I’ve spent the week at EarthX 2024, a massive global environmental conference. Those in attendance are likely to have above-average knowledge of environmental subjects. So imagine my surprise, in numerous conversations explaining my platform, that even some environmental specialists gave me a blank stare when I mentioned we’re in an ecological overshoot emergency.
I’ve mentioned it in previous posts, but I want to shine a very bright spotlight on it now – because every human being needs to know about overshoot. The longer it remains a secret, the longer we’ll delay doing something about it. Being in this condition represents an existential threat to the quality of our lives and our continued existence. Our kids can’t have a good future if we remain in overshoot.
“I think we’re destroying ourselves.” - Ecological Economist William E. Rees
In a nutshell, the human enterprise has outgrown the Earth. We’re demanding more resources from nature than she can provide and fully regenerate year after year. We’re also putting waste into nature faster than she can fully process it (the most prominent example of this is the growing accumulation of heat-trapping CO2 in our atmosphere). This is ecological overshoot. Remaining in overshoot damages critical life-supporting ecosystems, so their capacity to meet our needs is declining.
It’s not debatable; it’s a fact of life that we are in overshoot. The most obvious evidence includes:
An increasingly unstable climate
An alarming rate of extinction of other species
Loss of soil fertility
Increasing scarcity of fresh water
We also have some clear measurement of the degree of our overshoot. Global Footprint Network has been collecting and analyzing data about this for a few decades. Each year they provide a comparison of the world’s biocapacity and the ecological footprint of humans. They report how much our footprint (demands) exceeds biocapacity. Globally, we’re demanding almost twice (1.71%) what Earth can sustainably provide. These reports are quite conservative, as they don’t reserve any biocapacity for other species. It’s safe to assume we are deeper into overshoot than they report.
So, we’re stealing our children’s future right out from under them. We have a moral obligation to stop. We can do better. Individually, we can shrink our own footprints - consuming less, flying less (or not at all), driving less, eating less meat, and choosing to have smaller families, for example.
But we’ll need help. That’s why my campaign promise is to declare an ecological overshoot emergency and launch a national project to contract our economy and population until we are once again living within the means of the planet.
Dave Gardner is an independent candidate for U.S. President. Learn more at davetheplanet2024.com.
If you want to dig deeper into the subject, here are four good podcasts to listen to: