It's not much of a stretch to say that William Catton's slim little book "Overshoot" changed my life.
I don't remember how I first heard of it, but it was shortly after I had figured out the significance of climate change and the realities of Peak Oil about a decade ago. I do remember the impact it had on me. I had read perhaps two chapters when I put down the book, stared off into the distance, and for the first time in my life thought those fateful words: "We're fucked, aren't we?"
Of course I didn't fully believe that epiphany on the spot - I still had a lot of work to do. I was the product of a progressive, liberal, scientific home; I was a hard-core software engineer during the peak of the tech boom; I personified the power of human ingenuity; I especially believed in exploring the truth or falsehood of any proposition on my own.
I began to look at the world around me more critically. Did what I see fit better with the cornucopian views I had held for the previous 50 years, or with this brand new, utterly heretical idea I had just encountered? The more I looked, the clearer the answer became. The human species is undeniably in the state of overshoot that Catton described so unsparingly.
Accepting that premise, however, brought me face to face with an extremely uncomfortable set of conclusions. Situations that are unsustainable will not be sustained. Overshoot implies correction. Correction implies dieoff. Dieoff implies a radical alteration of our species' accustomed way of living.
I began looking for signs that the human ingenuity I worshiped so fervently would be able to turn the situation around before Mother Nature, red in tooth and claw, stepped in to do the job for us. This time, the more I looked the less evidence I saw. When COP15 blew its brains out in Copenhagen at the end of 2009, I finally accepted that despite the best intentions of a few, the human collective has no intention whatever of trying to rectify the situation. We seem utterly committed to a one-way trip off the cliff, with the movie "Thelma and Louise" as our roadmap.
With that acceptance came a burning desire to understand why we are doing this. Why does our course seem irreversible? What is locking us into such an obviously catastrophic course of action?
My efforts to unravel these questions have led me a long way from the cornucopian tranquility of my software engineering days. The investigation has taken me down rabbit-holes I could never have predicted, where I found such gems as the materialist anthropology of Marvin Harris, Howard Odum's Maximum Power Principle, evolutionary psychology, complex systems, cybernetics and finally the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of Ilya Prigogine and Eric Schneider.
Bill Catton's seminal concept has been at the core of my writing for many years now. It helped to disabuse me of the notion that humanity could ever be a truly sustainable presence on the planet. It has allowed me to frame the radical understanding that even a few tens of millions of humans, living as we now do, are far too great a load for Mother Earth to bear. It has helped me come to terms with the possibility that our species could go extinct far more rapidly than most of us can comprehend.
Fortunately, in this life every coin has two sides. In the end, Catton's terrifying idea was responsible for triggering the spiritual explorations that have taken me through the "gateless gate" into a quieter and more joyful landscape. There aren't enough words in the English language to express my gratitude for this unexpected result.
So Bill, wherever, whenever and whatever you now are, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for your clarity, your courage, your wisdom, and for the humanity that flowed from you so naturally. You were touched by the glow of Diogenes' lamp, and became a beacon in your own right.
Rest in peace.
Bodhi Paul Chefurka, GliderGuider
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