Yet few politicians have even heard of overshoot. Concern about its implications has yet to penetrate economic and developmental policy circles.
It therefore seems fair to ask: what accounts for such political deafness? One obvious earplug is the neoliberal economics dominant in the world today. Its adherents assume that:
The economy is separate from, and can function independently of, the biophysical “environment.” Important relationships between variables change predictably and if they deviate from desirable comfort zones, can be reversed. The “factors of production” (finance capital, natural capital, manufactured capital, human capital) are near-perfect substitutes. For example, human ingenuity — technology — can make up for any potentially limiting natural resource. Damage to ecosystems or human communities (i.e., intangible factors not reflected in market prices) are mere “externalities,” tolerable if they don’t impede growth.
For anyone working from these assumptions, it is a small step to the conviction that economic growth can continue indefinitely.
But there is a suicidal flaw in this mode of thinking. A model can succeed only to the extent that it faithfully “maps” any aspect of reality it purports to represent. This has been formally stated as Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety: The variety (i.e. internal complexity) of a control system must be at least as great as the variety of the system it is supposed to control. A regulatory system has “requisite variety” only if it has a repertoire of adaptive responses at least equivalent to the range of challenges posed by its environment.
The flip side is even more compelling: if the variety or complexity of the environment (ecosphere) exceeds the capacity of the regulatory system, then the environment will dominate and ultimately destroy the system.
If you don’t find this alarming, then you, like our politicians, haven’t been paying attention.
The world’s great economic powers are currently trying to run the world using simple-minded economic models that contain no useful information about the unfathomable complexity and the non-linear and often irreversible behavioural properties of the ecosystems — or even the social systems — with which the economy interacts in the real world. Our management/control system utterly fails the test of requisite variety. It is incompetent to fly the planet.
Let’s take the example of the climate crisis and response to date. The world has blown the opportunity to limit global warming to below 1.5 C and will likely top the IPCC’s dangerous 2.0 C limit before mid-century. Watch for record heat waves, unprecedented wildfires, food shortages, forest dieback. Imagine the geopolitical implications of a billion environmental migrants by 2050. Even more than now, there will be popular unrest, geopolitical strife.
Canada is literally adding fuel to the fire. We are among the world’s highest per capita carbon dioxide emitters and on our current path have no chance of meeting the nation’s modest emissions reduction targets.
Meanwhile Jonathan Wilkinson, federal minister of Environment and Climate Change, blindly asserts that while climate change is our “biggest long-term threat... it is also the biggest economic opportunity” — for material growth, of course.
Should we be surprised that at least one prominent Canadian climate scientist has proclaimed, “We’re screwed, it’s our fault, it’s going to get worse and there is nothing we can do about it.”
The once and future economy
Actually, there is something we could do about it, but the changes necessary go beyond anything any government anywhere has contemplated. What would “getting serious” about the survival of civilization look like? We need a new way of being on Earth in which people can enjoy emotionally satisfying, materially sufficient lives in community without wrecking the planet.
There are many possible options, but one workable form of a new adaptive civilization might be a network of eco-regional communities and economies supporting many fewer people thriving more equitably within the regenerative capacity of local ecosystems. Like all other species, human beings must become contributing members of the ecosystems that support them.
To begin the transition, senior governments should work with local authorities to:
Formally recognize the end of material growth and the need to reduce the human ecological footprint. Acknowledge that while humanity remains in overshoot, sustainable production and consumption means absolutely less production and consumption. Understand that our growth economy is utterly dependent on abundant cheap energy, which is coming to an end. Admit that modern renewables — wind turbines, solar panels, hydrogen — are not renewable, are themselves dependent on fossil fuels and have virtually no possibility of quantitatively replacing fossil fuels even by 2050, if ever. Recognize that equitable sustainability requires an economic levelling; that is, fiscal and other regulatory mechanisms to ensure redistribution of income, wealth and opportunity among and within countries. Greater equality is better for everyone. Enact polices that lead, fairly and without coercion, to a smaller global population, such as education, access to birth control, and economic independence for women. The challenge is great, given that models show about two billion people could live comfortably indefinitely within the biophysical means of nature. Implement measures including pollution and resource depletion taxes to internalize costs and move society closer to full social cost pricing. This would blunt current steeply rising levels of consumption in the developed world, the greatest contributor to overshoot.
As noted, this implies a whole new worldview. Capitalism and its handmaiden neoliberal economics elevated growth and efficiency: getting bigger, faster. Instead, the new eco-economy must promote true development and greater social equity: getting better fairly.
Other values essential for long-term economic security, social well-being and ecological stability include a renewed respect for nature, loyalty to place, community cohesion, regional self-reliance and local economic diversity. The cult of cowboy individualism cannot solve what is a collective problem.
Above all, the new economy-nature relationship must be regenerative. Local economies should be embedded in community and this (re)union in turn should become an integrated, mutualistic component of its sustaining ecosystems.
