What is Ecological Overshoot? (And why is it so controversial?)
Whether it’s by design or disaster, our voyage into overshoot will inevitably come to an end.
On its voyage to the moon in 1972, the Apollo 17 spacecraft took one of the most iconic photos in history. The ‘Blue Marble’ shows the majestic beauty of Earth, it reveals the planet’s isolation and vulnerability when contrasted against the void of deep space. It also reveals the planet's boundaries. This may be a glaringly obvious point to make, but the idea the Earth is limited by those boundaries is one of, if not the most, controversial facts there is. Boundaries hint at the fact that never-ending economic growth on a finite planet may not be possible.
Seeing as economic growth has led to miraculous increases in living standards, to question it is heresy. But high living standards for some have come with a horrifying cost for all of us: ecological overshoot. While ‘ecological overshoot’ isn’t a phrase you often hear in conversation, we first entered it in the 1970s. So, what exactly is ecological overshoot? And why is it so controversial?
The plight of a reindeer herd
In The Rise and Fall of a Herd of Reindeer, Victor Scheffer explained how, in 1911, the US government placed 40…
