Reactions to Overshoot
Documenting both the negative and positive reactions to the current state of Overshoot.
Humans appear to engage in a number of negative reactions to overshoot. First of all, they deny the reality of overshoot and double down on their activities that are creating overshoot, such as increasing fossil fuel extraction and burning & opposing renewable energy projects. As the economic situation deteriorates, due to the decreasing availabilty and increasing expense of basic resources such as natural resources, food, housing & medical care, humans lose trust in the basic institutions of democracy and increasingly turn toward the leadership of authoritarian leaders. Partly as a result of increased competition of decreasing resources and the reversion to authoritarianism and empires, humans are reverting to arms races & increased warfare. And another result of the increased competition for declining resources, the world's financial and political elites (the 1%) have increased their grab as much of planet's resources as they can and leave the rest of humanity to their fate: in many cases, migration, warfare, starvation & death. Inequality today is the highest it's been in decades.
Doubling Down
Article from New York Times -- January 22, 2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/climate/davos-climate-change-trump.html?searchResultPosition=3
Suddenly, the Trump Administration Tightens the Vise on Wind Farms
Federal agencies have recently issued a barrage of restrictions that could halt construction of solar and wind farms on public and private lands.
--From the New York Times
Fundamentalism
The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is a book by author Karen Armstrong published in 2000 by Knopf/HarperCollins which the New York Times described as "one of the most penetrating, readable, and prescient accounts to date of the rise of the fundamentalist movements in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam".[1] The Battle for God traces the history of the rise of fundamentalism in the three major monotheistic faiths. Armstrong's analysis starts with developments in Judaism and traces it through the creation of fundamentalism in Christianity to adoption of a similar approach to modernity in Islam. -- text from Wikipedia
This book is available on Amazon, Google Playbooks and numerous other sources including access to free PDF views.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER •
An urgent, topic-by-topic guide to Project 2025, with everything you need to know about how the second Trump administration is remaking America—from a go-to authority at The Atlantic
Project 2025 is a White Christian nationalist fundamentalist movement at its core.
Authoritarianism
In Goliath’s Curse, Cambridge scholar Luke Kemp conducts a historical autopsy on our species, from the earliest cities to the collapse of modern states like Somalia. He traces the emergence of “Goliaths”: large societies built on a collection of hierarchies that are also terrifyingly fragile, collapsing time after time across the world. Drawing on historical databases and the latest discoveries in archaeology and anthropology, he uncovers groundbreaking revelations:
- More democratic societies tend to be more resilient.
- In our modern, global Goliath, a collapse is likely to be long-lasting and more dire than ever before.
- Collapse may be invisible until after it has occurred. It’s possible we’re living through one now.
- Collapse has often had a more positive outcome for the general population than for the 1%.
- All Goliaths contain the seeds of their own demise.
As useful for finding a way forward as it is for diagnosing our precarious present, Goliath’s Curse is a stark reminder that there are both bright and dark sides to societal collapse—that it is not necessarily a reversion to chaos or a dark age—and that making a more resilient world may well mean making a more just one.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/691357/goliaths-curse-by-luke-kemp/
Escape from Freedom (1941) by Erich Fromm is a psychoanalytic and sociological analysis of why people submit to authoritarianism, exploring the psychological burden of modern freedom. Fromm argues that while freedom from pre-individualistic bonds brought independence, it also created isolation, anxiety, and powerlessness, leading people to seek escape through new dependencies like fascism, conformity, or destructiveness. The book examines the roots of Nazism and fascism, suggesting that true freedom requires the positive realization of one's self, not just the absence of external constraints.
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) by Hannah Arendt is a seminal work analyzing the rise of Nazism and Stalinism, identifying antisemitism and imperialism as key precursors. Arendt argues totalitarianism is a novel form of government that uses terror and propaganda to achieve total domination, transforming classes into atomized masses through isolation and loneliness, and viewing Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia as two sides of the same coin. The book is structured in three parts: Antisemitism, Imperialism, and Totalitarianism, exploring how these elements combined to create a new, unprecedented political system. -- from Google
Freedom House -- a website dedicated to tracking and documenting the state of democracy in the world. This site has a map showing the state of freedom in the world's nations.
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2019/democracy-retreat
https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=all&year=2025
Increasing Warfare
Beijing, Moscow and shaken American allies are seeking new warheads as President Trump ends more than a half century of nuclear arms control with Russia. -- from New York Times
Countdown to an Arms Race
The last significant nuclear-arms-control treaty is about to expire, and Trump isn’t putting anything in its place.
By Tom Nichols
From the Atlantic -- https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/trump-nuclear-weapons-treaty/685856/
It is now 85 seconds to midnight
2026 Doomsday Clock Statement
https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/2026-statement/