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.

Denial & 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.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/climate/trump-wind-solar-power-projects.html?unlocked_article_code=1.KFA.Ycd7.qwtADijGXz_M&smid=url-share

--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

Published by Penguin Random House

Project 2025 is a White Christian nationalist fundamentalist movement at its core.

Authoritarianism

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

https://freedomhouse.org/

Increasing Warfare

School bombing in Iran

The aftermath of an Israel strike on a school in Minab, Iran [Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News/WANA via Reuters (Al Jazeera – March 3, 2026)]

This article appeared on the Al Jazeera website on March 3, 2026. It is straightforward and convincingly documented.

It appears that the US government, as well as the Israeli government engaged in a deliberate act of terrorism resulting in the murder of 165 innocent civilians, mostly girls between the ages of 7 to 12 in southeastern Iran.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/3/questions-over-minab-girls-school-strike-as-israel-us-deny-involvement

What's even more disturbing about this article is that it appears that this policy of terrorism on innocent civilians has been carried on for some time now by our (US) government, as well as by the Israeli government.

Below is Google Gemini's definition of "state terrorism":

State terrorism is the systematic use of violence, intimidation, and terror tactics by a government against its own population or foreign citizens to achieve political objectives, maintain power, or suppress dissent. It involves state agents performing acts like extrajudicial killings, torture, and forced disappearances.

Wikipedia +3

Key aspects of state terrorism include:

Direct Perpetration: Unlike state-sponsored terrorism (where states support non-state actors), state terrorism is carried out directly by government agents.

If this Al Jazeera story is true, it appears that we Americans are citizens of an official terrorist state. If that is true, what the moral implications for us American citizens?

The definition of terrorism stated above leads to another disturbing implication: The policy of state terrorism stated above bears a strong resemblance to what ICE was trying to get away with in Minneapolis last month. This implication is further strengthened by Kristi Noem's insistence on labeling Renee Good and Alex Pretti as "domestic terrorists". This resembles the well known tactic of blaming the victim for the crime committed against them.

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

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/us/politics/new-start-nuclear-arms-control.html?searchResultPosition=3