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Overshoot and Its 7 Fundamental Drivers

August 5, 2024

(Recorded July 28 2024)

Description

In this week’s Frankly, (coincidentally released the day after Earth Overshoot Day), Nate breaks down seven factors contributing to humanity’s increasing overshoot – which is defined as the point at which species’ use of ecological resources and services exceeds what Earth can regenerate in a given time period – as well as some things that might engender a retreat from current overshoot levels.

For the first time in Earth’s history, a species is able to access, extract, consume, and inject waste into the entire biosphere – testing the limits of our planet’s stability and capacity to provide. The human system is based on the foundation of a huge energy surplus in the form of fossil fuels with the (inaccurate) worldview of limitless resources. As such, all of our institutions, lifestyles, and expectations require growth, even as we increasingly understand the damage it does to the planet.

How did humanity end up in the unique predicament of expanding its consumption beyond the limits of the most bountiful planet that we know of? Is it possible that the primary factors getting in the way of a more sustainable human future are rooted in our social and cultural structures, rather than our technologies? What opportunities still lie ahead of us to mitigate the damage we’ve already done and find a new ecological equilibrium?

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Show Notes

PDF Transcript

01:42 – Overton Window

02:02 – Ecological Overshoot

02:44 – Carrying Capacity

03:53 – The Carbon Pulse

04:10 – Megafauna biomass is 700% what it used to be

04:45 – Money tethered to energy, resources and waste, but our system neglects that

06:19 – People prefer confident, and optimistic people

06:45 – Ecolate

06:50 – Elon Musk believes Earth can support 80 billion humans

08:06 – Hedonic Ratchet

09:25 – Cognitive Dissonance

09:29 – Jared Diamond – Collapse

12:07 – Our world is ~85% run on hydrocarbons

12:41 – Increase in extreme weather events

14:30 – Syntropic technology

Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens is the Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF) an organization focused on educating and preparing society for the coming cultural transition. Allied with leading ecologists, energy experts, politicians and systems thinkers ISEOF assembles road-maps and off-ramps for how human societies can adapt to lower throughput lifestyles.

Nate holds a Masters Degree in Finance with Honors from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont. He teaches an Honors course, Reality 101, at the University of Minnesota.