Overshoot

The "normal" late-20th century economy of seemingly endless growth actually emerged from an aberrant set of conditions that cannot be perpetuated. That "normal" is gone. One way or another, a "new normal" will emerge to replace it. Can we build a different, more sustainable economy to replace the one now in tatters?

One of the authors of Limits to Growth, talks about growth, peak oil, and the possibility of collapse at the World Resources Forum. He says: "The current growth in population and in material use cannot continue--absolutely, with 100% probability, that it is going to stop. When? How? How seriously? We have no scientific way to make predictions. The longer we wait to do social measures, like birth control, or voluntary simplicity, the more likely it will be that physical measures will cause this decline."

The collapse of the globalized society we now inhabit will be exceedingly uneven geographically and one that is spread over many years. And, I believe that that collapse has already started to appear.

Science has a paper on the changes to the current global food system required to support the expanded global population we'll see in a couple of decades time, noting that radical changes to agriculture will be required to support 9 billion people.

Amid today's varying attempts to imagine a postpetroleum America, one very likely equivalent has received little attention -- the impoverished, dysfunctional nations of the contemporary Third World. Maybe it's time to consider the possibility.

- The Making of an Elder Culture
- Slow-tech: Manifesto for an overwound world
- Stuck accelerators: Toyotas and the fossil-fuel growth economy
- Energy flow, emergent complexity, and collapse

For decades now, those concerned with the future of the industrial world have warned that a point would come, sooner or later, when the consequences of all that short-term thinking would begin coming home to roost. For the United States, that point might be arriving now.

-The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World
-Who Will Build the Ark?
-Why Ecological Revolution?
-'Population Justice' — The Wrong Way to Go

In a new book, Bottleneck: Humanity's Impending Impasse, William Catton, Jr. says human society is now on an unstoppable trajectory for a significant die-off. Catton, author of the well-known classic of human ecology, Overshoot, expects that by 2100 the world population will be smaller, perhaps much smaller, than it is today. We are in what he calls "the bottleneck century."

The veneration of the automobile is a custom that is gradually, steadily becoming more commonplace in urban India. The global auto industry's major manufacturers are betting on it, India's central government is betting on it, and tens of thousands of new customers in India are delivering that bet.

As others have pointed out, many of Haiti’s problems have been related to its population density, associated environmental degradation and its need for cheap energy. Now, with the worst earthquake shaking the Caribbean in 200 years, we must sadly add another chapter to the Haitian book chronicling the linkage between its human and ecological disasters.

The American West at Risk's 13 chapters examine some of the major human-caused environmental problems now threatening the 11 contiguous Western states...Citing trustworthy, peer-reviewed studies in support of its arguments, and written by three trained scientists, this book has every claim for credibility—and is an enlightening and gripping read for scientists and laypeople alike.

Much of the way that we conduct ourselves is based on habit. For example, we get into the habit of crossing our arms with our right hand (or left hand) on top. It is not that putting the right hand or left hand on top is better or worse. We have just developed a habit of crossing our arms in a particular way.

"as mankind proceeded to get bigger and bigger we silently crossed a threshold"

...I feel like I shouldn't be here, that none of us should be. . .that there should be 200,000 Cuyetano Huanca's and Shorbana Khatun's in Copenhagen, not 25,000 NGO reps and media reps. It's a bit of a disgrace, and a reminder of our hubris, to think we represent the interests of the people most hurt by overconsumption (btw - this should not be a "climate conference" but a "capitalism/ overconsumption conference-;we should be focusing on the cause, not the effect)...