or by air small differences in the direction you take will result in huge differences in your ultimate destination. Back in the middle of the last century, human society might have made relatively minor adjustments in its trajectory, say, in the growth of consumption of resources including energy, even perhaps deciding that these must level off at some point in the future.
We humans made no such adjustments and so we now find ourselves faced with only draconian choices. But we do not seem to understand that we’ve arrived at a destination far from the one we imagined in 1950. An example is the celebration in the environmental community of a recent federal court decision to invalidate oil and gas leases offered by the U.S. government on 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico. (It turns out that oil and gas companies only bid on 1.7 million of those acres.)
The ostensible reason for invalidating the leases was that the government did not adequately consider the effect of the leases on climate change. The government could do another evaluation and try selling the leases again. But environmental organizations would likely challenge the leases in court again.
While the effects of climate change are already severe and likely to become even more so, global human society is utterly dependent on uninterrupted flows of fossil fuels to function. And, while climate change activists continue to champion a so-called energy transition to green energy sources such as solar and wind, what they might not understand is that so far, these alternatives have been used to augment human energy consumption. They have not displaced fossil fuels at all. Nor are they likely to in any time frame that matters.
To understand why this is so, we need the help of two concepts: power density and the rate-of-conversion problem. Here’s what I wrote about power density more than a decade ago:
Power densities are a measure of the land required for both energy sources and energy users. The current infrastructure matches the small footprint of energy sources against the large footprint of energy users. With the drive toward renewable energy sources, this relationship is about to be reversed with consequences few people understand.
I concluded the following:
[I]t is glaringly obvious that the energy sources we rely on now are one to two orders of magnitude smaller by land area per unit of energy produced than the industries and buildings they service are per unit of energy consumed. That means it takes a relatively small land area to service the enormous area devoted to commercial, residential and industrial buildings. Just the opposite will become the case using renewable energy sources. We will be obliged to devote vast tracts of space—far more vast than the buildings they serve—to support the energy use of our current infrastructure. This may not be impossible, but it will certainly be costly and socially disruptive.
The second issue, the rate-of-conversion problem, has become even more daunting since the time I first wrote about it in 2008. This concept refers to the rate at which we are converting to low-carbon and no-carbon energy sources versus the rate at which we need to make that conversion. In that piece I explained the “crucial issue at the heart of the rate-of-conversion problem” as follows:
When should we start making our conversion to an alternative energy economy? The answer is fairly straightforward. We should start while we still have ample and even growing supplies of fossil fuels. This is especially true of oil which is so critical to transportation and to the mining of the minerals needed for nuclear reactors and fuel and for the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels.
The era of plentiful fossil fuels, however, may be drawing to a close sooner than many believe.
Back then oil was headed to its all-time high near $150 per barrel. Since then prices have fluctuated wildly between extremes. Today, however, oil prices are on the rise again. But something has happened which few people realize. World oil production—meaning crude including lease condensate which is the definition of oil—peaked in late 2018 and has never recovered. This has happened even as we are nowhere near displacing fossil fuels for our energy needs and the world’s most important fossil fuel is now in decline.
What’s more is that the environmental community is focused on preventing additional production of oil, natural gas and coal—which is, of course, imperative if we are going to reduce carbon emissions and thereby lessen and even halt the progress of climate change.
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But lower production of fossil fuels may make it more difficult to fuel the factories and mines that are building the devices and structures we need to bring about a low-carbon future. There appear to be no good choices because we as a society have waited far too long to make the energy transition.
We could collectively go on a draconian energy diet to conserve fuel and reduce carbon emissions. But, that hardly seems politically and socially feasible. One of the chief reasons is that beyond the personal sacrifice, such a move would almost surely put the world economy into a long-lasting recession or depression. This is because energy is a central industry that supports a huge amount of economic activity.
But what if we devoted the energy saved to an emergency program to deploy low-carbon and no-carbon energy sources? That would put people to work and stimulate economic activity. We would, however, have to re-train tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people in very short order. We would be doing the equivalent of building a plane while flying it. Given the highly technical nature of the available alternatives, it is unlikely that this re-training would go quickly or smoothly.
Then there’s the investment in plant and equipment which takes considerable time to build. And, there is the adjustment and expansion of the energy infrastructure used to bring us electricity and liquid fuels. It would have to be adapted for dependence on far more electricity and far less liquid fuel as, for instance, ground transportation becomes increasingly electrified—which, of course, requires the emergency production and deployment of electric vehicles as quickly as we can and the recharging stations to accommodate them. And so on, and so on….
The speed and scale at which we must act to be successful in both reducing carbon emissions and replacing the energy sources which produce them suggests that we are far past the time when we should have begun.
The idea that a smooth transition away from fossil fuels is already happening and can succeed without draconian emergency measures is a self-deception of the first order. While I understand the desire to stop further burning of fossil fuels, I also understand that we have almost certainly blown any chance to make a decline in fossil fuel use—either forced or voluntary—a smooth process that does not risk the unraveling of modern global society.
We have only difficult choices ahead. We must now think about how to reduce the impact of two converging trends, climate change and energy depletion. That will be a huge undertaking that no court decision blocking fossil fuel production will be able to lessen.
Photo: Containers of oil in Lanzarote, Canary Islnds (2008). Photo by Clemen.rojo via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:End_of_the_oil_era_II.JPG
Without sufficient compassion, the ego can make any of us our own worst enemy. This article illustrates how the ego can easily subvert even our finest intentions.
Observe, for instance, how Kurt wrote in 2008 the following: “When should we start making our conversion to an alternative energy economy? The answer is fairly straightforward. We should start while we still have ample and even growing supplies of fossil fuels…”
Some part of him (the ego?) clearly has determined that fossilized biomass is “energy” and exists for him to burn, which is why he and like-minded folk calls it “fossil fuels”. And so people of his belief have burned it on scale till this day as though it is energy and the atmosphere is not involved in its combustion.
We are our language and the above observation is deep stuff that is best understood with compassion.
Yikes. All of the comments here are coming from the most negative, defeatist view / orientation possible. Here comes the self-fulfilling prophesy. I guess.
I was born in 1949 and have lived through the fantastic progression from Middle Ages cum electric light, to our current extravaganza – unique in world history. Very few people realize in what fortunate times they have lived (thx solely to the exploitation of fossil fuels). But now the end game is approaching. The life of my 8 grandchildren will be much more subdued.
“When should we start making our conversion to an alternative energy economy? The answer is fairly straightforward. We should start while we still have ample and even growing supplies of fossil fuels. This is especially true of oil which is so critical to transportation and to the mining of the minerals needed for nuclear reactors and fuel and for the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels.”
That is pretty telling but not what you first think. Your first impression is the transition. Let’s allow fossil fuels to be used to make the transition. Anyone who has studied the physics and understands the economics know that there will be no transition. There may be a transformation to a partial alternative energy economy but no transition to an alternative energy economy. Let just say for arguments sake there will be a transition to 100% renewables then what? People are so transfixed by the transition they forget this is a rinse and repeat affair every 30 years are so. What my techno green friends like to point out is renewables can do the transition then they can replicate a second gen transition. This will go on and on. They also like to throw in fusion and other exotics to hedge their bets. This is just plain fantasy in my opinion.
My approach is acceptance of a net energy decline, planetary decline, and human decline. Yea, the whole ball of wax. Let’s get out of this techno utopian narrative of NetZero and a coming metaverse of things. This is all going to quickly unravel in a stair step down into a more primitive arrangement. It will be those regions and communities that begin the process that can come out better when a mother of all crisis unfolds. The key to you the individual is find a good spot now while there is fossil fuels and renewables to support your move. Get out of cities that will see the worst of decline. Orbit one but do not live in one.
If we are lucky the degree and duration of the fall will be manageable. When I say manageable this does not mean for everyone. It means for some. Many will be collapsed into a very bad situation regardless of how manageable this decline situation will turn out. The places where this is going to be harsh is those areas in the wrong place for energy decline and those place with too many people and too big a consumption profile. Those places that will adapt have lower populations and good ecosystems to dwell in. Simple really but we make this discussion complicated with all the science we throw at it. We complicate it with our narratives of progress and NetZero growth. Fantasies complicate a simple question and answer.
Embrace voluntary simplicity now and decline in place. You can do this with the dignity of being ahead of the curve. You can find meaning in embracing the truth. Those who continue to live the status quo will look upon you like a nutter but you will know better. Find a place where you can practice permaculture localism. Triage out high tech and roll in appropriate tech that is low tech or no tech at all. This can be a hybridization while the decline process gathers speed. The key variable is your attitudes that will be the basis of your morale. You will need good morale to face the coming hardships. Be stoic and heroic in a localized world where humans can scale properly. If you are properly scaled then all the other important features of sustainable living fall into place. There will be no security but your wisdom will provide you with proper action that will be more secure. This is the best it gets. Consequences are what they are. They will have to be paid for in blood and treasure. Realgreenadaptation.blog
It’s become increasingly clear to me that the people in charge of our government (and probably most others as well) view international relations in terms of dog-eat-dog competition. In such an environment, voluntarily reducing energy consumption (and thus economic activity) amounts to suicide. Unfortunately, so does sticking with our current course. Best hope at this point is that the “Great Reset” derails industrial economies as people rise up and likely trigger civil wars and internal conflict from which no recovery occurs. Clearly not a great route to travel, and a slim chance at that, but we don’t have any good options at this stage.
The reasoning throughout this article is fundamentally flawed, as it seems to me.
The article pretty much assumes that it is necessary (somehow) to keep the current mode of economy, livelihood and material culture of so-called “advanced” / “developed” nations going pretty much as it is, only with different energy sources.
I begin by assuming, as all evidence suggests, that doing just that is neither possible nor desirable. I begin by assuming that we will all have to adopt sufficiency, rather than luxury, as the basic goal of our lives, our livelihoods, our material culture….
Yes, few people (yet) understand this, or want this. And that’s the problem we will need to address.
To my mind, it is simply ludicrous to adopt the attitude or policy that we should burn a lot of fossil fuels in order to create an energy infrastructure which doesn’t depend (so much) on fossil fuels. That is, we should not burn fossil fuels at the rate necessary to preserve a luxury-based and luxury dependent material culture. This is because we can’t. But it is also because we ought not to even if we could.
This article is fatally flawed. It offers nothing very useful to an honest conversation on its topics.
post 1945 (and that was when the American Dream fantasy took root), we were told that humankind, or at least the western industrial , American, version of it had shifted its ground base, and technology would deliver everything we desired, and to excess.
Nothing, literally nothing, was beyond our grasp, politicians, scientists, economists confirmed it.
that certainty lingers on, and it is that that prevents change, because if we can just hang on for a while longer, everything will ‘come right’ and things will be as they used to be.
to this end, millions remain convinced that prosperity depends on voting for the politician who tells the best lies, and promises infinite growth.
I too am re reading Catton, scaring myself, but all he wrote is coming true right now.
we still imagine that something out there is waiting be discovered—the breakthrough—such a word to conjure with.—-or the certainty that ‘they’ are concealing the ‘truth’, and the same ‘they’ want to decimate the global populations the the world’s resources can be preserved for ‘them’.
Collapsing nations and conflicts are symptomatic of resource depletion, and ensuing desperation of the peoples involved who see clearly what their future holds, while we, still holding onto a semblance of stability continue to fantasise that we will have BAU using batteries instead of petrol, and somehow the brutal conflicts of survival will happen somewhere else.
https://extranewsfeed.com/wheels-3173ba97430d
I think it may be even worse here because we have so damn many guns (in the US) and so few people with useful skills. But I think the latter may not matter much IF the transition is gradual–people can learn skills.
I just finally got ahold of Catton’s book–but I alternated between thinking, “Shit, he said this 40 years ago and nothing has changed!” and thinking, “But he’s wrong there. He said 4 billion people (the population then) couldn’t all be driving cars etc. But now we have 4 billion driving cars, etc. AND another 4 billion in poverty. Of course it isn’t sustainable and future generations will pay the price.
Too many people now. There were ALREADY too many when Catton wrote Overshoot – 40 years ago with 4 billion present.
We weren’t cognisant enough, fast enough. Probably no evolved species can do so, given where they’ve evolved from. In hindsight, our major mistake was using fire to lever stored solar energy (fossil, if you will) in firewood. This was our first leverage, our first surplus. But we levered that, and levered that, and levered that – Wile-E-Coyote stuff.
And yes, we will fight. Even the most egalitarian will try to stay alive, on a planet that cannot support us all. How that plays out cannot be accurately foretold, but pretty it won’t be.
Catton is certainly compulsive reading.
I picked up on several lines of his thinking that didn’t quite pan out at the time he was writing—but back in 05 I couldn’t possibly see how we could run another 10 years without collapse on a world scale.
yet here we are.
humankind is perhaps more resilient than we imagine—but only up to a point.
I now pitch it at mid 2020s—sheesh—I sound like a preacher waiting for the 2nd coming don’t I?
my refined reasoning is political. The USA is running out of fuel, no POTUS can alter that, but vast numbers think he can. After 2024, I see the radical right taking power again, maybe with Trump–or someone else. By 2026 energy depletion will make the country unsustainable, and social violence will become inevitable (wars of denial). Killing each other to survive,
maybe my thinking is extreme.
I hope it is
Completely agree. When I say “best hope”, I’m still thinking <5% chance of humans surviving the century. It was about three years ago that I decided to stop "rooting for the home-team" by pushing for the change that will never arrive and decided that the best option for me personally was to just enjoy what's still here while I can.
I think there will be just a few years of terrible violence. When large-scale famine happens, there is little violence; people are too enervated to do much. It is only when people have full bellies that they can inflict violence on others. Once real hunger sets in, people do little but sit around and wait, either for food to arrive or to die.
Supply chains are now so long and convoluted that once they start failing regularly it will be tough to keep cities supplied with food and other essentials. The faster the failure of supply chains happens, the faster starvation will happen and that will make less time available for violence.
Of course, widespread warfare could kill a lot of people very quickly, even more quickly than starvation, especially when nuclear weapons become involved. My guess is that the odds of inter-state resource conflicts escalating into nuclear war are about 50%. I may be optimistic.
The fact that overshoot makes all these horrible outcomes inevitable is infuriating, but no one can live in a state of fury all the time. I have seen overshoot building for so many decades now that I can only prepare stoically for the consequences. I urge others to do the same: get some land that can grow food for yourself and others (there will be many refugees), make sure your land is unlikely to be overwhelmed by war or it’s fallout (be sure to have a Geiger counter to keep track), work on enhancing community solidarity, and wait. It may not be enough, but I can think of no better strategy.
The small remnant population that lives through the bottleneck will end up living in equilibrium with its environment much as indigenous peoples have always done. There are many thousands of human generations to come and it will only take a few of them before the horrors of modernity’s collapse and the subsequent die-off are forgotten. That’s something I take comfort in every day.
Your thinking is about the same as my own. I’ve focused more on politics lately since it’s refreshing to concern myself with something that offers even a minute shred of opportunity for positive change. My concern there is that the left will indeed sit out the coming revolution(s), leaving the US and likely most of the world looking something like a post apocalyptic Franco or Pinochet regime.
The original Malthusian prophesy was well-clarified by Limits to Growth scenarios. Nothing about either consideration of the future was self-fulfilling, they just followed the evidence. At this point, it is incumbent on anyone who is not “negative / defeatist” to explain why we are not actually in overshoot or why overshoot doesn’t necessitate dieback.
Yes, you’re referring to the tragedy of the commons.
I came to the same conclusion, cheers!
The dependency of humans on technology only makes our overshoot worse. Overshoot is simple. It’s taking food and water out of the surrounding environment faster than it can be supplied for the long term (the carrying capacity). Your reference to the St Matthew’s Island reindeer is a perfect example of overshoot. If those reindeer had been able to use fossil fuels and machinery to gather lichen it would have accelerated the overshoot process but not changed the eventual outcome.
The same is true for humans. We can ‘permanently’ change carrying capacity a little by moving water around for agriculture, but we are still ultimately dependent on the products of photosynthesis for our lives. Taking nutrients out of the soil via photosynthesis faster than they can be replenished is overshoot. Temporarily supplementing soil nutrients with petrochemicals only delays the inevitable.
The technologies we have developed have mostly only accelerated overshoot because they have not permanently increased carrying capacity. Only a few technologies, like terracing hillsides for paddy culture, have permanently increased carrying capacity and most of those technologies are ancient.
I know that there are wildly varying estimates of the earth’s human carrying capacity, but most of them assume some form of widely used non-photosythetic energy supply. It’s true that water wheels, canvas windmills and sailing craft can use solar energy outside photosynthesis, but they are dwarfed by the energy humans used from firewood. To get a really good idea of ultimate carrying capacity we have to look to examples of stable worldwide human population prior to fossil fuels. To me, it looks like a carrying capacity of about 500 million or so is in the ballpark, about the same as the world population circa 1500. But that population was carried in a world that was much more ecologically sound than the one we are living in now. Right now, the carrying capacity is probably much less.
“At this point it is incumbent on anyone who is not ‘negative / defeatist” to explain why we are not actually in overshoot or why overshoot doesn’t necessitate dieback.”
Overshoot means something dramatically different in human ecology than in the ecology of any other species on Earth, but this is vastly more true in a technological civilization than in, say, a simple agrarian village or a hunter-gatherer community.
I believe the famous I = P × A x T formula to be flawed in important ways, but it contains a familiar explanation for why it is so that humans are unique among the animals with regard to overshoot. The Kaya identity also goes some way toward explaining why humans are unlike all other animals in relation to overshoot.
I=PAT – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_%3D_PAT
While imperfect, the I=PAT formula does get something very important absolutely correct. Human animals embedded in a technological civilization will, in the conglomerate, have a per capita harmful impact on ecosystems and the biosphere vastly greater than any other animal on Earth could possibly have.
Put simply, human overshoot barely resembles overshoot as it appears in the context of other-than-human species.
“Ecological overshoot is the phenomenon which occurs when the demands made on a natural ecosystem exceeds its regenerative capacity.” – Wikipedia
A familiar story of overshoot in the context of non-human animal species is the story of Matthew Island’s reindeer population. The traditional explanation of what happened there (which more recently has been questioned, but that’s a story for another day) is that the reindeer, which depended upon lichen in their winter diet, underwent a population explosion followed by a steep, dramatic die off due to destruction of their own winter food supply. This is the basic formula for overshoot and die off with regard to all animals on Earth, apart from humans — and especially apart from humans in a technological civilization. What characterizes overshoot and die-off in the non-human animal context is generally utterly simple by comparison to what characterizes overshoot and die-off in the human and technological civilization context.
No other animal on Earth has constructed 1.5 billion operational motor vehicles and tens of thousands of airports and mass transport jets. No other species has radically altered its ‘environment’ in the way that humans have. There is just no comparison whatsoever. Humans are off the chart in just that most basic way described in I=PAT and the Kaya identity.
The overshoot you are referencing has very little to do with what happened to the reindeer on Matthew Island, largely because those reindeer could not have, in any respect, chosen differently. They could not have opted for a way of life which resulted in a lower harmful impact per capita, or otherwise. It’s really an apples and oranges comparison. And yet when most folks get to talking about what they call “overshoot” and “die off” in a human ecology context they do not tend to factor in a precise and accurate understanding of what makes humans, and especially humans within a technological civilization, into the equation. They generally oversimplify matters so much that it results in far more smoke than light, ignorance than understanding.
We humans are certainly in overshoot, and we drew the entire biosphere of an entire planet into overshoot with us. That’s true. But what’s more important for us to understand than the simple naked fact of our overshot situation is the fact of what sort of human culture caused this overshoot. That’s the key to turning it around, to returning to a way of life that doesn’t drive overshoot and even potentially reverses it.
The world’s most ‘affluent’ people (nationally and individually) created a culture and civilization which essentially disregarded ecological knowledge and wisdom in pursuit of essentially unlimited consumption and modification of its ‘environment’. It still basically disregards ecological knowledge and wisdom in its mode of economy and material culture — and so it continues to exacerbate the planet-scaled ecological overshoot. What is being destroyed is not merely its own food supply, but the very basis of the ecological health of the biosphere as a whole, in nearly every location, aspect and facet.
In theory, it is very possible for humanity to wake up at this late hour and radically transform our modes of livelihood, economy and material culture in a direction which allows ecosystems to heal (at least partially), while also encouraging this healing process through regenerative practices. The reindeer of Matthew had no such alternative option.
We, as a collective (but not all of us as individuals) have the knowledge required to transform our culture from an ecocidal one to one which seeks to live in harmony with all species, all life, and the biosphere as a whole. But we’re not yet putting that knowledge and understanding into effect at a scale which is proportionate to the catastrophic overshoot situation we’re in.
Many believe we will not, cannot…, that it’s impossible and too late anyway. And maybe it is too late? I don’t know. It may be that if we reduced GHG emissions to zero immediately (for example) we will still experience a dramatic, even catastrophic, collapse of civilization and ecosystems / the biosphere. It seems very likely that we’re going to have a ‘global’ food crisis, a global political and climate refugee crisis, etc., regardless as to whether we adopt what I call “eco-culture” (any culture which is devoted to ecological knowledge and wisdom in practice).
Even if we cannot avoid catastrophe at this late date, I believe we should still nurture and cultivate eco-culture. We should do our best to be good ancestors. We are not like reindeer. We are humans. We can choose.
Our overshoot may not necessitate dieback. Or die-off.
Joe C –
The essence of my argument is that if we chose to do so we could very dramatically reduce our “ecological footprint”, and especially the same in relation to greenhouse gases (GHG), by dropping the excessive use of such like as automobiles, jet travel, oversized / underutilized buildings and houses, etc., etc., etc. And also by making far more frequent use of passive solar heating, passive cooling, etc., etc., etc. There is SO much we can do to mitigate climate which we are simply not choosing to do because collectively we are insisting upon perpetual economic growth as the only good thing to do with our human lives. The “developed world” has a luxury-based economy rather than a needs based economy. And it must be abandoned and replaced with a needs based economy.
Can we prevent mass hunger, famine, etc., by such means? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But we should do it anyway. We should give it a try. We may fail, but it’s still worth the trying.
Do you disagree with these points?
I don’t agree.
But I don’t have the time at the moment to continue the conversation today. We’ve been around and around this stuff for years, and I still don’t agree.
Yes today I am going up to the woods with the horses and cutting firewood. Its a form of enjoyment while I still can.
I am not sure you know the author well. He is simply saying what the perspectives are in our culture and showing that they are not tenable. If you read him in general you would understand that he would be supportive of very broad and sweeping changes such as you suggest.
Hi Jason –
I’ve read many of Kurt Cobb’s pieces here in Resilience over the years, though I tend not to be particularly enthusiastic about them — for the same reasons I’m not particularly enthusiastic about this one.
If Cobb is closer to my own way of thinking on these matters, I sure wish he’d come right out directly and say so! If he is saying so, he’s doing it in a very unclear and indirect way, as it seems to me.
From this article: “While the effects of climate change are already severe and likely to become even more so, global human society is utterly dependent on uninterrupted flows of fossil fuels to function.”
Yes, well, kind of, sort of. We are certainly not dependent upon the use of fossil fuels at a rate anything like the rate we find in most so-called “developed nations” — or ‘rich nations’ or ‘the global North’ — or whatever we choose to call those societies which consume far more of anything like a fair share under the conditions of unfolding climate catastrophe.
I have no doubt Kurt Cobb means well in his writing, and wants to be helpful. But at this late juncture we really ought to be telling the truth clear and plain, and the truth is that we will be needing to dramatically and rapidly reduce our dependency and use of fossil fuels on an emergency basis. This truly is an emergency, and we ought not to pretend otherwise.
I don’t disagree at all. I just don’t think that we will do anything and that even if we did everything you suggest, and more, it still won’t be nearly enough.
At this late date, reducing our carbon footprint enough to stay under 2C warming would be essentially the same as economic collapse. While there is admittedly a lot of wasted energy in the rich world, livelihoods and lives depend on that waste. You can’t reduce fossil energy use by 7-10% per year without causing mass unemployment and miserable living conditions in poorly heated buildings and collapsing infrastructure. Shutting down modern civilization that rapidly will be far too painful for people to bear (even though we both know that it would still be better than letting business as usual continue). The last thirty years are clear evidence that people will refuse to bear it and would rather destroy the climate than make significant sacrifices.
And even if we put off reducing the fossil inputs to agriculture until the very last, after all other fossil energy uses were given up, we will eventually have to do without them for food growing, transportation, processing, and delivery at some point. At that point people will begin to starve.
A massive program of population control (in rich countries), reversal of urbanization, reduction in technological complexity / energy use, and general preparation for a low-energy, low-technology world, might have worked to avoid overshoot if we had started on it right after WW2, or at least by the time Limits to Growth was published. It would have required a worldwide “back to the land” movement, but even then it would have been difficult to keep the world’s 2.5 billion people alive. Now there are three times as many people, too many of them rich, and it’s much too late for that kind of revolutionary change to succeed. We are now way into overshoot. Now there are only consequences.
I applaud those people who sacrifice their futures in the vain attempt at salvaging a modicum of modern civilization, at “trying”, but I’m so certain that the attempt will fail I’m just encouraging everyone to prepare as best they can for collapse and dieoff. While the only benefit of a near-term collapse and dieoff will be a saved climate, we will be extremely lucky to even have that happen. Perhaps more likely is that we will destroy the climate and then endure collapse and dieoff. If that happens we might not avoid extinction. Yes, it’s that dire.