Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on February 7, 2015
Overshoot
“Overshoot” was part of that wave of books and studies of the 1960s and 1970s which tried to come to terms to the consequences of the unavoidable limitation of the natural resources available to humankind. The initiator of the trend was, perhaps, Garrett Hardin with his 1968 “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Earlier on, in 1956, Marion King Hubbert had proposed the concept of “peaking” of oil production, a remarkable first in a field in which the term “depletion” was all but banned. But Hubbert remained within the conventional paradigm that saw technology as able to solve all problems and he believed that nuclear energy would come to the rescue. Hardin, and later Catton and others, instead, saw the root of the problem in humankind’s behavior: the tendency to overexploit natural resources; to use today what should be left for tomorrow. The basic message of “Overshoot” is that overexploitation is a basic consequence of the way human beings behave in the ecosystem. It is not something that can be solved by technological wizardry.
We may compare “Overshoot” to another book that carried a similar message: “The Limits to Growth” of 1972. Conceived at about the same time (even though “Overshoot” was published only in 1980), these two books can be seen as opposite in terms of public relation strategies. Overshoot never was a best-seller, nor it was translated in any language (except, recently, in Russian and Spanish). Instead, “The Limits to Growth” was sold in millions of copies and translated into almost every language which appears in print. But, as a consequence, “The Limits to Growth” was the target of a strong demonization campaign which turned into an obligatory laughing stock for anyone who dared to mention it in public. “Overshoot”, instead, escaped the attention of the powers that be and never received the same treatment. So, it has been quietly influencing an entire generation of people who have understood the root causes of our problems (see, e.g. this comment by John Michael Greer).
Re-examined more than 40 years after its conception, “Overshoot” appears dated in many details but not in its basic message. Its strength remains having posed so openly and so clearly the essence of the problem: human beings are part of the ecosystem and they tend to behave accordingly; trying to expand as much as possible and to appropriate as many resources as they can. It is normal: we are gradually discovering how the laws of physics and biology apply to the economy (Hardin was a biologist, after all). Unfortunately, if humans behave as just one of the species of the ecosystem, they tend to appropriate as many resources as they can, and as fast as possible. Then, the result is the phenomenon called “overshoot,” with the associated suffering, destruction, and assorted disasters at least for that subsystem of the ecosystem we call “humankind”. Can we avoid that? So far, it doesn’t seem so: we even refuse to acknowledge that the problem exists.
On the other hand, if overshoot is part of the way the ecosystem works, we have to accept it; no matter how bad its consequences can be, at least from our viewpoint of human beings. One of the rules of the ecosystem is that in order for something new to be born, something old has to die. That is how the ecosystem has been working for billions of years; it will keep working in the same way for the future; with or without human beings.
Cassandra’s legacy by Ugo Bardi
11 Comments on "Overshoot"
Plantagenet on Sat, 7th Feb 2015 5:05 pm
Overshoot is how the ecosystem works. In nature there is usually one key element in the environment that becomes depleted, causing the animal population to plummet. Humans are considerably different from animals, in that humans can substitute or replace various elements in the environment as they become depleted. For instance, as whale oil became depleted in the 19th century, it was replaced by petroleum. Replacing petroleum in the 21st is more difficult problem, and one that won’t get much attention as long as the world is in an oil glut.
Davy on Sat, 7th Feb 2015 5:34 pm
Planter, you ever heard of reverse substitution. This is where the substitution process goes from oil back to wood as an example.
Humans are different from most animals because we are an extinction species that serves natures purpose of evolution through ecosystem destruction. Currently we are bottleneck man.
We are in a demand destruction oil glut indicating the bumpy descent has begun.
clifman on Sat, 7th Feb 2015 5:40 pm
Back in the heyday of The Oil Drum, I posted that my 3-legged stool for truly grokking our predicament (hat tip to Greer) was comprised of Catton’s ‘Overshoot’ along with Al Bartlett’s presentation on exponential growth, and the documentary ‘What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire.”
Nothing in the interim has knocked any of those legs aside. Catton’s contribution was immense, and he will be missed, along with Bartlett.
And Plant, humans are not different from animals. Humans are animals. All the laws of ecology apply just as much to us as to yeast (hat tip Bob Shaw).
Plantagenet on Sat, 7th Feb 2015 5:41 pm
Daver…why would we replace oil with wood when we could shift to electric instead?
Can you imagine how much wood you’d have to burn to power a car—no EVs are a much better way to go.
Plantagenet on Sat, 7th Feb 2015 5:42 pm
Clif
Yes, humans are animals.
No, humans are not as limited as animals when it comes to manipulating the environment. Isn’t that obvious?
Cheers!
Davy on Sat, 7th Feb 2015 6:18 pm
Planter, you don’t get it man rub your eyes and take a breath. It is not the “US” doing the replacing it is nature cutting “US” off. That is the fundamentals of reverse substitution.
Plantagenet on Sat, 7th Feb 2015 6:41 pm
Daver—Thats exactly where humans differ from animals. When an animal reaches its natural limits there is nothing it can do.
But humans can switch and start using new resources. For instance, conventional oil peaked ca. 2005, and the for the last 10 years the global economy has switched to using more and more unconventional oil.
GregT on Sat, 7th Feb 2015 7:18 pm
Here we go again…………….
Makati1 on Sat, 7th Feb 2015 7:26 pm
Plant, did you ever consider that cars are not necessities? Most of the world manages without them.
And wood will NOT be a substitute for oil/NG for very long. My sister uses about a cord of wood every year just to keep warm, and cook over the fireplace, when the electric goes off during snow storms. If she used it year round as a substitute for electric, it would be multiples of that cord. (Cord = 4’x4’x8′ piled neatly.)
The forest of America would not last much more than a year or two if it were a substitute for oil/NG and electric.
Yes, we are on a dead end path and the end is fast approaching.
Bandits on Sun, 8th Feb 2015 5:29 am
Plantagenet is like a stupid savage dog that runs out and tries to bite the pedals of every cyclist that rides past.
The cyclist can get angry and frustrated and ride the same route every day, reason with the stupid dog, kick the stupid dog or ride a different route. There is no reasoning with this dumb animal, so I suggest a different route. Leave it alone.
Davy on Mon, 9th Feb 2015 7:11 am
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-08/if-greece-exits-here-what-happens-redux
Grexit is precisely the contagion that would reverberate through a likewise weak global system. The current global system has multiple nodes of instability from 7 years of a global system stoked with debt and rates at historic lows. The historic lows and debt are still present as we are most likely entering a business cycle drop of some shape and size. Why else would the fed be so anxious to get their fundamental tool of interest rates more normalize but are unable to move rates for fear of instability?
We have been in a stable disequilibrium for 7 years held together by central bank policies. This has been a two tier economic system one digital and one real. If one looks at the many economic indicators that are not messaged by the authorities it is plain to see the incongruities between the physical and the digital. These many juxtaposition of irrational economic realities surely must correct at some point.
Reality has no gatekeeper. Those who try to manage reality do so with masks and tape. Eventually if one is trying to hide the fact there is fire what does one do when there is heat and smoke. I am at a loss trying to figure out this new environment of global economics of the digital. Investors and central banks being in effect one and the same are determined to hold together their wealth in any way possible.
The physical economy is the experiment. It is thought that however demand is created the real and physical economy will break out and operate its magic on its own. The reality of the situation is a brain dead corpse in ICU complete with ventilators and fluid tubes. There is a heart rate and pulse but no brain activity.
At some point investors will not be confident the world’s central banks have their backs. Investors know the first to jump ship is either likely to lose his ass or come out like a rose. IOW jumping ship is a gamble per the individual. Per the herd it is unconscious reactions of the herd to either not move or move en masse. This is not something the digital masters can control completely. This is the world of reality.