32 ms·

Earth Overshoot Day

133 points by ciconia 4y ago

Hammershaft 4y ago
"If everybody lived like people in the Netherlands, we would need 3.6 Earths. It would take 7.3 Netherlands to regenerate everything the country’s residents demand from nature." I've heard this metric before and I find it believable but I'm curious of how it is calculated and what assumptions it's based on.
- Y-bar 4y ago
  You can find the Data & Methodology here: https://www.footprintnetwork.org/resources/data/ https://www.footprintnetwork.org/resources/data/
- RektBoy 4y ago
  I'm curious what is the number for US then? 1000 Earths?
  - masklinn 4y ago
    The US’ overshoot day is March 13, 19.73% into the year. So a bit under 5.1 earthes. Although interestingly because the USA are a large, sparse, and resource-rich country, it doesn’t live that much beyond its own means ecologically: 2.4 USA would be enough to fulfill its needs, whereas (per the above) the netherlands being a dense and resource-poor country it would need a bit more than 7 of itself.
fnord123 4y ago
Really interesting from an ecological standpoint, but from a resource concern isn't the purpose of relying on each other (e.g. Russian gas), to link the economies so we have strong incentives to avoid wars?
- lucideer 4y ago
  It's interesting that you see this as an incentive to avoid wars. A large proportion of wars have been caused by resource interdependence (invasions to secure external resources that are relied heavily upon), not avoided by it.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    It seems hard to me to quantify the number of wars prevented by any measure.
    - dijit 4y ago
      Interdependence of resources was the primary reason the EEC (later forming the EU) was created. The idea was to make the idea of going to war unthinkable because we relied on each other, and it's quite easily to calculate the deficit in deaths in Europe after that. There are statistics saying it was extremely effective; Even when you account for Russian conflict against the Chechen's and the Serbian/Albanian conflict in Kosovo.. https://www.statista.com/chart/15458/the-estimated-number-of-violent-war-related-deaths-in-europe/ https://www.statista.com/chart/15458/the-estimated-number-of...
  - zarzavat 4y ago
    It’s meta-stable. War is very expensive. Resource interdependence is usually a disincentive to war. However when resources are either extremely valuable or essential, usually either oil or water, then it can overcome the disincentive and become an incentive to conflict.
    - lucideer 4y ago
      > War is very expensive. Unless you're referring to the obvious horrific cost to human lives, war isn't "expensive" in any real sense in terms of national finance. War is profitable: any money "spent" goes somewhere. Many wars have lifted countries from recession. The only slight argument one could make for the expense of war is military consumption of fossil fuels (but we're already talking about control of that resource, so that's self-fulfilling).
- mhandley 4y ago
  Interdependence can be complicated and assymetric. Russian gas dependency indeed provides a disincentive for Germany to support Ukraine against Russia, but at the same time it emboldened Russia because Putin likely believed the EU was weak due to its dependency on Russian gas.
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    The EU is weak due to Russian gas. We basically have to commit suicide to get out of this.
- coffeeblack 4y ago
  Interdependence has been big since the 90s and seems to have been disproven somewhat by Russia now. But I don’t think so. Russia assaulted its neighbors several times before, so Putin had reasons to assume that the West would not react, just like before. The West neglected to follow through 15 years ago.
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    > Interdependence has been big since the 90s and seems to have been disproven somewhat by Russia now. Hardly. It just hadn't on gone long enough and far enough. I'd say that the entire cause of the war is just that- that the interests of the two sets of elites didn't line up yet. They eventually would have because ownership would have become much more distributed as always happens as a result of neoliberalism.
- cseleborg 4y ago
  I think we're recognising that this strategy was a mistake and simply didn't work with Russia. If we trade with them, they'll become more like us, was the thinking, and the strategy behind the German government's policy towards Russia for 15 years.
  - modo_mario 4y ago
    > and the strategy behind the German government's policy towards Russia for 15 years. Seeing what the likes of Gerhard Schröder is doing and given other economic incentives that favoured Germany I don't think that was the main idea behind it.
    - cseleborg 4y ago
      Well, there's Schröder, of course, definitely a bit embarrassing now. But there were also those for whom this actually was a legitimate foreign policy strategy. I do believe DE's current president and former foreign policy minister, F.-W. Steinmeier, genuinely thought increasing business with Russia was the way to keep Europe's annoying neighbour civil.
      - modo_mario 4y ago
        Was Germany during this time not opposed to the idea of essentially group buying Russian gas rather than letting it be used as a political bat? If so, why?
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    I don't think it was a mistake. It just wasn't deep enough because it wasn't given enough time. 20-30 years is nothing.
- bregma 4y ago
  Every economic theory I've ever encountered fails to account for human stupidity.
- eru 4y ago
  > Really interesting from an ecological standpoint, but from a resource concern isn't the purpose of relying on each other (e.g. Russian gas), to link the economies so we have strong incentives to avoid wars? That's at best a nice side-effect, if it actually works. Nah, the main reason is that specialisation and trade is just so much more efficient. You get more from less.
massmovers 4y ago
[flagged]
bergie 4y ago
Somewhat related, a constructive method for trying to fit inside the resource constraints: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000-watt_society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000-watt_society
- mattclarkdotnet 4y ago
  But we don't have an energy constraint. We currently produce energy in silly polluting ways, but there's no reason we can't stop doing that and have lots more energy per person as well.
  - CyanBird 4y ago
    It is a goal of efficiency, not per se of net production If you achieve these metrics while aiming to set up a renewables vertical, then you can overshoot and more easily at least metrics wise control co2 production
mekkkkkk 4y ago
It's interesting to see population growth being listed as one of the prime factors, and that "Girl's Education" is proposed as a solution to this. I get why sex-ed and more widespread access/knowledge/acceptance of contraceptives might help the situation slightly, but aren't there much more deeply rooted problems than "girls don't know what a condom is"? And further, it brings up interesting moral questions touching on eco-justified anti-natalism. Would it be morally justified to have a hundred kids? EDIT: I largely take back the first paragraph, but I'll leave it for posterity. Helping girls to create a career for themselves probably has a larger impact on population growth. The anti-natalism thing is still interesting though.
- ejolto 4y ago
  Girls education is not about sex-ed, it's so they can get a job and have opportunities other than being a mom.
  - mekkkkkk 4y ago
    You are right, I glossed over the description and saw mentions of sex-ed, but it's apparently just part of it. Thanks for the correction!
  - ricardo81 4y ago
    This. All nations have followed a population curve and with increased education and social mobility, the birth rate drops. It was only a couple of generations ago here in the UK that people had large families, and another couple of generations before that that women were allowed to vote. Reading general comments on the web about the likes of the UK only have a tiny part to play and it being 'almost pointless' to combat climate change and conservation (vs larger population countries) seem to forget we've been industrialised and polluting for a quarter of a millenia. On the same token, the technology acquired over that time can solve the problem. Overshoot day is a good reminder that we're still living above our means.
- ralfd 4y ago
  Less kids in industrialized nations will never matter though, as the missing people will be imported. If eco-anti-natalism were really justified they would be anti-immigration. We instead need to get sustainable holistically and need technological advancements and policy changes. It doesn't matter much if we are 6 or 8 billion (currently) or 11 billion (UN forecast for 2100) people on the planet if the smaller number already overshoots resources x-times.
tener 4y ago
This exercise of "if everyone/everything was like X" is very fallacious. There is no path that takes the current world we are living in all the way to this simulated reality that makes no sense. "If everyone were like Elon Musk..." reads like a start of a joke or a horror story, but never a feasible reality. The truth is that, once resources become scarce, various optimization mechanisms kick in. For example, Israel produces a lot of food in the desert thanks to various water usage optimization techniques. Human civilization uses a tiny percentage of the total energy delivered to Earth. This again is tiny percentage of power generated by Sun. There are abundant resources all around us that we simply need to learn how to effectively utilise. This is not sci-fi stuff, these are "merely" engineering problems. The challenge is to get to that "post-scarcity" (or whatever you call it) future sustainably, without killing ourselves or making Earth a toxic hellhole. This requires cooperation, but you won't get that by going around and claiming falsehoods or persuading people with fallacies.
- mekkkkkk 4y ago
  I don't think the point is to describe a probable future where everyone lives like the Dutch. The whole point is that it wouldn't be possible. It's just an easy to understand illustration of how our current civilization is largely resting on unsustainable foundations. Finding solutions to the engineering and societal challenges that you mention seems to be the goal of the project.
  - throwaway71271 4y ago
    > The whole point is that it wouldn't be possible. Why so? Life needs energy, we can harness energy better to produce engineered food and desalt water.
    - mekkkkkk 4y ago
      I'm not referring to quality of life, but "living" in the broader sense including the enabling infrastructure and resource dependencies as they stand today.
7373737373 4y ago
All life seems to expand until it runs out of resources. Unless we learn to manipulate atoms better (and could we even do it more efficiently than nature?), conflict seems to be inevitable.
- kibwen 4y ago
  Making our current consumption more efficient won't help much; the existence of induced demand means that making consumption more efficient will just incentivize more consumption. What we need is less consumption, but when you try to tell people this the usual reaction is to wring their hands and tell you that such a thing is impossible, which is their way of tacitly admitting that they'd personally rather destroy the planet than reduce their own standard of living.
  - eru 4y ago
    Why less consumption? We are sitting on a huge ball of matter, and even consumption typically does not destroy any matter nor loses any to the void of space. (The sun is a great source of energy. We also have nuclear fission and fusion, otherwise.)
    - lm28469 4y ago
      > even consumption typically does not destroy any matter nor loses any to the void of space. Yeah if you scale back to the universe nothing ever changes and nothing matters at all. If you start looking at air/soil/water pollution (which is only a fraction of our problems) it's clear that our ways of life are far from ideal. But sure, the atoms are still all there, I don't think that's the part that matters tho
  - imtringued 4y ago
    Induced demand applies to "free" resources. If you tax resource consumption it will go down overall.
- SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
  Yep. The thing that keeps any particular form of life in check are predators. A large amount of plant growth promotes herbivore populations, which promotes carnivore populations. If carnivores or herbivores overeat, they crash their own food supply, causing their own population to decline due to food scarcity. Ecosystems reach a form of homeostasis this way. Humans have eliminated anything even close to being their predator at any significant scale, except our own behaviour. As a result, we run the risk of exhausting our own food (read: resource) supply.
iNic 4y ago
I am extremely frustrated by these kinds of degrowth narratives, as they usually come out of a genuine concern for the environment - but all their approaches to solutions are extremely economically illiterate. This [1] article explains some of my frustrations, but doesn't address everything mentioned on the Overshoot website. [1]: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/people-are-realizing-that-degrowth?s=r https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/people-are-realizing-that-...
- tebs1200 4y ago
  Which parts of the site do you interpret as describing "degrowth" narrative? I had a look at the solutions listed and the general theme seemed to be smarter use of existing resources and didn't really mention growth, or reducing growth. - Producing energy using less fossil fuels, not necessarily producing less energy - Producing food in a way that uses less fossil fuels, not producing less food. I think what the site is saying is we depend on ecological systems and natural resources to sustain our current standard of living, but we are consuming them at a faster rate than they can replenish. We need to use the available resources more efficiently - doesn't necessarily translate to less or even slower growth though.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    Sustainable resource use leads to more growth, just not faster growth. You can overfish or overgraze to boost growth in the short term while sacrificing overall growth as ecosystem collapse will result in no or little growth. It would be more appropriate to look at 'lifetime' income of a resource but that would require 0% interest rates as positive interest rates devalue future income and reward short term thinking.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  > economically illiterate This is proposing that people are lacking faith. You believe something must work because an economic theory proposed that it does. In reality these theories often fail to predict anything substantial. Our economic system is very primitive and requires steady growth. But in reality the productivity of a finite area of land cannot grow any further even with technological advancement and long before you hit the limits of thermodynamics. The only thing that can grow in an unlimited fashion are excuses by economists to be honest. Sorry, perhaps I just don't have the growth mindset. Not proposing that the end is nigh, but bullshit has to be called what it is in the interest of progress.
PostOnce 4y ago
If everyone lived like people from the year 1910, we'd all have long since starved to death. If we lived like people from the 1950s, food would cost far, far more than it does today. The Haber process and modern agriculture feed us all, and cheaply. We get five times more milk per cow and eight times more corn per acre than we did a century ago. We synthesize fertilizer out of thin air instead of scraping bird shit off of remote islands. On top of that, human fertility rates have dropped far, far below replacement in substantial parts of the world, and when the developing world is developed, I suspect they also will see declining population. Each person needs slightly more than one child for us to have a stable population. So, a fertility rate of ~2.1 (2 children per woman). In the US it's 1.7, in Germany it's 1.54, in Japan it's 1.36, and in Korea it's 0.94. China: 1.7, Brazil: 1.72, India: 2.2 (just above replacement, and dropping) We can outsmart, and have repeatedly outsmarted, all sorts of potential disasters. We can't ignore our problems, but neither have we met with any sort of defeat.
- DrBazza 4y ago
  > We can outsmart, and have repeatedly outsmarted, all sorts of potential disasters. Unfortunately, the main one we can't outsmart is volcanic winter, which has produced planet-wide famines on several occasions, and is all but certain to happen again. Geologically speaking, the 20th century was pretty quiet. In the 21st century we've already had two tsunamis (including the 2nd or 3rd biggest earthquake), and the Tonga volcanic eruption, which was fortunately below sea level, but still likely the second loudest noise in human history after Krakatoa, and Eyjafjallajökull which had the potential for volcanic smog but fortunately didn't happen. We're overdue a Cascadia mega-thrust earthquake which would have "interesting" repercussions for the tech industry, given how much of it is based on the US west coast. I agree with your point though, we've largely progressed through normal seasonal issues with crops, and dramatically improved yields via science.
  - bregma 4y ago
    > Unfortunately, the main one we can't outsmart is volcanic winter, which has produced planet-wide famines on several occasions And yet, here we are still.
RektBoy 4y ago
I didn't look into their calculation. But I tried their app to calculate my number and input no car use or public transport, inside multi-store building, no flying at all. Still I got 3.7 Earth, wtf.
- Y-bar 4y ago
  I got a similar number and by far food was the big number, the past few months have been meat-heavy and I can see that reflected in the results. It alone was at 2.7. My transportation is at 0.2. Same thing with me living alone in an apartment caused my shelter score to grow to 0.7 from 0.4 if I was to claim that two people shared this apartment. Which kind of makes sense, many people living alone generally means more buildings have to be built and more energy be used to heat/cool and light them, and land have to be used to build them on.
bradhe 4y ago
This website reads like it was generated by an AI.
massmovers 4y ago
[dead]
teekert 4y ago
Hmm, I would love for Sabine Hossenfelder [0] to take me through the numbers that claim my country needs 3.6 earths if we were to invite everyone to our lifestyle. She did a very nice job changing my mind about nuclear power: [1] [0]: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/p/about.html https://backreaction.blogspot.com/p/about.html [1]: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/04/is-nuclear-power-green.html https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/04/is-nuclear-power-g...
- lom 4y ago
  One of the numbers that is probably factored in is how much less efficient the food production would be if we adopted the food policy of one single country for the entire world. While we currently use about ~50% of habitable land for food production, if we all adopted the diet in Bangladesh we would only need about 14%. If we all had the diet as in New Zealand we would need 190%. The dutch fall at 100% in the data that they published: https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets Not exactly the 3.6 worlds listed in the link above, but diet is only one small part...
irrational 4y ago
Am I the only one seeing tons of raw code on this webpage? For example, [divider line_type=”No Line” custom_height=”40″][nectar_btn size=”jumbo” button_style=”regular” button_color_2=”Accent-Color” icon_family=”none” url=”https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/webinar-dutch-overshoot-day-2022-en/” https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/webinar-dutch-overshoo... text=”DUTCH OVERSHOOT DAY WEBINAR” css_animation=”bounce” margin_left=”40″] What’s the deal?
- pineconewarrior 4y ago
  wordpress shortcodes not rendering properly

133 points by ciconia 4y ago

"If everybody lived like people in the Netherlands, we would need 3.6 Earths. It would take 7.3 Netherlands to regenerate everything the country’s residents demand from nature." I've heard this metric before and I find it believable but I'm curious of how it is calculated and what assumptions it's based on.

Y-bar 4y ago
You can find the Data & Methodology here: https://www.footprintnetwork.org/resources/data/ https://www.footprintnetwork.org/resources/data/
RektBoy 4y ago
I'm curious what is the number for US then? 1000 Earths?
- masklinn 4y ago
  The US’ overshoot day is March 13, 19.73% into the year. So a bit under 5.1 earthes. Although interestingly because the USA are a large, sparse, and resource-rich country, it doesn’t live that much beyond its own means ecologically: 2.4 USA would be enough to fulfill its needs, whereas (per the above) the netherlands being a dense and resource-poor country it would need a bit more than 7 of itself.

fnord123 4y ago

Really interesting from an ecological standpoint, but from a resource concern isn't the purpose of relying on each other (e.g. Russian gas), to link the economies so we have strong incentives to avoid wars?

lucideer 4y ago
It's interesting that you see this as an incentive to avoid wars. A large proportion of wars have been caused by resource interdependence (invasions to secure external resources that are relied heavily upon), not avoided by it.
- adrianN 4y ago
  It seems hard to me to quantify the number of wars prevented by any measure.
  - dijit 4y ago
    Interdependence of resources was the primary reason the EEC (later forming the EU) was created. The idea was to make the idea of going to war unthinkable because we relied on each other, and it's quite easily to calculate the deficit in deaths in Europe after that. There are statistics saying it was extremely effective; Even when you account for Russian conflict against the Chechen's and the Serbian/Albanian conflict in Kosovo.. https://www.statista.com/chart/15458/the-estimated-number-of-violent-war-related-deaths-in-europe/ https://www.statista.com/chart/15458/the-estimated-number-of...
- zarzavat 4y ago
  It’s meta-stable. War is very expensive. Resource interdependence is usually a disincentive to war. However when resources are either extremely valuable or essential, usually either oil or water, then it can overcome the disincentive and become an incentive to conflict.
  - lucideer 4y ago
    > War is very expensive. Unless you're referring to the obvious horrific cost to human lives, war isn't "expensive" in any real sense in terms of national finance. War is profitable: any money "spent" goes somewhere. Many wars have lifted countries from recession. The only slight argument one could make for the expense of war is military consumption of fossil fuels (but we're already talking about control of that resource, so that's self-fulfilling).
mhandley 4y ago
Interdependence can be complicated and assymetric. Russian gas dependency indeed provides a disincentive for Germany to support Ukraine against Russia, but at the same time it emboldened Russia because Putin likely believed the EU was weak due to its dependency on Russian gas.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  The EU is weak due to Russian gas. We basically have to commit suicide to get out of this.
coffeeblack 4y ago
Interdependence has been big since the 90s and seems to have been disproven somewhat by Russia now. But I don’t think so. Russia assaulted its neighbors several times before, so Putin had reasons to assume that the West would not react, just like before. The West neglected to follow through 15 years ago.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  > Interdependence has been big since the 90s and seems to have been disproven somewhat by Russia now. Hardly. It just hadn't on gone long enough and far enough. I'd say that the entire cause of the war is just that- that the interests of the two sets of elites didn't line up yet. They eventually would have because ownership would have become much more distributed as always happens as a result of neoliberalism.
cseleborg 4y ago
I think we're recognising that this strategy was a mistake and simply didn't work with Russia. If we trade with them, they'll become more like us, was the thinking, and the strategy behind the German government's policy towards Russia for 15 years.
- modo_mario 4y ago
  > and the strategy behind the German government's policy towards Russia for 15 years. Seeing what the likes of Gerhard Schröder is doing and given other economic incentives that favoured Germany I don't think that was the main idea behind it.
  - cseleborg 4y ago
    Well, there's Schröder, of course, definitely a bit embarrassing now. But there were also those for whom this actually was a legitimate foreign policy strategy. I do believe DE's current president and former foreign policy minister, F.-W. Steinmeier, genuinely thought increasing business with Russia was the way to keep Europe's annoying neighbour civil.
    - modo_mario 4y ago
      Was Germany during this time not opposed to the idea of essentially group buying Russian gas rather than letting it be used as a political bat? If so, why?
- guerrilla 4y ago
  I don't think it was a mistake. It just wasn't deep enough because it wasn't given enough time. 20-30 years is nothing.
bregma 4y ago
Every economic theory I've ever encountered fails to account for human stupidity.
eru 4y ago
> Really interesting from an ecological standpoint, but from a resource concern isn't the purpose of relying on each other (e.g. Russian gas), to link the economies so we have strong incentives to avoid wars? That's at best a nice side-effect, if it actually works. Nah, the main reason is that specialisation and trade is just so much more efficient. You get more from less.

massmovers 4y ago

[flagged]

bergie 4y ago

Somewhat related, a constructive method for trying to fit inside the resource constraints: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000-watt_society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000-watt_society

mattclarkdotnet 4y ago
But we don't have an energy constraint. We currently produce energy in silly polluting ways, but there's no reason we can't stop doing that and have lots more energy per person as well.
- CyanBird 4y ago
  It is a goal of efficiency, not per se of net production If you achieve these metrics while aiming to set up a renewables vertical, then you can overshoot and more easily at least metrics wise control co2 production

mekkkkkk 4y ago

It's interesting to see population growth being listed as one of the prime factors, and that "Girl's Education" is proposed as a solution to this. I get why sex-ed and more widespread access/knowledge/acceptance of contraceptives might help the situation slightly, but aren't there much more deeply rooted problems than "girls don't know what a condom is"? And further, it brings up interesting moral questions touching on eco-justified anti-natalism. Would it be morally justified to have a hundred kids? EDIT: I largely take back the first paragraph, but I'll leave it for posterity. Helping girls to create a career for themselves probably has a larger impact on population growth. The anti-natalism thing is still interesting though.

ejolto 4y ago
Girls education is not about sex-ed, it's so they can get a job and have opportunities other than being a mom.
- mekkkkkk 4y ago
  You are right, I glossed over the description and saw mentions of sex-ed, but it's apparently just part of it. Thanks for the correction!
- ricardo81 4y ago
  This. All nations have followed a population curve and with increased education and social mobility, the birth rate drops. It was only a couple of generations ago here in the UK that people had large families, and another couple of generations before that that women were allowed to vote. Reading general comments on the web about the likes of the UK only have a tiny part to play and it being 'almost pointless' to combat climate change and conservation (vs larger population countries) seem to forget we've been industrialised and polluting for a quarter of a millenia. On the same token, the technology acquired over that time can solve the problem. Overshoot day is a good reminder that we're still living above our means.
ralfd 4y ago
Less kids in industrialized nations will never matter though, as the missing people will be imported. If eco-anti-natalism were really justified they would be anti-immigration. We instead need to get sustainable holistically and need technological advancements and policy changes. It doesn't matter much if we are 6 or 8 billion (currently) or 11 billion (UN forecast for 2100) people on the planet if the smaller number already overshoots resources x-times.

tener 4y ago

This exercise of "if everyone/everything was like X" is very fallacious. There is no path that takes the current world we are living in all the way to this simulated reality that makes no sense. "If everyone were like Elon Musk..." reads like a start of a joke or a horror story, but never a feasible reality. The truth is that, once resources become scarce, various optimization mechanisms kick in. For example, Israel produces a lot of food in the desert thanks to various water usage optimization techniques. Human civilization uses a tiny percentage of the total energy delivered to Earth. This again is tiny percentage of power generated by Sun. There are abundant resources all around us that we simply need to learn how to effectively utilise. This is not sci-fi stuff, these are "merely" engineering problems. The challenge is to get to that "post-scarcity" (or whatever you call it) future sustainably, without killing ourselves or making Earth a toxic hellhole. This requires cooperation, but you won't get that by going around and claiming falsehoods or persuading people with fallacies.

mekkkkkk 4y ago
I don't think the point is to describe a probable future where everyone lives like the Dutch. The whole point is that it wouldn't be possible. It's just an easy to understand illustration of how our current civilization is largely resting on unsustainable foundations. Finding solutions to the engineering and societal challenges that you mention seems to be the goal of the project.
- throwaway71271 4y ago
  > The whole point is that it wouldn't be possible. Why so? Life needs energy, we can harness energy better to produce engineered food and desalt water.
  - mekkkkkk 4y ago
    I'm not referring to quality of life, but "living" in the broader sense including the enabling infrastructure and resource dependencies as they stand today.

7373737373 4y ago

All life seems to expand until it runs out of resources. Unless we learn to manipulate atoms better (and could we even do it more efficiently than nature?), conflict seems to be inevitable.

kibwen 4y ago
Making our current consumption more efficient won't help much; the existence of induced demand means that making consumption more efficient will just incentivize more consumption. What we need is less consumption, but when you try to tell people this the usual reaction is to wring their hands and tell you that such a thing is impossible, which is their way of tacitly admitting that they'd personally rather destroy the planet than reduce their own standard of living.
- eru 4y ago
  Why less consumption? We are sitting on a huge ball of matter, and even consumption typically does not destroy any matter nor loses any to the void of space. (The sun is a great source of energy. We also have nuclear fission and fusion, otherwise.)
  - lm28469 4y ago
    > even consumption typically does not destroy any matter nor loses any to the void of space. Yeah if you scale back to the universe nothing ever changes and nothing matters at all. If you start looking at air/soil/water pollution (which is only a fraction of our problems) it's clear that our ways of life are far from ideal. But sure, the atoms are still all there, I don't think that's the part that matters tho
- imtringued 4y ago
  Induced demand applies to "free" resources. If you tax resource consumption it will go down overall.
SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
Yep. The thing that keeps any particular form of life in check are predators. A large amount of plant growth promotes herbivore populations, which promotes carnivore populations. If carnivores or herbivores overeat, they crash their own food supply, causing their own population to decline due to food scarcity. Ecosystems reach a form of homeostasis this way. Humans have eliminated anything even close to being their predator at any significant scale, except our own behaviour. As a result, we run the risk of exhausting our own food (read: resource) supply.

iNic 4y ago

I am extremely frustrated by these kinds of degrowth narratives, as they usually come out of a genuine concern for the environment - but all their approaches to solutions are extremely economically illiterate. This [1] article explains some of my frustrations, but doesn't address everything mentioned on the Overshoot website. [1]: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/people-are-realizing-that-degrowth?s=r https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/people-are-realizing-that-...

tebs1200 4y ago
Which parts of the site do you interpret as describing "degrowth" narrative? I had a look at the solutions listed and the general theme seemed to be smarter use of existing resources and didn't really mention growth, or reducing growth. - Producing energy using less fossil fuels, not necessarily producing less energy - Producing food in a way that uses less fossil fuels, not producing less food. I think what the site is saying is we depend on ecological systems and natural resources to sustain our current standard of living, but we are consuming them at a faster rate than they can replenish. We need to use the available resources more efficiently - doesn't necessarily translate to less or even slower growth though.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Sustainable resource use leads to more growth, just not faster growth. You can overfish or overgraze to boost growth in the short term while sacrificing overall growth as ecosystem collapse will result in no or little growth. It would be more appropriate to look at 'lifetime' income of a resource but that would require 0% interest rates as positive interest rates devalue future income and reward short term thinking.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
> economically illiterate This is proposing that people are lacking faith. You believe something must work because an economic theory proposed that it does. In reality these theories often fail to predict anything substantial. Our economic system is very primitive and requires steady growth. But in reality the productivity of a finite area of land cannot grow any further even with technological advancement and long before you hit the limits of thermodynamics. The only thing that can grow in an unlimited fashion are excuses by economists to be honest. Sorry, perhaps I just don't have the growth mindset. Not proposing that the end is nigh, but bullshit has to be called what it is in the interest of progress.

PostOnce 4y ago

If everyone lived like people from the year 1910, we'd all have long since starved to death. If we lived like people from the 1950s, food would cost far, far more than it does today. The Haber process and modern agriculture feed us all, and cheaply. We get five times more milk per cow and eight times more corn per acre than we did a century ago. We synthesize fertilizer out of thin air instead of scraping bird shit off of remote islands. On top of that, human fertility rates have dropped far, far below replacement in substantial parts of the world, and when the developing world is developed, I suspect they also will see declining population. Each person needs slightly more than one child for us to have a stable population. So, a fertility rate of ~2.1 (2 children per woman). In the US it's 1.7, in Germany it's 1.54, in Japan it's 1.36, and in Korea it's 0.94. China: 1.7, Brazil: 1.72, India: 2.2 (just above replacement, and dropping) We can outsmart, and have repeatedly outsmarted, all sorts of potential disasters. We can't ignore our problems, but neither have we met with any sort of defeat.

DrBazza 4y ago
> We can outsmart, and have repeatedly outsmarted, all sorts of potential disasters. Unfortunately, the main one we can't outsmart is volcanic winter, which has produced planet-wide famines on several occasions, and is all but certain to happen again. Geologically speaking, the 20th century was pretty quiet. In the 21st century we've already had two tsunamis (including the 2nd or 3rd biggest earthquake), and the Tonga volcanic eruption, which was fortunately below sea level, but still likely the second loudest noise in human history after Krakatoa, and Eyjafjallajökull which had the potential for volcanic smog but fortunately didn't happen. We're overdue a Cascadia mega-thrust earthquake which would have "interesting" repercussions for the tech industry, given how much of it is based on the US west coast. I agree with your point though, we've largely progressed through normal seasonal issues with crops, and dramatically improved yields via science.
- bregma 4y ago
  > Unfortunately, the main one we can't outsmart is volcanic winter, which has produced planet-wide famines on several occasions And yet, here we are still.

RektBoy 4y ago

I didn't look into their calculation. But I tried their app to calculate my number and input no car use or public transport, inside multi-store building, no flying at all. Still I got 3.7 Earth, wtf.

Y-bar 4y ago
I got a similar number and by far food was the big number, the past few months have been meat-heavy and I can see that reflected in the results. It alone was at 2.7. My transportation is at 0.2. Same thing with me living alone in an apartment caused my shelter score to grow to 0.7 from 0.4 if I was to claim that two people shared this apartment. Which kind of makes sense, many people living alone generally means more buildings have to be built and more energy be used to heat/cool and light them, and land have to be used to build them on.

bradhe 4y ago

This website reads like it was generated by an AI.

massmovers 4y ago

[dead]

teekert 4y ago

Hmm, I would love for Sabine Hossenfelder [0] to take me through the numbers that claim my country needs 3.6 earths if we were to invite everyone to our lifestyle. She did a very nice job changing my mind about nuclear power: [1] [0]: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/p/about.html https://backreaction.blogspot.com/p/about.html [1]: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/04/is-nuclear-power-green.html https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/04/is-nuclear-power-g...

lom 4y ago
One of the numbers that is probably factored in is how much less efficient the food production would be if we adopted the food policy of one single country for the entire world. While we currently use about ~50% of habitable land for food production, if we all adopted the diet in Bangladesh we would only need about 14%. If we all had the diet as in New Zealand we would need 190%. The dutch fall at 100% in the data that they published: https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets Not exactly the 3.6 worlds listed in the link above, but diet is only one small part...

irrational 4y ago

Am I the only one seeing tons of raw code on this webpage? For example, [divider line_type=”No Line” custom_height=”40″][nectar_btn size=”jumbo” button_style=”regular” button_color_2=”Accent-Color” icon_family=”none” url=”https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/webinar-dutch-overshoot-day-2022-en/” https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/webinar-dutch-overshoo... text=”DUTCH OVERSHOOT DAY WEBINAR” css_animation=”bounce” margin_left=”40″] What’s the deal?

pineconewarrior 4y ago
wordpress shortcodes not rendering properly