Dear Friends:
The book club met this morning to discuss “The Human Ecology of Overshoot: Why a Major ‘Population Correction’ Is Inevitable” an article by William E. Rees from World, an open access scholarly journal from MDPI based in Basil, Switzerland. Some of us also read “You Are Contaminated” by David Wallace-Wells from the New York Times. Jon had recommended the “Overshoot” article, he said, partly because it has a way of connecting back to most of the books we’ve been reading over the last three years or so and partly because it has haunted him since he first read it last year. “You Are Contaminated” we will take up next time—on Friday, August 15—since we didn’t have time to deal with it directly this morning. Our hope is to begin a new book in early September.
“The Human Ecology of Overshoot” makes its main point early: “We are consuming and polluting the biophysical basis of our existence.” We are using up resouces faster than they can be replenished and creating waste faster than it can be absorbed. Fossil fuels have enabled “an eight-fold increase in human numbers and a hundred-fold expansion of real gross world product in the past two centuries,” and its more than can be sustained.
Along with fossil fuels, three “innate abilities/predispositions” of human beings have driven this expansion, according to Rees. First, humans are capable of exponential growth in terms of population. Secondly, we have a tendency to consume all available resources. And thirdly, we tend to expand to occupy all available habitat. At least initially, Rees seems to be saying quite clearly that all three of these qualities are “innate” in human beings. “One might expect,” he says, “that an intelligent species would devise cultural overides to rein in potentially dangerous expansionist tendencies on a finite planet.” But the opposite has more often been the case. One of the most important causes of overshoot is a belief in human exceptionalism and the neoliberal economic assumptions that underlie our economy and politics that tell us we are not bound by the laws and limits of nature. “The economy and the ‘environment’ are separate systems,” according to this view, “so the former, propelled by continuous technological advances, can grow indefinitely, unconstrained by the latter.” But as the rest of the article goes on to spell out in detail, this is not the case.
For those who missed the discussion or just want more information, the article itself is attached to this email. It does a great job presenting the critically important data on the impact of human beings on Planet Earth. This morning much of that discussion centered around the question of whether the “predispositions” mentioned above are “innate” in human beings and if so, what that might mean? Can they be restrained or guided? To what extent are they shaped and even partly created by a particular economy or historical moment? Could a flourishing economy be based on a different set of assumptions about what is innately human? How do we, in fact, move toward something more sustainable that will also sustain us?
Big questions for sure! Next time we will shift our attention to “You are Contaminated” by David Wallace-Wells which deals with similar questions in terms of plastic and plastic pollution. Look for a separate email sharing a link to this article coming shortly. Please feel free to join us even if you have not been participating lately. Drop ins always welcome!
Will Lane, host
Green Gettysburg Book Club
