The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Overshoot and Its 7 Fundamental Drivers | Frankly 68

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

(Recorded July 23 2024) Description In this week's Frankly, (coincidentally released the day after Earth Overshoot Day), Nate breaks down seven factors contributing to humanity's increasing overshoot – which is defined as the point at which species' use of ecological resources and services exceeds what Earth can regenerate in a given time period – as well as some things that might engender a retreat from current overshoot levels.  For the first time in Earth's history, a species is able to access, extract, consume, and inject waste into the entire biosphere - testing the limits of our planet's stability and capacity to provide. The human system is based on the foundation of a huge energy surplus in the form of fossil fuels with the (inaccurate) worldview of limitless resources. As such, all of our institutions, lifestyles, and expectations require growth, even as we increasingly understand the damage it does to the planet.  How did humanity end up in the unique predicament of expanding its consumption beyond the limits of the most bountiful planet that we know of? Is it possible that the primary factors getting in the way of a more sustainable human future are rooted in our social and cultural structures, rather than our technologies? What opportunities still lie ahead of us to mitigate the damage we've already done and find a new ecological equilibrium?    Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future Join our Substack newsletter Join our Discord channel and connect with other listeners   Show Notes

Greetings. It is Sunday, July 28th. There's no way I would have predicted I was going to record it frankly today because last night, Saturday night, I had 103 temperature. I thought I had COVID, but tested negative. And I think what happened is I went for a three-hour bike ride yesterday. It was like in the early 80s, but really humid. Early 80s, low 80s. Early 80s was Duran Duran. in. And I didn't drink anything, and I think I had like a miniature sunstroke. I'm feeling much better now, but I toss and turned for 12 hours in bed. And of course, this podcast and running this NGO aren't really a job anymore. They're my life. So I think about this stuff all the time. And this popped into my head. So last week,

on the frankly on solutions. Of course, these are all riffs. I don't have scripts and I often forget 10 to 30% of what I intend on saying. And I had two circles, socially acceptable solutions and effective solutions. What I forgot to say was that the effective solutions, the size of the circle, declines over time because we're losing the window to have interventions, preparation, governance, different technological responses to what we face. And so the role of this podcast, the role of my work writ large,

is to expand the Overton window of what is socially acceptable so that it increasingly overlaps with this shrinking effective solutions. So with that in mind, I wanted to take a big step back on the Overton window and talk about overshoot. And I've come up with seven fundamental drivers of overshoot, which is the topic of today's, frankly. So what is overshoot? We don't hear about it that much,

but it is when a species grows and expands to beyond the carrying capacity of their environment. The carrying capacity is how many of frogs or, orangutans or reindeer a certain ecosystem or a certain environment can sustain based on the food supply and the ecosystem services. Overshoot is when the population exceeds the carrying capacity. And over time, that excess population and excess consumption of resources actually degrades the carrying capacity. and then there is a reduction, and so the species gets back into line on what's sustainable.

Humans are in overshoot. We look at other animals and organisms in ponds and on savannas and in forests and can label them as being an overshoot, but I think there's no question that 8 billion humans living at one time, not overtime, is unsustainable. and I'd like to just give a brief recap of the seven fundamental drivers of overshoot. First of all, as many of you will be aware, the carbon pulse where we have millions of years of stored energy injected into an economic system versus 10,000 years ago, the number,

the amount of mammalian biomass, which is humans, our livestock, and all the wild mammals on Earth is 700% what it used to be because we've injected this huge bolus of ancient productivity into our food supply. The carbon pulse has exploded the overshoot and carrying capacity, not the carrying capacity, sorry, the overshoot above carrying capacity. The second is our culture using monetary alchemy to draw consumption forward in time. When we create money, it's a double entry into the financial system. There's an asset and a liability, but our financial creation neglects the third and the fourth book entries,

which are the non-renewable energy and resources that it accelerates extraction of, and the ecosystem impacts of the biosphere and the environmental deterioration. The third fundamental driver is the fact that we've outsourced our governance and our wisdom to the financial market. This is the superorganism, and the superorganism is based on power, which is energy per unit time. and our entire society, our entire species, with the exception of the cultures that are still not part of the superorganism, which are very few, we continue to optimize for growth, which is antagonistic to overshoot. I'm happy I'm recording this now because I've made flub ups. I can always say that I had 103 fever last night and you'll have to forgive me. The other thing is that in our governance structures and our corporations, our leadership structures,

there's embedded self-reinforcing hierarchies because most institutions promote the assertive, confident, and optimistic employees, individuals, humans to senior roles within their ranks. So there's embedded positive feedback of more of the same leading to more overshoot. The fourth fundamental driver is a culture or species-wide lack of ecological education and result in values. Yes, we are numerate. Yes, we are literate, but very few of our species are equalite or ecologically literate. The world's richest man this week said that Earth can support 80 billion humans. This, I mean, he is very smart and I actually agree with some of his positions. This is the most delusional statement I've ever heard.

This would be a planet full of dead locusts and smoking embers with 80 billion humans on it because of the environmental impact. We wouldn't have a biosphere left. So one of the drivers of overshoot is a lack of recognition of overshoot. Another is the positive feedback of status and consumption and envy that are marketing and what we view as socially acceptable and aspirational is more money, more stuff, more conspicuous consumption. It's as if our culture puts this large, shiny, conspicuous carrot. in front of us and says, this is your objective in life.

This wasn't always the case. This is because of this giant bolus of fossil sunlight. Another fundamental driver is the prevalent consumption and technology have raised the baseline of our own dopamine superhighways. And the neurotransmitter cascades in our mind require us at every decision tree, should I go on a campfire with my cousins, or should I play Candy Crush? Should I go to Vegas for a poker tournament

or should I go canoeing in the North Woods? Should I have a salad or a hamburger? There's a zillion of these micro choices and the more addicted we are, the more comfortable and convenient things are, the more we choose the more overall, Overshoot-laden choice, which uses more energy and resources. And this, again, doesn't have to be that way.

There could be maturity, wisdom, more right-brain thinking. But this also acts as a positive feedback. Last but not least is overshoot creates the mother of all cognitive dissonance. There's a lot of examples in the literature of cognitive dissonance. The one I use the most is Jared Diamond in the book Collapse, talked about people that lived downstream of a dam that was about to burst. And people that lived three miles downstream were just a little bit worried about it. People that lived two miles downstream were quite worried about the implications of that

dam burst. But people living within a half mile of the dam burst. professed total unconcerned because for them to recognize that this dam would like tear their houses down and go downstream and upend everything of their lives was too painful for them to hold both truths simultaneously, their own life and lifestyles and the fact that this could be disrupted. We have many examples of this cognitive dissonance in our lives. We have a tasty chicken sandwich at the same time we actually like chicken. They're good animals.

We have the lights on in our room and we leave to go for an air and we leave the lights on without recognizing they're fired by a coal server somewhere, you know, just burning electrons and emitting some small amount of coal into the atmosphere. But writ large, we don't think about we are part of a species in massive overshoot on this planet because the implications of what we have to do in the future are very, very severe. And, you know, that's another reason that this podcast, granted, is getting more popular, but will never be really popular because most people don't want to hear the gory details of the ecological, environmental, financial, geopolitical, social situation. So I actually think cognitive dissonance is one of the seven fundamental drivers.

Briefly, since I don't want to leave on that note, what would be the seven antidotes to overshoot? Well, obviously, one would be the peaking, declining, and eventual dissipation of the energy surplus. Energy surplus is what enabled overshoot situation. And again, climate change isn't the problem. Climate change is one of many problems downstream from overshoot. We, a lot of us in our cultural narratives, look at all that humans have achieved the last couple hundred years and technology and innovation and inventions, but we forget the fact that this is 85% powered by ancient sunlight, which is finite and we're treating it as if it were

interest but its principle. So a reduction in the energy surplus would certainly mitigate the level of overshoot. Another thing that would, of course, would be the planet itself reducing the carrying capacity, and in the reduction of the carrying capacity, it would truncate the growth in overshoot and cause a retracement. We're going to see this, and we're seeing it already, with higher standard deviation of drought and floods, higher wet bulb temperature, heat stress, different implications on crops. The biosphere will itself limit how far overshoot over certain species gets. Another antidote potentially would be a desire by the species in overshoot itself to care about and address overshoot. You know, what I'm saying

here is nothing new, depending on the boundary. We've been in overshoot for almost 400 years or 50 years, depending on where you draw the boundary. Certainly what I'm saying in this video was true a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, 30 years ago. The only difference now is a lot more people are recognizing that this is happening and therefore their brains are open and their hearts are open to learning about it. And it's becoming, you know, undeniable in some senses. If such a culture were to care about these things, what would some other antidotes be? Well, one would be that we gradually change our cultural conversations from a human-centered to an earth-centered world and all that that implies. Another antidote would be instead of creating

money with no reference to ecosystem services or non-renewable energy and materials, we would create money with some biophysical tether. It would have some relationship to productive capital, productive capacity and the ecosystem health. And additionally, we would have centropic technology. Instead of technology that would just add to the overshoot, it would actually give us the human services, basic needs that we want. But in synergy with, ecosystems with watersheds, with forests, with soil, a more centropic earth-centered technology. And then lastly, and maybe firstly, it starts with the microbehavioral recognition and change at the level of the individual human where we don't require this massive exosomatic

consumption and huge amounts to live meaningful lives, where you do. find these decision trees of do I want to go camping or on a roller coaster, do I want to eat this thing that's unhealthy but gives me great dopamine and comfort? Or do I want to eat something more healthy and locally grown? There's a whole, well, you know, I'm learning this and experiencing it myself. I'm trying to have little Nate on my shoulder weigh in and observe on my decisions and behaviors and maybe if 1% or 3% or 6% of society starts living their choices differently in a world of overshoot, in a world where we recognize that there are 10 million other species

that are living on this spinning orb in space and the only planet we know to harbor, you know, life and complex life that maybe things would change. So this is my brief fever-induced reflection on the seven drivers and maybe some antidotes to overshoot. Talk to you next week.