Overshoot
* Book: Overshoot. The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. By William Catton Jr. 1980
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Dave McLeod:
"Chapter 17 of Joe Brewer's recently released book on The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth (as a fellow member of Earth Regenerators, I know you are already familiar with this material). The chapter on "The sneaky topic of carrying capacity" conveniently summarizes William Catton Jr. concepts of Overshoot and Carrying Capacity.
"A foundational book was published in 1980 by the human ecologist William Catton Jr.. It has the assertive title of Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. This classic environmental text was widely read among ecological thinkers at the time. Today, most people are not aware of its existence. Yet this book lays out in clear terms how the cultural evolution of humanity has exceeded the Earth's capacity to support our massive population as it has grown in the last few hundred years.
Catton introduced the key concept of carrying capacity to carefully walk the reader through the process by which humanity has temporarily exceeded it. Carrying capacity is usually defined as the number of individuals in a biological population that an environment can support indefinitely—assuming the environment does not change during this time. The overshoot occurred during a period that Catton named The Age of Exuberance, when the illusions of technological progress seemed capable of improving the quality of life (as experienced by the beneficiaries of colonization and resource extraction) for an extended period of time."