Dear Perplexed,
You remind me that this year Earth Overshoot Day falls on August 1. That’s when humans have used up the resources that Earth can generate for the year. The rest of the year—five whole months in 2024—we’re running on a deficit. We’re depleting resources and piling up pollution, including the carbon dioxide that’s ruined our climate. Overshoot causes most ecological problems—climate derangement, de-forestation, soil erosion, water shortages, overfishing, acidification of the oceans, loss of bio-diversity, and species extinction.
But why, you asked, is it so hard for most people to see it? Why don’t we talk about it? Why doesn’t our climate conversation mention overshoot? And how should we celebrate Earth Overshoot Day?
First, congratulations! You’re tackling a taboo! In 1971, 3.8 billion humans overshot Earth’s budget on December 25th. Back then, we lived close to our means. Since then, according to the Global Footprint Network, Overshoot Day has been creeping earlier. Now we’re 8.1 billion and use the equivalent of 1.7 Earths each year. Of course, if everyone lived like Ecuadorians and Indonesians, Earth’s resources would last until November 24th. But even then, society couldn’t survive.
The numbers tell the story. We’re only one of 8.7 million species on the Earth, but we’re crowding all the others out. We’ve eliminated 50% of natural plant biomass. Of land mammal biomass, we make up over one-third (37.5%) and our livestock another 60.5%; that leaves only 2% for wild land mammals. We’re threatening the extinction of 1 million species, many within decades. Humans aren’t doing so well either. Hundreds of millions of people already suffer from overshoot—they’re hungry, thirsty, warring over resources, and losing their homelands. “Business as usual” will bring a grim future. According to The World Counts, we’ll exhaust fresh water in 15 years and food in 25 years. Yep, we’re in the advanced stages of overshoot.
But you’re right. We don’t know it. To see overshoot, we’d have to step outside the cultural myths and defenses (more about these below). To speak about overshoot, we’d declare independence from groupthink. This autonomy is enviable. We all long for it, even as we are pressured to conform. In fact, scarcity heightens every creature’s impulse to conform, to melt into the herd. To speak about overshoot is to risk sour looks, or outright ostracism.
So, instead, we minimize overshoot. Our brains have evolved to detect short-term threats and to focus on one problem at a time; today it’s climate change. The dangers of overshoot are unprecedented, and we can’t—or won’t—wrap our minds around this mortal peril. Denial—that tendency to repudiate painful aspects of reality—is so convenient, so comforting, so hard to renounce.
The worst kind of denial is disavowal. Disavowal refuses to acknowledge a traumatic perception. Disavowal holds two incompatible mental states at the same time. You may have heard of people who both “see” their mounting debt, but then disavow it and continue “business as usual”—no budget, no spending brakes. Disavowal destroys the thoughts and feelings that would flow from truly seeing the debt. Disavowal refuses to feel the threat and fix it. Disavowal is common in children; in adults, though, it’s the beginning of psychosis.
Disavowal permeates our culture. We consider the economy separate from the biosphere. We think it’s propelled by technological innovation and capable of infinite growth, unfettered by environmental constraints. We think we’ll solve the climate crisis with green energy and don’t calculate the environmental costs to manufacture and distribute the solar panels and wind turbines. Our prayers for Green Salvation postpone the day of reckoning. We refuse to see beyond carbon emissions to the monstrous, habitat-wrecking scale of humanity.
Similarly, disavowal makes us panic about falling fertility rates. Governments institute pro-natalist policies to prevent the imagined catastrophe of a greying population, a mob of retirees who’ll overburden the shrinking number of workers and collapse the economy. The media feeds this panic by reporting the imagined dangers of population decline. True, demographic shifts will require societal adjustments. We might delay retirement. We might accept a period of austerity and then move to a steady state economy. We could manage all this if governments would plan for the decline and welcome a shrinking population.
Our disavowal of limits really seems like a group psychosis.
Limits insult human exceptionalism. Human exceptionalism is the prideful group belief that we have transcended the biosphere and laws of nature. Yeast in a bottle burn through nutrients and die. Deer over-reproduce when food is plentiful, then over-graze and suffer population collapse. But, we aren’t like them; we’re special.
Human exceptionalism is a form of omnipotence. Omnipotence disavows limits and loss. Loss is the most difficult psychological state to bear. But it glances off the cultural armor of omnipotence.
Admittedly, humans have blown through past limits. Remember how the 1970s Green Revolution averted global starvation? So, have we proved the doomsayers wrong? Can we outrun limits forever? Or, maybe now, we’ve finally hit the wall. Earthly heat keeps breaking records, we’re expecting our worst-ever hurricane season, we’ve lost nearly one-third of wild birds. Maybe now we’ll hear the creditor knocking at Earth’s door, reminding us that we’ve overdrawn our ecological bank account and are sinking into bankruptcy.
So, how can we celebrate Earth Overshoot Day? Here’s my suggestion. Spend time with the best of human creativity—a Bach mass, a jazz masterpiece, your favorite music or poem. Be grateful for benign human brilliance. Then go talk with someone about Earth Overshoot Day. You might be afraid to do it. After all, as I said earlier, they might envy your autonomy. Watch the conversation. Maybe you’ll see resistance or denial. Watch yourself. Can you tolerate their envy, stay engaged, and suggest other perspectives? Maybe you’ll brainstorm local ways to balance humans with their habitat. Maybe you’ll find fellow mourners.
To see, to reflect, to feel, to repair—this is the best of being human.
Wishing you a meaningful Earth Overshoot Day,
Dr. Miriam