Overshoot - population collapse incoming.

It is a normal part of life and death - death of a population that has no natural predators and has had unchecked growth. It's time to get our spiritual houses in order if not our local ecosystems too

Food and other resources become depleted with a population that is expanding without limits. Waste product pollutes water and air and soil. Fertility of soil is depleted. When the population collapses, fewer will be able to survive than in earlier times when resources weren’t depleted or destroyed. Carbon tax credits seem like a scam and CO2 has been rising slower because the oceans are absorbing it. The acidity level will become too elevated for that chemical reaction to work and then the air will show more rapidly increasing CO2 levels. But that is only one part of the problem, microplastics, glyphosate, other agricultural chemicals are all affecting the soil and lifeforms on land and in the waters of our planet.

• Read more: Overshoot: Why It’s Already Too Late To Save Civilization, By Alan Urban on February 9, 2023, (google doc).

The author is sharing his 16 pages of thoughts and info because, while it’s too late to save this system, there could be more sensible ways to approach it rather than our current overall pattern of continuing like normal.

Poleshift is still on the way - I am pretty sure about that. We are going to have a planetary reset whether we like it or not. New maps will be needed once civilization climbs back out of the devastation. But today is a pretty day. I should get outside and enjoy it. Continuing like normal? Or being grateful for paradise while it is still here?

An Excerpt from the close:

Most people refuse to believe that our civilization is unsustainable and headed for collapse in the near future. There are people who have been presented with all the facts mentioned in this article who still refuse to accept the truth.

But why? There are many possibilities, but I think a big one is cultural conditioning. Ever since we were born, we were all taught by the media that technology is a good thing. They say technology is progress, and the more technology we have, the freer and happier society will be. Like in Star Trek.

So when you tell people that actually, technology is destroying the planet and leading us toward collapse, they find it impossible to believe. They’ll even say that what we need now is more technology. But unfortunately, we can’t solve our problems with the same methods that got us into this predicament.

There are countless peer-reviewed studies demonstrating that we are in overshoot right now and that we are headed for a hunter-gatherer future. These studies are based on empirical data and basic math, yet many environmentalists refuse to believe it. They say growth is fine, we just need to switch to “green growth.”

But it’s not just cultural conditioning that does this to people; it’s also fear. When I first realized that society will probably collapse in my lifetime, I tried really hard to convince myself that it wasn’t true. I started learning about techno fixes, green energy, and sustainable growth. It took me a long time before I finally realized that sustainable growth is an oxymoron.

Ever since the Limits to Growth study back in 1972, it has been clear that our global civilization would collapse someday, but few people believed it. Only now that resource depletion and climate disasters are becoming such obvious problems are people finally starting to wake up.

What now?

As more and more people wake up to the reality of collapse, it is absolutely crucial that we help them understand why collapse is happening.

The entire history of humans throughout the Holocene is characterized by overshoot and collapse. When societies exceeded the carrying capacities of their ecosystems, they usually either went to war with neighboring societies or devolved into civil war.

My fear is that when the economy collapses and things start to get really bad, people will blame others. The others could be anybody: Jews, immigrants, white people, minorities, fascists, socialists, the patriarchy, the “woke mob”, or other nations such as Russia or China.

We must understand that collapse is not the fault of some malignant “other.” Collapse is the inevitable result of overshoot, and overshoot is everybody’s fault. Yes, some people are more to blame than others, but unless you’ve lived your entire life off-the-grid and self-sufficient, you too have contributed to overshoot.

We need to stop blaming each other and start working together. We need to create a culture based on sustainability instead of consumption, a culture where we care more about leaving things to our children than acquiring things for ourselves. We need to eliminate the idea that humans are separate from nature and remember that we are all part of nature.

Until we do these things, I fear that we will only make our predicament worse. I’ll close with a quote from William Catton, author of Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change:

“I have tried to show the real nature of humanity’s predicament, not because understanding its nature will enable us to escape it, but because if we do not understand it, we shall continue to act and react in ways that make it worse.” 

• Read more: Overshoot: Why It’s Already Too Late To Save Civilization, By Alan Urban on February 9, 2023, (google doc).

From my own investigation of environmental issues, human waste is disrupting the ecosystem, increasing illness in species, and loss of habitat. We are running very low on bioavailable phosphorus for farming and the solution in part is to stop wasting it on agriculture and return to composted manure fertilizer and tilling in the green biomass. Home gardens reduce transport and increase freshness for the gardener.

I have 89 draft posts, now I have 88 draft posts. Peace be with you and I hope you see some happy bumblebees today. I did. It liked my potted dahlias from my winter garden.

It’s easy to see why bumblebees like these dahlias.

Disclaimer: This information is being provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use and is not intended to provide individual health care guidance.