The good times are over
"The party's over, folks!" Mother Nature has handed humanity an overdraft notice: "Your bank account is overdrawn!" "Pay up!" "I've assessing you humans an overdraft fee that is increasing each month!"
We humans are currently overshooting the carrying capacity of our planet. The consequences are not pleasant. Global warming or climate change is just one consequence. The real problem is ecological overshoot. Our weather is getting catastrophic because we have put too much carbon dioxide in the air. But many of us humans are currently ignoring the warning signals and looking for ways to put more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The 2nd consequence of overshoot is much harder to ignore. The rich, as they have historically done, are grabbing and hoarding what they can get, and leaving the poor to fend for themselves -- "economic inequality". The poor, in response, are gathering their children and a few belongings and undertaking dangerous journeys to the more properous and safer lands that the rich live in -- "increased migration". And this increased migration is setting off increasingly violent pushback by those already living in those more propsperous lands. Food, housing, and medical care are becoming increasingly unaffordable even in the rich countries like the US.
As we humans fight over the declining space & resources, we are getting meaner and more violent. Humans are like the traditional pack of wolves where the hunting is getting harder -- the pack gets meaner and more "snarly". Humans are entering a period of cultural regression, with increasing tribalism, authoritarianism, greater racism and increasingly widespread and violent warfare. The collective mental health and social well-being of humanity is declining.
It's not enough to point out the problem. We must find and create solutions, and many groups are already working on it. These solutions will involve changes in how we treat the environment, how we do business and changes in our shared human culture. It wil not be quick or easy. We all must begin to think and act in a more holistic fashion.
There are lots of other experts and organizations who have been focused on this problem long before I became aware of it. Some of their websites, videos, books and other references are posted below.
Limits to Growth and Overshoot
Published 1972 – The message of this book still holds today: The earth’s interlocking resources – the global system of nature in which we all live – probably cannot support present rates of economic and population growth much beyond the year 2100, if that long, even with advanced technology. In the summer of 1970, an international team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) began a study of the implications of continued worldwide growth. They examined the five basic factors that determine and, in their interactions, ultimately limit growth on this planet-population increase, agricultural production, nonrenewable resource depletion, industrial output, and pollution generation. The MIT team fed data on these five factors into a global computer model and then tested the behaviour of the model under several sets of assumptions to determine alternative patterns for humankind’s future. The Limits to Growth is the nontechnical report of their findings. The book contains a message of hope as well. The authors state that: “The challenge of overshoot from decision delay is real, but easily solvable if human society decided to act,” meaning that forward looking policy could prevent humanity from overshooting the aforementioned planetary limits.
Authors: Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, William Behrens III
Limits to Growth and Overshoot
Our day-to-day experiences over the past decade have taught us that there must be limits to our tremendous appetite for energy, natural resources, and consumer goods. Even utility and oil companies now promote conservation in the face of demands for dwindling energy reserves. And for years some biologists have warned us of the direct correlation between scarcity and population growth. These scientists see an appalling future riding the tidal wave of a worldwide growth of population and technology.
A calm but unflinching realist, Catton suggests that we cannot stop this wave - for we have already overshot the Earth's capacity to support so huge a load. He contradicts those scientists, engineers, and technocrats who continue to write optimistically about energy alternatives. Catton asserts that the technological panaceas proposed by those who would harvest from the seas, harness the winds, and farm the deserts are ignoring the fundamental premise that "the principals of ecology apply to all living things." These principles tell us that, within a finite system, economic expansion is not irreversible and population growth cannot continue indefinitely. If we disregard these facts, our sagging American Dream will soon shatter completely.
--- University of Illinois Press
