[Ibon]

The catch 22 with human overshoot is that carrying capacity is extended through technology and the whole scale obliteration of natural ecosystems converted over to man made environments. That very technology that can mitigate the impacts of overshoot is the same technology that created the imbalance that enabled our population to bloom to almost 8 billion and our non discretionary consumption to reach decadence.

As William Catton put it in his pioneering work, “Overshoot,” we are no longer mere homo sapiens, with little impact on the Earth’s environment. We are now homo colossus. Technology and fossil fuels made us too colossal to endure.

"All the previous chapters have been aimed at enabling the reader to see why, with great reluctance and regret, I am compelled to doubt that we can confidently hope to avoid a serious `crash' as the focal human experience of the 21st century - envisioned also as our species having to pass through an ecological `bottleneck.'"

When Catton wrote Overshoot it was a warning and a prognosis that we cannot avoid the collapse. I think we have inched just a little bit further since then and we are now actually engaging in the consequences that will happen during the events that unfold during this collapse. And I do sincerely believe that therein lies the only remote possibility that we embed adaptations to eventually stay within some future carrying capacity which is fluid of course due to the degradation that will only extend further in this process.

On the other hand I look at those pastures 10 years ago where I removed the livestock and I see a hillside forested with some trees that have already in this short time reached 40 feet.

Nature is resilient and heals fast..... as long we we keep pockets of refuge habitat out of which nature can colonize former human landscapes.

[REAL Green]

I do sincerely believe that therein lies the only remote possibility that we embed adaptations to eventually stay within some future carrying capacity which is fluid of course due to the degradation that will only extend further in this process. Nature is resilient and heals fast..... as long we we keep pockets of refuge habitat out of which nature can colonize former human landscapes.

I like to look at this as decline, a process, and local. While the planet and human society is in general decline the failures are still mostly local. At least during our lifetime, the process could be one of general destructive change with localized failures. This will continue down to some level reached decades hence. The next generation may find a stable level and or further drops down. Collpase is potentially out there but very hard to define. It seems the harder we try to define it the more distant it becomes. This might be becuase growth and decline occur even in succession. Nodes are destroyed and new niches opened up. It is fluid with rebound.

[C8]

Ibon (and others), I have to tell you that I do not see this spiritualized sword of wisdom that you speak of as existing among very many today. All I see are people with no wisdom or spirituality who simply seek status, or people whose spirituality is based on the tribal views of we are holy and others are evil and you are commanded to have as many children as possible.

Even if we increase the carrying capacity, it seems like a pursuit of wealth and a tribal impulse to out-populate other ethnic groups will absorb all the surplus. In other words, I see greed and xenophobia as far more powerful forces than reason and enlightenment. As a father of two I come to this tentative conclusion with a very heavy heart.

So do I have any hope? Is there a realistic path out of this I can latch onto? I teach my kids every day that it is not circumstances that make your life happy or not, it is how you view things and how you react. But i am also realistic enough to know that really bad circumstances are pretty hard to deal with over time, even if you have a positive attitude.

Social media seems to promote hate among every group. I can remember when it was touted as bringing us together. Hate is a tough thing to live with every day. The news just focuses on the very worst aspects of human nature. Its hard to read the news and not feel a sense of disgust with humanity. Media in general seems to promote negative views and pessimism- not the foundations for discovering a spiritual life. Views turn to actions as groups go violent on each other. I feel tech is warping our collective minds and taking us more into the emotional and farther away from reason.

How long do we have here in the US before things get really bad? Is there a realistic chance of mankind turning this ship away from the iceberg? Thanks.

[Newfie]

C8,

There are the techno questions and then the psychological ones.

China is living pretty much in harmony because of the Great Leap Forward that Mao enforced by sending the entire population through re-education camps where they were taught to trust no one, them selves included. The only thing that could be trusted was the state.

That the Chinese are now widely accepting the credit score program as a way of clamping down on fraud within their society is an evidence that we can have cohesive societies. We just have to learn to not trust anyone but the state and then totally rely upon the state to care for us. It is a natural evolution of the hive mentality. We all exist because of the state and must remain loyal to the state.

The Western equivalent of the Great Leap, the need to make everyone distrust everyone else, is fed by the excessive political rancor. It’s now more important to marry someone from your own party than from your own religion. This is in part because party has displaced religion for many. But this rancor is slow and not very effective.

There are still elements of individualism, freedom, free thought who do not follow the party line. And there are 2 parties, dictating a war between the competing factions. Yet the West is still under pressure to accept the Chinese big government solution, a single party with harmony adhering to the overloads.

Perhaps that is why the virus is so readily accepted and the lockdown is being perpetrated by the overloaded. This minor predator, given to us by the Chinese, is being used to accomplish in the West what Mao’s Great Leap Forward did in China. We cover our faces, etc his elicits a primal fear reaction, it is innate, It’s literally in our DNA. We are told to social distance, to stay away from family and friends, leaving us to listen to the state propaganda broadcasts (I.e.News). We are told it is an ongoing threat that will be with us forever. No more concerts, or masses, or funerals. We are to each be content with our role in the great machinery, wary of all around us who may have “THE DISEASE.”

[Ibon]

C8,

I look at the state of society in the USA as just right now perhaps dealing with the first cold drops of a new reality settling in. The acting out of aggression, the hate, the tribalism is coming from the most extreme anti-social members of society. They are most vocal on social media. In fact, channeling your rage through social media is the very symptom of being anti-social, not having organic community, friends and family with whom to interact. So there is a filter effect happening where what dominates is the most dysfunctional.

Best solution? Distance yourself from social media. The limited time you budget find sites like these and others where at least dialogue is happening even with strong divergent points of view.

I had a major realization years ago when I was in business constantly flying between the USA and Latin America. If occurred to me one day when I was at the gate to board a flight and I saw around 30 passengers herding around a TV looking at CNN. I had this insight that for many Americans organic small town community was totally replaced with community derived from media.
This was already 15 years ago I had that insight, that was before cell phones and the further penetration of digital media.

It is mostly toxic. Budget your use and content or it will fuck you up.

Surround yourself with awakened curious conscious compassionate folks with whom you can break bread and who can discuss nuanced issues that are not able to fit in white or black boxes. And most importantly, go for walks in the natural world. Look at the stars at night.

Digital media has made us more myopic than mice.

[MonteQuest]

If some of you are wondering how we are going to increase the death rate to get back to carrying capacity then we can see the clues in this pandemic. Every time this century (and probably the following one) that events create this situation, where some die if you do and some die if you don't, it will be the marginalized citizens in sub optimal habitat that will perish first. Just like in natural ecosystems. And our moral and ethical conundrum will be superceded by the principal that some die if you do and some die if you don't nature of the event.

I have pondered this question for years. What is the optimal situation for survival? Is it the poor who live closer to nature and derive much of their existence from the land? Or is it the well-heeled who live off technology? We, in the developed world, are not used to doing without, while most of the developing world doesn't even have electricity.

[MonteQuest]

Nature is resilient and heals fast..... as long we we keep pockets of refuge habitat out of which nature can colonize former human landscapes.

That's one of the reasons I became a National Park Ranger and a wilderness advocate.

[MonteQuest]

I like to look at this as decline, a process, and local. While the planet and human society is in general decline the failures are still mostly local. At least during our lifetime, the process could be one of general destructive change with localized failures.

That depends upon the limiting factor. Liebig's Law of the Minimum states that whatever necessity is least abundant, relative to per-capita requirements, sets the environment’s limit for the population of any given species. If it's energy, that will be global. Right now, it may well be reduced access to energy from economic collapse.

[Ibon]

If some of you are wondering how we are going to increase the death rate to get back to carrying capacity then we can see the clues in this pandemic. Every time this century (and probably the following one) that events create this situation, where some die if you do and some die if you don't, it will be the marginalized citizens in sub optimal habitat that will perish first. Just like in natural ecosystems. And our moral and ethical conundrum will be superceded by the principal that some die if you do and some die if you don't nature of the event.

I have pondered this question for years. What is the optimal situation for survival? Is it the poor who live closer to nature and derive much of their existence from the land? Or is it the well-heeled who live off technology? We, in the developed world, are not used to doing without, while most of the developing world doesn't even have electricity.

I think this pandemic again is giving us a clue since we see there are marginal citizens in both opulent technology driven cultures and in the poorest developing countries. The marginalized go first in either case.

What is sobering about pandemics is how ineffective they actually are in substantially decreasing the death rate. Imagine a really contagious virus with a CFR of say 10% that would infect the entire population. 10% of humanity perishes, that would be
770 million which would still leave us with 7 billion humans.

Probably in the next 2 centuries it will be a combination of continued declining fertility rates, punctuated events like pandemics, energy constraints, wars, systemic disruptions like climate change and starvation from marginalized agrarian land being abandoned due to climate change events and energy constraints.

The biggest single contributor could really be starvation if climate change radically effects crop production.

But needing to define this beyond satisfying an intellectual curiosity does not serve much of a purpose. Of course choosing which bio region or country to live in might make these considerations worthwhile, but not for aging baby boomers like us who have already made their nest.

[MonteQuest]

Probably in the next 2 centuries it will be a combination of continued declining fertility rates, punctuated events like pandemics, energy constraints, wars, systemic disruptions like climate change and starvation from marginalized agrarian land being abandoned due to climate change events and energy constraints.

I think it will be limited access to energy, either from economic conditions or supply not meeting demand. Malnutrition will lead to more disease, as energy and food availability decline.

[MonteQuest]

This chart helps explain our situation. The J-curve on the left is the population growth response to a sudden, heretofore, unexploited resource like a dollop of sugar in a Petri dish, an algal bloom from nutrient runoff—or the advent of fossil fuels for humans. When the subsidy is gone, the population crashes.

The S-curve on the right is the normal growth and population stabilization within carrying capacity for any given species. As Charles Darwin noted, “The cumulative biotic potential of any given species will always exceed the carrying capacity of its environment.” And as it does, growth will slow and there may be a slight dieback to a sustainable level within carrying capacity. The population stabilizes, sometimes exceeding, sometimes under carrying capacity. But only a species with a sudden and abundant energy subsidy will overshoot it. And the sequel is always a population crash, as the subsidy is temporary. And in the case of FF's, finite.

Using fossil fuels to replace fossil fuels with renewables is just another overshoot energy subsidy by proxy.

[careinke]

Do you think overshoot will happen?

It's already happened. It occurred when we passed 2 to 3 billion.

Read this book for the big picture. Here's a book review of Catton's seminal work.

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

"We like to think that our intelligence and moral code sets us apart from other creatures. When other creatures gain an energy subsidy, they instinctively react by proliferating: their population goes through the well-studied stages of bloom, overshoot, and die-off. If we humans are more than mere animals, we should be expected to behave differently. Yet so far we have reacted to the energy subsidy of fossil fuels exactly the way rats, fruit flies, or bacteria respond to an abundant new food source. A hard look at the evidence tends to make one skeptical of (such) human claims to uniqueness..."-- Richard Heinberg, from his book, The Party's Over

Monte, Although I generally agree with you and Heinberg (except I think the carrying capacity could be made higher).

There is one question I can't seem to resolve. Why do richer people have a lower birth rate than poor people? This seems to contradict the sugar in the yeast model. The poor are running out of sugar, they should be having less children, but they are not. The rich still have, and consume lots of sugar, their population should be flourishing, but it's declining.

So, could you please help me resolve my cognitive dissonance over this? Preferably with no insults.

[REAL Green]

Do you think overshoot will happen?

It's already happened. It occurred when we passed 2 to 3 billion.

Monte, Although I generally agree with you and Heinberg (except I think the carrying capacity could be made higher). The rich still have, and consume lots of sugar, their population should be flourishing, but it's declining. So, could you please help me resolve my cognitive dissonance over this? Preferably with no insults.

Rich needs to be clarified. Rich in things is different than rich in spiritual. There is rich in habitability. What needs to be found is the proper combination of the three. Habitability means finding the right local of place, people, and activity. Spirituality in our time of decline means learning to have less things but with more meaning. That is true prosperity in good or bad times. Often it is the case the greatest meaning comes in the most adverse times so all this is relative to circumstance too. Heroics is meaning in action. But let’s be clear heroics is often transitory so shooting for stability is always preferable for a rich place. My point is riches goes through ascending levels of abstraction that allows a mixture to achieve meaning

While I agree the Anthropocene is an era of human overshoot this is far too big a drama except for us to dwell on in the abstract. So what, humans are in overshoot. There is nothing that can be done about this in a planetary sense. We can cry over it or study it but we have no choice but to live in it. Nature will adjust us just as nature allowed us to go into overshoot. The real issue is you and your local of people, place, and activity. Look to strengthen it with more meaning and less things because we are in a paradigm of decline. If you are in a bad place and can then leave. I would not be in a mega city. Many suburbs are dead zones. Many ways of life are killing the spirit. Some have lots of things but little meaning.

That said there is only so much one can move. Just as species will seek out a new micro climate with the advent of climate change so to should you if you are dying in a holistic sense. A place of happiness can be with less things. Sometimes species are stuck without the ability to move and that may be your situation too. In the human case becuase of knowledge and tech we can adapt. The key is to adapt properly with a proper mix. If you are a techno optimist then unless the tech never stops, adaptation is futile in a continuous pursuit of more. If you are a REAL Green that embraces realistic green prepping then you will in this time of decline do decline in place or decline into a better place. Meaning will come from a journey of meaning not an end game of being an imaginary king in a castle that is just a mirage. You will be practicing triage, salvage, and hybridization of the old and new in REAL Green. Less not Moar powerful tech is the way now. Tech is part of the journey but tech should not be the meaning as is the case now.

Let’s just say you were in a different time then decline might not be what you do. Maybe you would grow and fill the land with things. Think of landing in the new world 500 years ago. The point I am making is emulate and follow the planet. Humans lose track of this and try to follow what is human fantasy instead of embracing what the planet is doing. Decline now becuase humans and the planet are in a succession of decline. In this process find your niche in destructive change. You may be kicked off your niche but then find a new one or perish. Many species do best with succession becuase other species are rooted out of their place opening up new ones. In this regards you can actually improve your lot in life when others are failing even though human civilization is in decline overall.

The planet is in general decline with localized failure but some places can be improved and a way of life can be a good one even in decline. For humans in regards to natural bounty nothing could be like the mid Holocene when the planetary ecosystem was at its maximum of productivity and complexity and human populations very low. This is again that abstraction we dwell in fantasizing about what was or could be. This does not mean a micro climate with productive niches offering riches cannot be found now. If you can seek this out. Even if you can't physically move and or poor in things you can spiritually move with acceptance giving meaning within your trap. Demons become angles in acceptance. But acceptance does mean somewhere there is grief and grief mean hardship and loss. There are no transcending consequences only transformation. Transformation can take a little and make a lot.
Realgreenadaptation.blog

[MonteQuest]

Monte, Although I generally agree with you and Heinberg (except I think the carrying capacity could be made higher).

There is one question I can't seem to resolve. Why do richer people have a lower birth rate than poor people? This seems to contradict the sugar in the yeast model. The poor are running out of sugar, they should be having less children, but they are not. The rich still have, and consume lots of sugar, their population should be flourishing, but it's declining.

So, could you please help me resolve my cognitive dissonance over this? Preferably with no insults.

I've hardly been known for insults. But to answer your question, it's due to Demographic Transition. (Google it)

Basically, as a population urbanizes, there is a rise in the standard of living; better education, better access to health care, contraception, the emancipation of women, etc. This leads to a drop in the fertility rate. But the Catch-22 here is that DT is only possible via the sugar of fossil fuels. Make sense?

As to the carrying capacity being made higher, the pherologists that study this say we could maybe support 5 billion if we all lived like peasants. The average of all the studies ever done is around that 5 billion figure, with lots of caveats that require changing how we live dramatically.

[MonteQuest]

While I agree the Anthropocene is an era of human overshoot this is far too big a drama except for us to dwell on in the abstract. So what, humans are in overshoot. There is nothing that can be done about this in a planetary sense. We can cry over it or study it but we have no choice but to live in it. Nature will adjust us just as nature allowed us to go into overshoot. The real issue is you and your local of people, place, and activity. Look to strengthen it with more meaning and less things because we are in a paradigm of decline. If you are in a bad place and can then leave. I would not be in a mega city. Many suburbs are dead zones. Many ways of life are killing the spirit. Some have lots of things but little meaning.

This is why my mantra has always been--there is no technofix. We can only mitigate and adapt. Trying to keep this bubble inflated via conservation, efficiency gains, and renewables is a dog that will not hunt. In fact. it will make us crash all the more resoundingly. The boat is overloaded. No amount of bailing will keep it from swamping.

[vtsnowedin]

We can only mitigate and adapt.
.

To me moving to solar power and electric vehicles is mitigation and adaptation.
Will it prevent a final population collapse? Probably not. It will make the interim years cleaner and quieter tho.

[MonteQuest]

We can only mitigate and adapt.
.

To me moving to solar power and electric vehicles is mitigation and adaptation.
Will it prevent a final population collapse? Probably not. It will make the interim years cleaner and quieter tho.

Only if it is done while reducing population and energy/resource consumption at the same time. Otherwise, it is just keeping the boat overloaded. Sugar derived from sugar is still sugar.

[Ibon]

We can only mitigate and adapt.
.

To me moving to solar power and electric vehicles is mitigation and adaptation.
Will it prevent a final population collapse? Probably not. It will make the interim years cleaner and quieter tho.

I think another point worth considering is that if this technology moves through the bottleneck and we are down to that final number of carrying capacity, then it will have its place in the technology mix of the future. So that makes it worth while to preserve and optimize although we just have to be realistic that in a high consumption growth based capitalism it is not defensible.

The other aspect about carrying capacity that is important when we finally get down to 1 billion or so is that some environmental degradation is manageable because the resource sinks and the resiliency of our biosphere and climate has the tolerance for a certain level of waste, pollution and impacts. Our planet is not that fragile.

Kind of like this analogy: A smoker who only occasionally smokes does not destroy the actions of the cilia in the lungs that can clean the impurities. It is when you smoke 2 packs a day that you destroy the lungs ability to heal. This is human overshoot. We can be a billion on the planet and burn fossil fuels and create some pollution and still maintain carrying capacity. It is when we breed and consume equivalent to smoking 2 packs a day that we fuck up our planet and ourselves which is exactly what we have done.

[MonteQuest]

I think another point worth considering is that if this technology moves through the bottleneck and we are down to that final number of carrying capacity, then it will have its place in the technology mix of the future. So that makes it worth while to preserve and optimize although we just have to be realistic that in a high consumption growth based capitalism it is not defensible.

I agree. Some have opined that all the renewables we will ever need have already been built. Others have said that all the renewables we will ever have--have already been built. Connect the dots.

A smoker who only occasionally smokes does not destroy the actions of the cilia in the lungs that can clean the impurities. It is when you smoke 2 packs a day that you destroy the lungs ability to heal. This is human overshoot. We can be a billion on the planet and burn fossil fuels and create some pollution and still maintain carrying capacity. It is when we breed and consume equivalent to smoking 2 packs a day that we fuck up our planet and ourselves which is exactly what we have done.

I like that analogy. Nature only provided us with a few cigarettes per day to smoke unless we dug up the ancient sunshine and smoked it, too. As I wrote years ago, "Had we been truly intelligent, we could have limited our numbers on the commons. Think of the world we could have had: a small healthy population, relatively free of disease and suffering with a high quality of life—almost forever. In our insistence to breed with freedom on the commons, we squandered that opportunity. And since the population went up due to the population sustainability of fossil fuels, it will go down as they decline—although there is uncertainty as to what a sustainable global population would be without them."

[vtsnowedin]

MonteQuest"

I agree. Some have opined that all the renewables we will ever need have already been built. Others have said that all the renewables we will ever have--have already been built. Connect the dots.

I see both of those as obviously false, dots connected or not.
Consider using fossil fuels to build and ICE car that will then burn fossil fuel throughout it's life time ,against using a similar amount of fossil fuel to build an EV and solar panels ,which will then use the power from the panels to run the car as far as the ICE vehicle goes if not farther. Less total fossil fuel use, cleaner air , as much accomplished for the owner in the way if transportation. etc.