||| FROM ELISABETH ROBSON |||

Part 1:theorcasonian.com/guest-opinion-why-is-san-juan-county-not-talking-about-ecological-overshoot/

Part 2: theorcasonian.com/guest-opinion-why-is-san-juan-county-not-talking-about-ecological-overshoot-part-2/

What should we do?
That is the question we ask ourselves when we think about wicked problems like ecological overshoot. The three speakers who presented in recent weeks at the Ecological Overshoot Speaker Series talked about what ecological overshoot is, how it is more than just climate change, how it threatens life-as-we-know-it, and how we might respond.

Bill Rees suggested that we face the reality of overshoot and talk about it, regularly. He said, get politically engaged and don’t be afraid to ask embarrassing questions. And he recommended working as a community to prepare for the kind of future that is likely to unfold (perhaps sooner than any of us might like to imagine).

Jeremy Jiménez noted that 85% of the world’s biodiversity is found in the 5% of lands where people are living indigenously. He reminded us that we have a lot to learn from these communities, and asked us to think about the stories we can share with each other to create a culture that values protecting the land. These stories will be specific to where we live and the kind of culture we want to foster.

Max Wilbert identified two important responses to ecological overshoot. First, to construct alternative ways to live, through community organizing and relocalizing our food systems, and to prepare our communities (as well as our governments and broader society) for rapid, widespread degrowth. And second, to build effective resistance movements to push back against business-as-usual—that is, the way of life that is destroying the life support systems of the planet—with massive public mobilizations to pressure governments and build new political parties and alternative institutions.

There are three common threads weaving through the ideas presented by all three speakers: facing the reality of ecological overshoot, talking about it, and preparing our communities for degrowth; loving and protecting the natural world; and understanding that personal change does not equal social change. I’ll expand briefly on these ideas below.

Facing the reality of ecological overshoot
The physicist Albert Bartlett is famous for his quip, “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” We’ve seen the graphs showing exponential rises in population, materials use, development, and pollution, and it’s obvious this exponential rise cannot continue.

We’ve seen the graphs Bill Rees presented showing all species in exponential growth and overshoot eventually collapse. We’ve seen the modeling graphs produced by Limits To Growth in 1972, and then reproduced in 2005,  and then reproduced again in 2023, showing the exponential rise and then dramatic fall (likely, by the middle of this century) of non-renewable natural resources, food production, industrial output, and population. We’ve heard the multiple warnings from concerned scientists that humans are on a collision course with the natural world caused by our activities depleting ozone, reducing freshwater availability, depleting marine life, creating ocean dead zones, cutting old growth forests, destroying biodiversity, exacerbating climate change, and polluting the entire planet with toxins—all caused by continued human population growth and industrial development.

We struggle to engage with these realities because Albert Bartlett is right; this inability to truly understand exponential growth is one of the many ways we are not “cognitively equipped,” as Bill Rees put it, to deal with ecological overshoot. It’s not because we are “stupid” as one commenter on my previous article claimed we are suggesting; but rather because we humans don’t easily think that way.

Back in 2017, the group Islands Climate Resilience (ICR) created a report to “encourage preparedness for climate-related impacts in the San Juan Islands.” The report takes an in-depth look at one symptom of ecological overshoot—climate change—and makes concrete recommendations about what we might do in the islands to mitigate and adapt to climate change, including supporting habitat diversity, and limiting human impacts on ecosystems and habitats.

While climate change is projected to be a significant factor in the biodiversity and extinction crises in future decades, what’s destroying ecosystems and species today is habitat fragmentation and loss, overexploitation, and expanding industrial agriculture, pollution, and development. A more comprehensive report must take this into account.

If we are ready to seriously engage with the reality of ecological overshoot, we might begin by forming a group inspired by ICR, perhaps named Islands Ecological Overshoot Resilience, with a mandate to take an in-depth look at ecological overshoot in San Juan County, and create a report that will encourage preparedness for overshoot-related impacts in the county. This would of course be a much bigger project than ICR’s report, but it would provide a more accurate picture of what to expect incoming decades and a more comprehensive plan for how we as a county can prepare.

Loving and protecting the natural world
It was obvious from their presentations that all three speakers in the ecological overshoot series love the natural world. Bill Rees said, take care of the land and live locally. Jeremy Jiménez said, understand that other species are our kin; that it’s not all about just humans and that we must recognize that nature has rights too. And Max Wilbert said, resist
business-as-usual and defend the land we love with everything we have, and reminded us that flourishing natural communities are what enable us humans to flourish too.

Every one of us living here in the San Juan Islands has something we love about this land, these waters. What do you love? Perhaps you love orcas. Orcas and whales here in the Salish Sea and the world over are under assault. They are struck by ships, entangled in fishing gear, killed by seismic testing and radar, and poisoned. Necropsies of orcas show they have astronomical levels of PCBs and other flame retardants, plastic, PFAS “forever chemicals”, and mercury in their systems.

Perhaps you love a dear old tree near where you live, or the birds who live in and rely on that tree. Old growth forests around the world are under assault. 90% of the old growth forests that once covered much of the lower 48 U.S. states have been logged. Most of the remaining old-growth forests are on public lands, and here in the Pacific Northwest about 80% of this forestland is slated for logging. Industrial agriculture, deforestation, pollution, and industrial development has decimated one third of the world’s bird populations in just the past 50 years.

Perhaps you love something else. Whatever it is that you love, it’s under assault. So defend it. Fight for it. Work as hard as you can to protect it. I recently saw videos of indigenous Indonesian people putting their bodies in the way of the massive machines tearing up their land, streams, and forests to mine nickel for EV batteries. “Even if we are killed, all chopped up, we persist,” they shouted at the machines. Are we willing to fight with such ferocity for the land in San Juan County? For the Salish Sea? For the fate of the biosphere? We may not face devastating nickel mining here, but that nickel from Indonesia ends up in the batteries of the cars we drive. Will we look away from the atrocities committed to supply us with our luxury goods?

We all have unique capabilities to offer the world. The problems we face are so huge, so complex, I believe we need an all-of-the-above strategy. Whatever it is each of us does well—researching, writing, organizing, mobilizing—we must do it in service of loving and protecting the natural world.

Personal change does not equal social change
A third common thread among the three presentations in this series is that personal change does not equal social change. While it’s perfectly fine for each of us to show by example how to live more lightly on the land, that will not solve the massive, complex, global ecological crises we face; nor will it solve ecological overshoot here in the county or anywhere else in the world.

Most people who understand the natural world is primary and who work to protect it also try hard to live more lightly on the land, because that’s what feels good to us. Each person has to decide for themselves what they can do to protect what and who they love, and how to live in a way that feels right to them. There are already many people and organizations in the county working to live more lightly on the land and to protect the natural world, so we can build on what’s already happening.

I suggested that I am trying to force my “progressive agenda,” my vision of the future on others. While I certainly have my own imaginings of the kind of future I’d like to see rather than the horrific one that is rapidly approaching, the last thing on Earth I’d want to do is force my vision on anyone else. The reality is that ecological overshoot will eventually force us all into one-planet living, as Bill Rees calls it, no matter whose vision we most resonate with.

I think about things like how helpful it would be if we had maximum house sizes instead of minimum; if we capped electricity use per household and implemented an energy rationing plan; if we could plan our communities to make walking to each other and to services easy, and leave the rural, undeveloped areas to wild nature and to supporting good food and clean water; if we could create jobs solely devoted to restoring ecosystems here in the county; if we could create a local economy not based in perpetual growth; if we could eliminate tourism and still have everyone in the county able to support themselves within the community and on the land; and if we could work more effectively together to fight the ongoing destruction of the Salish Sea bioregion.

These kinds of actions go beyond personal change.
But I don’t want to impose proscriptive regulations on people—I want us to want one-planet living for ourselves and for our communities because we value wild nature, healthy ecosystems, vibrant communities, and simple but fulfilling lifestyles.

That’s why talking about ecological overshoot is so important. We can’t inspire each other to create a vision for one-planet living in San Juan County if we don’t talk about it.

Our task
Cultures that survive and thrive are cultures that protect the ecosystems and natural communities of their environment. This should be obvious, yet it needs saying, again and again. Ecological overshoot is caused by our culture’s ongoing destruction of the life support systems of planet Earth. We can choose to let this continue without resistance, or we can
choose to do everything we can to stop the destruction.

In his recent paper The Human Ecology of Overshoot: Why a Major ‘Population Correction’ Is Inevitable, Bill Rees wrote, “In the best of all possible worlds, the whole transition [to one-planet living] might actually be managed in ways that prevent unnecessary suffering of millions (billions?) of people, but this is not happening—and cannot happen—in a world blind to its own predicament.”

If we take ecological overshoot seriously, this is our task: to open our eyes to our own predicament and talk about it. We here in San Juan County are but a tiny blip on the world stage. But if we really care about the future of life on planet Earth—for ourselves, for future generations, and for all the natural communities we cherish—we must take part in
this conversation. I look forward to hearing from you.

Ecological Overshoot Series Videos

Further reading and viewing on ecological overshoot:

 

Print Friendly, PDF & Email