By Mike Joy*
You may not have noticed, but earlier this month we passed Earth overshoot day, when humanity’s demands for ecological resources and services exceeded what our planet can regenerate annually.
Many economists criticising the developing degrowth movement fail to appreciate this critical point of Earth’s biophysical limits.
Ecologists on the other hand see the human economy as a subset of the biosphere. Their perspective highlights the urgency with which we need to reduce our demands on the biosphere to avoid a disastrous ecological collapse, with consequences for us and all other species.
Today is #EarthOvershootDay the baseline for the Earth’s resources we can sustainably use
— Professor Mark Maslin 𝕏 (@ProfMarkMaslin) August 2, 2023
First described in 1971 overshoot day was Dec 25th
Now it’s August 2nd - we are now in ecological debt
Humanity's demand for nature’s resources has exceeded Earth's capacity to regenerate pic.twitter.com/QnzG1cjxda
Many degrowth scholars (as well as critics) focus on features of capitalism as the cause of this ecological overshoot. But while capitalism may be problematic, many civilisations destroyed ecosystems to the point of collapse long before it became our dominant economic model.
Capitalism, powered by the availability of cheap and abundant fossil energy, has indeed resulted in unprecedented and global biosphere disruption. But the direct cause remains the excessive volume and speed with which resources are extracted and wastes returned to the environment.
From an ecologist’s perspective, degrowth is inevitable on our current trajectory.
Carrying capacity
Ecology tells us that many species overshoot their environment’s carrying capacity if they have temporary access to an unusually high level of resources. Overshoot declines when those resources return to more stable levels. This often involves large-scale starvation and die-offs as populations adjust.
Access to fossil fuels has allowed us to temporarily overshoot biophysical limits. This lifted our population and demands on the biosphere past the level it can safely absorb. Barring a planned reduction of those biosphere demands, we will experience the same “adjustments” as other species.
One advantage humans have over other species is that we understand overshoot dynamics and can plan how we adjust. This is what the degrowth movement is attempting to do.
To grasp the necessity of reducing ecological overshoot we must understand its current status. We can do this by examining a variety of empirical studies.
Material flows and planetary boundaries
Analysis of material flows in the economy shows we are currently extracting more than 100 billion tons of natural materials annually, and rising. This greatly exceeds natural processes – erosion, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes – that move materials around the globe.
Such massive human-driven material flows can destroy ecosystems, cause pollution and drive species extinct.
Only about 10% of these resource flows are potentially renewable. In many cases, we are harvesting more than can be regenerated annually (for example, many fish stocks).
Humans have now transgressed at least six of nine planetary boundaries. Each boundary has distinct limits, but in some instances the overshoot is at least double the safe operating level.
Both material flow analysis and planetary boundaries provide critically important information about our impacts on the biosphere. But they fail to capture the full picture. The former doesn’t directly measure biosphere functioning. The latter doesn’t capture inter-dependencies between various boundaries.
The biosphere is a holistic entity, with many self-organising and interconnected subsystems. Our generally reductionist scientific methodologies are not able to capture this level of complexity. The methodology that comes closest to achieving this is the ecological footprint.
Biocapacity
The ecological footprint measures the amount of productive surface on Earth and its capacity to generate resources and assimilate waste. These are two of the most fundamental features of the biosphere.
It then compares this available biocapacity with humanity’s annual demands. Humanity’s ecological footprint has exceeded the biosphere’s annual biocapacity since at least 1970 and is currently almost twice the sustainable level.
The reason we can use more of what is generated annually is because we use stored biomass – ancient solar energy captured over millennia – to power this draw-down.
“The global economy will inevitably contract and humanity will suffer a major population ‘correction’ in this century.” 👀
— Ryan Katz-Rosene (@ryankatzrosene) August 13, 2023
New paper by Bill Rees (one of the people who conceptualized the idea of “the ecological footprint” just dropped…) pic.twitter.com/xwwszBW8hs
We must note that the ecological footprint is an acknowledged underestimate of our demands on the biosphere. Also, the biosphere isn’t there only for us. At least 30%-50% of the biosphere should be reserved as wilderness to protect other species and global ecosystems.
Humanity exceeds its fair share of natural resources by more than 50%, and likely needs to reduce this demand by 70-80% to operate within carrying capacity. Those with greater wealth are responsible for a disproportionately large share of overshoot.
It’s not just a climate crisis
The political and public concern about climate change is considerable internationally and in New Zealand. But this is one of many environmental crises, together with soil erosion, groundwater pollution, deforestation, the rise of invasive species, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification and the depletion of resources. They are all symptoms of overshoot.
The climate crisis is seen as a problem requiring a solution rather than a symptom of overshoot. The problem is generally formulated as looking for a way to maintain current lifestyles in the wealthy world, rather than reducing overshoot.
The ecological perspective accepts that we exceed biophysical boundaries and emphasises the importance of reducing energy and material consumption – regardless of how the energy is provided.
The scope of human disruption of the biosphere is now global. This ecological perspective highlights the current magnitude and closeness of significant and unwelcome changes to Earth systems. The reduction of humanity’s demands on the biosphere is an overriding priority.
Ecological economics, with its emphasis on a steady-state economy, is perhaps the most rigorous existing economic framework with specific proposals for determining priority actions. We urge scholars of all disciples to examine these.
The author acknowledges the contribution of Jack Santa-Barbara.
*Mike Joy, Senior Researcher; Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
80 Comments
Maybe science will help meet humanity’s demand
https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/08/06/young-maori-physicist-seeking-to-harness-power-of-the-stars/
A case of optimism bias grasping at straws. And also not reading the article. Nobody has yet done fusion in an energy-positive manner, or for more than seconds - for obvious reasons.
Thanks Interest.co for publishing this piece - it won't be picked up by most of the narrative-clinging MSM, for sure.
The next question is: Why does Economics not count those boundary overshoots? And what good is Economics, if it doesn't count items essential for human existence?
This opinion article was on RNZ yesterday
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/495938/critics-of-degrowth-eco…
You guys remind me of the Dodo’s from the Ice Age
And what good is Economics, if it doesn't count items essential for human existence?
I guess because so much of human existence isn't something that can be accurately represented on a graph. Economics is essentially dealing purely with object/materialism as a means of human well-being.
Why does Economics not count those boundary overshoots?
It can count them & can even estimate the cost.
They are typically called externalities (its such a poor name because they arent really external).
For example in transport the socioecononomic cost of crashes and vehicle produced air pollution has been calculated.
The issue is that capitalism typically doesnt price these "externalities" so we continue to run down the earth.
The problem is capitalism just says these issues are costing the 'Economy' X$$. People and planet are expendable.
I read an article recently about mental health and stress in the population and all it seemed concerned about was the $$ cost/loss to the economy. No thought that the religious worship of money, capital and economics might be the real cause of our social ills.
Innovation is always the Chicken Little blindspot.
www.ft.com
"Rondo’s approach combines two basic technical approaches, neither of them obviously revolutionary. The first is much like a giant toaster, with electricity conducted through a metal wire, which heats up thanks to electrical resistance. That heat then radiates into a complex array of bricks, a version of a system developed for use alongside blast furnaces about two centuries ago. The bricks are heated to about 1,500°C — and conserve this heat energy for days, with daily loss rates of just 1 per cent. The integrated system is intended to offer factories a steady supply of carbon-free industrial heat from renewable energy that keeps flowing after the sun goes down or the wind stops blowing.
...By converting grid electricity to heat at peak generation times, and converting it back at times of high demand, thermal batteries could prove a powerful grid-level storage system.
...The maximum temperatures that their systems can deliver — currently about 1,500°C — are insufficient for some industrial processes, including in metal production. They are also not suitable — at least not yet — for processes requiring very precise temperatures, such as oxyacetylene welding, noted the think-tank Energy Innovation in a recent report. But these represent only a small portion of industrial heat, it added, estimating that thermal batteries could in theory displace about 75 per cent of fossil fuel usage for US industrial energy."
You didn't study Thermodynamics, did you?
Some of us have lived with solar energy stored in the thermal mass in our passive-solar houses for decades. And many readers will remember night-store heaters, just what you are describing. No technology can create energy, and there are thermodynamic limits to its use, transmission and storage - most of which we are at, or close to.
Don’t panic - humanity is in widespread correction mode already - more than half the world is well below replacement birth rates and those remaining above are on steep declines owed to rapid urbanisation and female education and access to contraception. 70 percent of the world is projected to be urban in twenty five years - urbanites don’t have many (or sometimes any) kids. Add to that the bulge of aged folks moving through which will elevate death rates (they’ll exceed birth rates) and bring the population correction up much earlier than most will expect.
Yes, the percentage/rate at which global population is growing has slowed - but globally, raw numbers are still growing. And you are right that the more contraception becomes freely available, the lower our birth rates will go. But, that said, depopulation/decline is not expected until the turn of this century.
We will remain in the new geologic epoch, the Anthropocene, for a long while yet.
And the real threat - which we should be panicking about, relates to our highly imbalanced biosphere. People are on the up whilst all other species are in rapid decline. Huge issues for the children of today.
Absolutely it was predicted (more accurately it was known/proven) 20 years ago. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was published back in 2003;
https://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.html
See in particular the Synthesis Reports (and in particular, that on biodiversity).
The Ecosystem Assessment Board statement, highlights this in stating up front;
Human activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.
I'm talking about human population.
Not great articles to be quoting since they aren't dated (that I can see) from the UN.
From it appears 2017,
The current world population of 7.6 billion is expected to reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, according to a new United Nations report being launched today.
It would appear in 2022, we have a downgrade in the projection.
The world population is projected to reach 8.5 billion in 2030, and to increase further to 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion by 2100.
https://www.un.org/en/desa/world-population-projected-reach-98-billion-…
https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population
IMO the peak will be much less and sooner than either of these 2 projections. There's a multitude of drivers that are barely understood, or yet to even show themselves.
Well Mike's article should trigger the "Malthus was wrong/The Limits to Growth is bunk'' brigade.
Meanwhile, the disasters keep coming..........https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2023-08-17/u-s-racks…
Here's what Malthus actually said:
“No man can say that he has seen the largest ear of wheat or the largest oak that could ever grow; but he might easily, and with perfect certainty, name a point of magnitude at which they would not arrive. In all these cases therefore, a careful distinction should be made between an unlimited progress, and a progress where the limit is merely undefined”
Only maligned by folk who choose not to read him.
Hilarious? Not a scientific classification, last time I looked.
Nothing to do with theories - exponentially-increasingly hoeing into a finite planet with a finely-balanced ecology, is a temporary arrangement.
Not sure you'd know science if you fell over it - one hallmark of original thinking is what people choose as a pen-name...
It's not like it's happened before...Wellington Flood : 20 Dec 1976 : Hutt Valley - YouTube
California under FIRST EVER tropical storm watch: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/18/weather/hurricane-hilary-rain-floodi…
But as you say, all perfectly normal, nothing to see here.............(it's all happened before apparently).
King of the whiners | 19th Aug 23, 10:38am
"California under FIRST EVER tropical storm watch" - apart from that time in 1939 when 100 people died. Nice try whiner - try google?
The National Hurricane Center was established in 1955. It is this body which issues hurricane warnings. This is the first storm warning it has ever issued for California. FACTS. So, just as the headline says it's the first warning of this type they have made.
Try google? I just did.........
I do hope you have children and grandchildren, and I do hope you proudly boast to them of what you do.
I am struggling to see any headlines that state that. This one is more accurate. https://www.npr.org/2023/08/18/1194588117/hilary-could-be-the-first-tro…
You make yourself struggle because you have a pre-held bias big enough drive a locomotive through.
https://www.msn.com/he-il/weather/other/hurricane-hilary-triggers-south…
One search, first headline I came across, took 10 seconds.
Try - seriously - learning how to think. It's an insult to ourselves not to be as informed as we can be; don't download this one; buy the book:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_In_Systems%3A_A_Primer
To think dispassionately, we need to read not just echo-chamber stuff; I have Douglas, Richardson Prebble, alongside Lee and Paul (JT) in my NZ section; my international shelves include Ayn Rand and https://www.amazon.com/More-Less-Surprising-Learned-Resources_and/dp/19…. They do not reinforce biases - I read them for comparison, appraise dispassionately.
Give it a go...
Yes King, the FIRST EVER tropical storm. Other than 1858 San Diego, 1939 Long Beach, 1963 Tropical Storm Jennifer-Catherine, 1965 remnants of Hurricane Emily, 1972 remnants of Hurricane Joanne, 1976 remnants of Hurricane Kathleen, 1997 remnants of Hurricane Nora and 2022 remnants of Hurricane Kay. However, if you are talking about actual Hurricane intensity, then no, there have been none before. And it appears that this one is being downgraded as well. So the record may still be kept and then there WILL BE NOTHING TO SEE HERE.
The fires in Hawaii looked like something out of a post apocalyptic nuclear movie set. Its interesting to see we are finally starting to have conversations about population overshoot, basically this is the root cause of all the problems. Aljazeera now has more weather related news than other news, its constant floods and fires and record temperatures now on a daily basis.
What's the point ?, we all know how we got to this point but continue to do nothing about it. Its basically impossible to address the root cause of the problem, society will collapse at some point its inevitable and its peoples belief that it never will that will see it happen. We have maybe another 30 years left but I'm forced to reduce this on an almost daily basis. 30 years is probably optimistic at the current point in time. I'm hoping to "Check out" just in time.
Accepting that its all true, what will be the practical measures that show we have arrived?
We have tried the limits of interest rates, 3 to 20%, could we bet on our unemployment being 10% at the end of the next decade for example?
We will have had a fair meal of climate change, fire,drought,food scarcity,flooding.
Even the most gungho governments may be reluctant to "stimulate" their economy.
That's asking a lot of an ecologist to speak in the language of a dying era of economic convention.
Highly recommend Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics
New goals will require different measures. Interest rates won't be one of them
"Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist." - Sir David Attenborough
Fear not:
As Lavrov pointed out, the US and Europe’s political and economic circles are "reasonably concerned" that the shift to a multipolar system "is connected to serious geopolitical and economic losses and the complete breakup of globalization in its current iteration shaped according to Western templates." "Above all, they fear the prospect of losing the opportunity to feed off the rest of the world, thereby ensuring their own advanced economic growth at the expense of others," he emphasized. Link
Mike Joy purveyor of doom porn projections - "Humanity’s ecological footprint has exceeded the biosphere’s annual biocapacity since at least 1970 and is currently almost twice the sustainable level." Yet we have had global greening recorded by satellites since 1970. Mike's Chicken Little predictions have failed to some true - time to tweak the models some more and keep that doom gravy train rolling.
Greening of the Earth and its drivers
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004
"“Continued Coral Recovery Leads to 36-Year Highs Across Two-Thirds of the Great Barrier Reef.”
https://www.aims.gov.au/monitoring-great-barrier-reef/gbr-condition-sum…
"The Southwest Atlantic humpback whale has recovered from the brink of extinction. A new study has found that, prior to whaling, the global population was approximately 27,000. The current estimate is that populations have recovered to around 25,000."
https://oceanographicmagazine.com/news/southwest-atlantic-humpback-whal…
profile,
"An entire globe greening". Even by your standards, that is exceptionally silly. It amuses me to see you twist and turn in an effort to avoid the realities of CC.
I will not give you links, find them yourself though you might look at the journal Nature, but try explaining just how glaciers continue to melt globally, sea level rise, marine heatwaves, how CC is affecting wine growing globally. Will you deny that the Clausius-Clapeyron equation holds good, that the Keeling Curve is real and so on?
As you are clearly intelligent, this seems puzzling, but the answer can be found in behavioural psychology. I recommend you read The Intelligence Trap by David Robson. Here is one very short quote from p117; "we then use our intelligence and knowledge to justify erroneous judgements made on the basis of them".
Let me expand briefly on one of my favourite topics, wine. There are now over 700 vineyards in England and the number keeps rising. Why? Germany was always known purely for its white wines, particularly Reisling, but now the second most planted variety is Pinot Noir. Again why? Across the world, the alcohol content of wine is rising. Why? French winegrowers are notoriously conservative, but Bordeaux has now sanctioned 6 new varieties. Why? Climate change of course.
We are in the early stages of degrowth but it's manifesting itself as low fertility rates rather than a per capita reduction in fossil consumption. Most consumption is done in OECD countries which have declining fertility rates (and populations in many cases), most countries with high fertility rates are not developing.
Highly Recommend Deep Ecologists like Pentti Linkola, the kooky figures like John Michael Greer and so on.
The reality is we are likely to experience a tainter style resource exhaustion collapse followed by rapid decomplexification as oil runs dry. The writing is on the wall.
As a retired petroleum exploration geologist, even I am able to accept and support virtually everything you say here Mike but like most advocates for sustainability and ecological survival, you simply seek to ways to deal with the symptoms of the problem rather than address its root cause.
Until we rein back the exponential growth in our planet's human population, we will always be going one step forward and two steps backwards in solving the very real crisis we are in. In 1963 we had 2.5 billion people on earth and now just sixty years later there are 8 billion. At that growth rate we will never achieve sustainability let alone find the resources from planet earth to survive as a species.
You are both right - the difference is whether degrowth is managed proactively, or whether nature drives the agenda. The former is preferable.
There is one wild card though; a financial freeze-up (2008 on steroids) would render the collapse graph near-vertical; 3 billion gone in a month sort of thing (given that no city supported over 1 million prior to FF, and 60% of that 8 billion now live in cities). We should have a national plan for that; a season is a long lead-time in food terms.
a season is a long lead-time in food terms
But a 2008 on steroids would likely mean all int'l transactions seize up. NZers produce far more food than the nation can eat - the only issue the government would need to sort out would be payment to producers, processing and distribution - 'stocks' of edibles won't be the problem.
You sure? The glib claim is that we 'feed 40 million'; but the reality is more like: a trace of our milk-powder passes 40 million lips as part of a processed food. And most of it is milk - there's a limit to its use. I don't think we even come close to being self-sufficient in fruit and veg. Seed-stock? (non-sterile!) Arable land?
We'd need a command economy, a commandeering of dairy-acreage, particularly close to towns/cities (transport would be moot in such circumstances) and a switch to unprocessed, a switch to seasonal, and - depending on grid reliability; think intermittent freezers - we might have a problem with storage as well.
Yes, I'm confident. We have a lot of protein/hooves on the ground as we speak - many years worth for our population. Then there are our protein pests - add to that our existing fruit and nut trees - and I don't think we'd run out of seed stock (Māori successfully grew crops for hundreds of years) where certain grains and vegetables are concerned.
And yes, in any kind of major crisis where we became isolated/cut off, government would need to execute a command economy (e.g., distribution, rationing and the like).
That's not to say there aren't certain things our government should stock pile, but I don't think food is one of them.
I accept your argument in the short term, but I'm not going to lose sight of the physics; I can count perhaps 30 calories of fossil oil, to one of produced food (measured all-in at consumption-point). Certainly 'many more calories'; and we are looking at a scenario ex fossil input (no PKE or phosphate input either, of course). Yes, you could run the stock down by eating the stock - the Meat Battery Project? - but maintainable food-production ex-FF?
I'm not advocating food stockpiling; I'm suggesting we need adequate supplies of non-sterile seeds. Hence the 'season' comment.
Maori are not a great example. They fired large areas (turning it from forest to savanna) chasing the moa to extinction. Hector's Dolphin have a range of a few 10's of K's up and down the coast, but must have been contiguous pre human. Who ate the gaps? And they operated very close to the EROEI margin; hence post-battle eating of the vanquished. They managed a maximum of perhaps 100,000 before European diseases skewed the count. That's a long way short of 5 million.
As always, I end up resorting to my utopian outlook :-). I'm an optimist about the unique advantages of our little 'place' on the globe.
Provided we remain sovereign, I would think that we don't really need to be ex-FF for generations to come due to our fossil mineral wealth on shore and off-shore - problem is we're not planning for long-term/future FF use, as it's out-of-fashion presently, given we can easily import it cheaply.
Sure, sans any imports, we will have FF scarcity. I think what we need is a government willing to openly discuss our FF-scarce future. They need to look at this issue and discuss it strategically with a minimum 100-year out lens when that importation will become too costly/unavailable to us.
We need a Ministry of the Future which is staffed with physicists and geologists and engineers. The present emphasis of Ministry for the Environment on climate change is a bit futile - my non-scientist understanding is that the levels of accumulated CO2 in the atmosphere cannot be reversed. Much as it is unpopular to say, the time for making any difference with mitigation has likely passed - and NZs efforts in that regard have perhaps always been of no consequence anyway. We are in the hands of Gaia :-).
We should instead turn our knowledge and efforts to solving these future scarcity issues. For example, we have this untapped resource where phosphate is concerned;
https://teara.govt.nz/en/marine-minerals/page-2
What we need to do to my mind is de-commercialize mining and perhaps eventually nationalize energy. Identify essential in-country uses/applications where no alternate (NFF) energy will suffice. Develop exploration and infrastructure to meet those future needs for local, non-profit, far-term, future- targeted consumption only. A kind of get-the-infrastructure-in-place while we can (if that is at all feasible) while also moving toward electrification of everything else.
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