Overshoot

ROBIN FARRELL

May 19, 2025

We are all on that same ship HMS Overshoot. Will we transition in time to meet up with HMS Drawdown and HMS Restoration? Or are we to join RMS Titanic as the Great Fossil Fuels Blowout reaches its fateful conclusion?

#COP30 #G20 #Water #Infrastructure #Reforestation #Regeneration #NatureProtection #Overshoot #GDP #GPI #EcologicalOvershoot #Energy #Restoration #naturalcapital #greenfinance #greenbonds #bluebonds #DebtforNature #ClimateRisk #Collapse #Drawdown #Extraction #Equity #GlobalClimateModels #ClimateAction #Nature #RightsofNature #NaturebasedSolutions #EcosystemRestoration #GlobalRestoration #ClimateChange #Biodiversity #Conservation #Ecocide #SDGs #ClimateFinance #NPA #MarineProtectionAreas #GreenandBlueCarbon #Ocean #CarbonRemoval #Mangroves #GenerationRestoration #WaterCrisis #Regeneration #Agriculture #InnovationFinance #Futurism #SustainableDevelopment

Introduction

“There are five stacks of woe that our Man swarm brings: (1) Land scalping, (2) Resource depletion, (3) Starvation, (4) Social, political upheaval, and (5) Ecological/Evolutionary wounds.”

- The Centre for Biological Diversity, in “Owning Up to Overpopulation”

Like a swarm of locusts, humanity has collectively gorged itself on natural resources and become the most invasive of species. More of an infestation from an Earth system perspective. Human activity is collectively destroying, degrading and exploiting biodiversity on a massive scale. Far exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet and yet still increasing the ecological overshoot with every year.

"Ecology is bigger than capitalism, bigger than human civilisation itself. Yet for most of us ecology takes place somewhere in the sidelines of our existence, or in a classroom. We fail to grasp the gravity of our ignorance of basically almost everything that exists. On a planet with 10 million species, well over a third of habitable land has been modified by just one: humans. This is not a civilisation. This must be a type of infestation."

- George Tsakraklides

It took all of human evolutionary history for world population to reach 1 billion around 220 years ago. Since then we have doubled in size (1927), doubled again (1974), and now doubled again (2020). This has only become achievable through our technological ingenuity, with advances from fossil fuels, food production, education, healthcare etc.

Such advances created highly favourable conditions for population growth, enabling industrialisation and the overcoming of historical population reduction vectors (disease, famine, plague). Industrialisation has long been in vogue, heralded as a great civilisational solution:

"If we are able in the decades ahead to avoid thermonuclear war, and if the present underdeveloped areas of the world are able to carry out successful industrialization programs, we shall approach the time when the world will be completely industrialized. And as we continue along this path we shall process ores of continually lower grade, until we finally sustain ourselves with materials obtained from the rocks of the earth's crust, the gases of the air, and the waters of the seas. ... By that time the mining industry as such will long have disappeared and will have been replaced by vast, integrated multipurpose chemical plants supplied by rock, air and sea water, from which will flow a multiplicity of products, ranging from freshwater to electric power, liquid fuels and metals"

— Dr Harrison Brown (1957) - The Next Hundred Years

Impressive as these developments have been, today we have a major structural problem of overshoot. We have already surpassed the ecological limits to our biosphere. An eight-fold increase in world population over two centuries, with its inherent consumption of resources, has led to the systematic loss and destabilisation of Nature and our future livability.

Just as our historical emissions are already out there, so are our historical impacts on Nature - which are amplifying the problems from climate change and energy overshoot.

Source: PIK, adapted from Caesar et al. (2024)

Our overshoot of nature's limits is also accompanied by a form of 'social overshoot' - deriving from the governing economic system and how 'system wealth' is created, extracted, distributed and hoarded.

Subtle or obvious at different times, there is a systemic extraction of value from Nature, from our various 'commons', from current and future generations, and from the under-represented / vulnerable. And this has been perpetuating for a very long time, with regular conflicts and huge distortions in global equity, value and governance. Such structural social problems are also getting in the way of global agreements around climate change action.

A. Energy and Economics

“To talk about energy and the economy is a tautology: every economic activity is fundamentally nothing but a conversion of one kind of energy to another, and monies are just a convenient […] proxy for valuing energy flows.”

Vaclav Smil - Energy and Civilisation: A History

Our civilization, and even the entire natural world on our planet, revolves around energy. Our modern conveniences, way of life and functioning, are all supported by energy sources. The drivers behind increasing energy usage are its value as:

a commodity - useful energy for the current system of production and consumption
a social necessity - for mobility, products, modern conveniences (heating, lighting, cooking etc)
a strategic supply - safeguarding capabilities and living standards into the future
an ecological resource - energy and related flows in the context of the biosphere

"The major carbon polluting nations – along with the multi-national corporations over which they can and should exercise control – retain the capacity to dial-back the CO2 control knob, yet in defiance of the common interest they continue along a fatal path."

Dr. James Hansen

The impacts and characteristics of human action are now evident across most of the planet.

The global economy was built on fossil fuels and abundant, cheap money
The system of economics is non-natural and essentially unlimited in scope
We live on a finite planet, with the governing economic system continuing to “extract” from Nature and people on a global industrial scale
The corollary is societal and systemic collapse

Earth's Energy Imbalance - The EEI is in effect the excess energy footprint of humanity, driven by the net radiative forcing. To prevent / reverse global warming the EEI must fall to zero and below. And this is a positive feedback process - as EEI continues to increase, so does heat / global temperatures, and the Earth's inability to absorb future increases without serious impacts on the biosphere. These impacts are also nonlinear - the rate of global warming has tripled over the past 20 years, leading to stronger storms, sea level rise and increased heat waves.

The total GHG CO₂ equivalent concentration now stands at c. 573 ppm, more than double that of the pre-industrial era. This change in GHG forcing is greater than the change from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), 130,000 BP to 1750. It is therefore certain that this will mean a further c. 65m of sea level rise, on top of the 130m already experienced since the LGM. The timescale for this will be very short (in geological terms).

EEI reduction necessitates a reduction in incoming radiation absorbed, and an increase in outgoing radiation, which in broad terms means:

Reducing the amount of GHGs in the atmosphere – to trap less radiation that would otherwise return to space.
Increasing aerosol depth / cover – essentially putting more small particles in the atmosphere, which influences cloud formation and reflection of sunlight.
Increasing cloud cover and albedo (reflection) – more cloud cover increases reflection,smaller water droplets can increase the reflectivity of clouds.
Restoring natural capital in the short-term – so that Earth’s natural cooling and heat transfer processes are improved and quickly, rather than degraded.

These solutions are also to some degree, interconnected. For example restoring natural capital has a knock-on effect on evapotranspiration and water transport, which implies more cloud cover, water vapour and so on. As per usual, doing "all of the above" is probably the best approach given how little time remains.

Energy Consumption and GDP

As in Nature, energy in all its forms, neither created nor destroyed, is transformed from one form to another. Energy is consumed to power or manufacture most products and services. Growth in energy usage is near-perfectly correlated with economic output. The energy system is what drives our modern economies and living standards.

This is an important societal truism - GDP / economic output does not constitute wealth, rather it is a measure of energy consumed (and up till now, environmental footprint). GDP and energy use are in lockstep, with a long-term correlation of almost 1.

'Net wealth' measures aim to account for the 'Excluded Items' (e.g. environmental and household), as set out in the recent post 'Societal Pivot Points'. The GPI (Genuine Progress indicator) is one such measure.

The switch from GDP to GPI and similar measures is long overdue. GDP perpetuates the economic myopia of growth on a finite planet. GPI reminds us regularly that we have already peaked and are in decline, and urgently need to fix the problem.

GPI is even an understatement of the net damage we are doing.

As the below chart highlights, Global GPI per capita peaked in 1978, an indicator of how we have exceeded the ecological carrying capacity of the planet for nearly five decades.

Source: Costanza, Kubiszewski et al (2014) - Time to leave GDP behind

“At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation”

— Paul G. Hawken (Co-founder of Project Drawdown)

The Unsustainable Energy Trap

Unsustainable energy still dominates global production and consumption. Energy demand still continues to outpace population growth. Clean energy has thus so far been merely additional supply, albeit now around half of electricity supply (c.21% of global energy production).

Can we replace all of our energy usage with renewables and continue living the way we do today ?

Unfortunately, not any time soon. Despite the rapid growth in renewables, we also set a new record for GHG emissions last year. The continuance of economic growth means that growth in energy demand is still outpacing the additions in renewable energies. This is a serious structural supply gap problem - renewables are growing but are yet to displace fossil fuel energies.

The existing systems continue to prioritise the interests of energy producers and consumers. The contemporary economy is a production economy, and the commercial interests of Big Energy have a stranglehold.

Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet

Origins of the Energy Trap

This has always been the way, at least in the last 5,000 years.

Wood / Biomass - Before the Age of fossil fuels there was the Age of Wood. Our modern ancestors deforested entire regions (Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia, United States) to extract valuable resources (e.g. wood, agricultural) for their various needs (military, energy, civil engineering, ships etc). In doing so, they fundamentally altered the landscapes, their ecologies, productivity and quality. A salutary reminder of what happens when mass extraction takes place.

Fossil Fuels (Coal) - Commissions against the long-used but foul-smelling coal had led to its ban in England in 1306. Limited coal use continued until the Black Death (1347) and the loss of around half of the population. Subsequent reforestation improved the supply of the main fuel stock - wood. During the 16th century, wood was becoming scarce again due to (i) increasing population and fuel demand, (ii) deforestation to make room for crops and sheep pasture (wool being the main export). The dissolution of the English monasteries (1536-41) and seizure of their lands led to a major shift in coal mine ownership and the ascendance of coal as fuel.

With greater use of the coal-burning chimney, coal could be burned indoors for heat while evacuating of noxious fumes. This of course led to environmental problems. As more and more homes burned coal, air quality declined such that in 1578, the Queen herself was “greatly grieved and annoyed with the taste and smoke of sea-coales”. By the turn of the century, coal had become the most used fuel in the nation.

“The shift from wood to coal was arguably the most momentous in the history of energy.... The impact on society was huge.” ~ Roger Fouquet, LSE

Source: Ripple et al (2024) - The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on Planet Earth

With growing populations ever since and worldwide adoption, fossil energy use has grown exponentially from these origins. With ever-expanding uses in industry and society, and technological / engineering advancements, the growth trend has continued to this day. The above indicators from Ripple et al (2024) portray many of the dimensions of overshoot that this has created.

The main result has been tremendous growth in population, and all of the modern accompaniments to that - technologies, industrialisation, resources extraction, wastes, pollution, global proliferation of housing, urban areas, transportation, modern conveniences etc. So much growth (and momentum) that we have moved well past the safe operating spaces of the planet.

Whereas past energy-driven impacts on the biosphere took place when populations were much smaller, today's energy-driven polycrisis is orders of magnitude larger in scale. And therefore structural in scale and nature - turning the ship around is a multi-decade process.

Today we have 8.2 billion 'consumption engines' and an estimated 360 million profit-seeking companies (end 2023).

World Energy Consumption remains fossil fuel-dominated, at 504 EJ (Exajoules) in 2024 (81% of the global total).

Source: Statistical Review of World Energy (2024)

Global primary energy production has grown 60% since 2000 and is expected to more than double by 2050. Accordingly the BAU path to ecological destruction is already set, unless clean energies can overhaul unsustainable energies very quickly. The question is will the BAU fossil fuels party wind down now, or only when its too late?

Energy Transition - The Race Against Time

Electricity's share of final energy consumption is projected to rise from 21% to over 50% by 2050 in the NZE 2050 Scenario, as end-use sectors are decarbonised and the energy demand mix is rebalanced.

Fossil fuels currently account for over 60% of total global electricity generation. This will need to drop rapidly below 30% under the NZE 2050 scenario. In particular, coal still supplies around 1/3 of global electricity generation.

Therefore an even greater pace of deployment of clean energies will be needed.

Global renewable electricity generation is currently on track to nearly double by 2030, sufficient to meet the power needs of China and the USA (264 EJ, or 42% of global consumption).

Encouragingly, China’s emissions actually fell by 1% in the last 12 months. A new pricing policy for renewables has caused a rush to install new supply. While power demand was up 2.5%, there was a fall of 4.7% in thermal power generation (coal and gas).

Energy Efficiency and Related Challenges

Depending on the methodology used, the efficiency levels of our energy systems are comparable to Nature. Overall efficiency is 10-15% for the global energy system (including production losses, grid/storage losses and so on). Historically, the Jevons Paradox has shown us that gains in energy efficiency do not actually save any energy - they enable more energy usage.

As we adopt more renewable energies in the future, we might expect continued incremental improvements, but with some reductions in overall energy efficiency as fossil fuel usage declines (renewable energies have other benefits, but come with a lower EROEI).

AI and data centres notwithstanding, energy usage per capita in the developed world needs to reach equilibrium quickly - with a progressive leveling-up in the rest of the world over time. The goal must be to ensure everyone has access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy services to support a good standard of living. A likely range of 30-70 GJ per person p.a., rising to 80-100 GJ per person p.a. in the developed world, though this threshold may fall over time.

A great (but so far unrealised) hope is also for clean hydrogen solutions (green /turquoise) - these have been affected by commercial cost and scaling issues (they are still too expensive). But new solutions are now reaching commercial readiness and may yet have a great impact on industrial power generation and industry applications.

Summary

Notwithstanding increased electrification of sectors and efficiency improvements, the current path is not sufficient to ensure clean energies will crowd out unsustainable fossil energies in the 2030s. Accordingly overshoot is likely to be with us until at least the mid-2040s.

All signs point towards the need to pull back from the 2040s overshoot phase we are now in. This will require further accelerations in funding and production for renewable energies, nuclear energy (including SMR), geoengineering approaches and Nature restoration, with an 'all of the above' approach to mitigation. We need to achieve real results by 2030, with a view to realistic closing of most of the NZE gap in the 2030s.

All of the realistic solutions above must be funded and prioritised now to buy as much time as possible, as climate changes and the EEI exhibit their progressively alarming impacts.

Nature Restoration is of particular importance as it is (i) a scalable and near-term climate change mitigant; (ii) a counter to continued ecological destruction / land-use change; (iii) a drawdown solution (for 10-20 Gt p.a.).

B. Ecology and Extraction

Ecological System

Life operates within a hierarchy of Earth system energy flows, subject to thermodynamic laws and limits. Trophic thermodynamics are a function of these energy transfers / transformations - from the sun to the biosphere.

Of all the net primary productivity (photosynthesis) at the producer trophic level, only a small fraction goes to the next trophic level (primary consumers), and a fraction of that goes on to the next level, and so on up the food web. Such 'ecological efficiency' ranges from 1-20% depending on the ecosystem.

The percentage of the solar energy used by plants is much less than the maximum energy efficiency of photosynthesis (c. 26%). A typical figure for plants is 1%, although higher yields have been reported e.g. in sugar cane (up to 3.5%). Such energy losses are the result of physiological processes (cellular respiration, tissue supply), absorption/reflection of incident sunlight, the plant's regulatory mechanisms, photorespiration and length of growing season.

As above, the efficiency levels of humanity's energy systems are comparable to Nature. Overall efficiency is 10-15% for the global energy system. The global energy system generates colossal amounts of waste energy due to inefficiencies at every stage of energy use or transformation. Such energy is simply lost at source to the environment, dissipated within the biosphere / Earth system thermodynamics.

Global mean temperature (GMT) is now above the Paris 1.5 C limit set back in 2015. With Earth's sinks currently exhibiting reduced capacity, and more surprises coming through (methane release, marine heatwaves, water deficits, cloud feedbacks etc.), the outlook is more bearish than previous.

Ecological Footprint

Ecological accounting shows that since 1970, the global community has been exceeding the regenerative capacity or biocapacity of the Earth. Each year since 1970, humanity has increased the level of global ecological overshoot. This problem is highlighted each year on Earth Overshoot Day, the date for when humanity's resource consumption for the year is considered to have exceeded the Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources.

The proliferation of environmental impacts arises from both the extraction and consumption of resources (including the burning of fossil fuels). This will lead to exponentially increased costs in the future - from the impacts themselves and from efforts to avert /mitigate them and to adapt.

Our “ecological footprint” is the pressure put on the planet to meet the needs of the population living there. Currently, to meet the needs of the entire human population, we actually need 1.7 Planet Earths in order to remain sustainable. The ecological footprint follows the same highly correlated path as that of population growth, GDP growth and energy consumption. One leads to the next and they are self-reinforcing.

Ecological footprint is a method of gauging humans’ dependence on natural resources by calculating how much of the environment is needed to sustain a particular lifestyle. In other words, it measures the supply and demand gap for nature / natural capital.

Environmental sustainability is realised when a population can support a particular lifestyle indefinitely while still meeting the demands placed on an environment.

Source: York University EF Initiative & Global Footprint Network, 2023.

The ecological footprint measures the amount of “biologically productive” land or water that enables the population to sustain itself. This measurement takes into account the resources a population needs to (i) produce goods and (ii) 'assimilate' or clean up, its waste. Biologically productive land and water can include arable land, pastures, and parts of the sea that contain marine life.

The units for ecological footprint are global hectares (gha), which measure the amount of biologically productive land with a productivity equal to the world average.

Given the multi-dimensional nature of biocapacity and anthropogenic impacts, the ecological footprint likely underestimates the true footprint in many important respects. But it is a solid start.

Ecological Footprint per capita

Gaia (the Earth system) is subject to Nature's laws - the laws of physics. These govern energy usage and transformation, and thus economics. The only way to achieve sustainability is to slow down consumption of the planet’s resources, so that it can replenish them.

Accomplishing this means pivoting away from the current extractive form of capitalism and its inherent consumerism. Affluent nations must drastically reduce consumption levels and ecological footprints - they are responsible for over 90% of excess GHG emissions.

The future target must be one where we consume the biocapacity of around 0.8 Earths (declining global hectares per capita declining ). To do this means steering towards a degrowth trajectory in energy usage and consumption, until we reach a new equilibrium that is sustainable and safe for the biosphere.

"Signs of stress on the world's principal biological systems - forests, fisheries, grasslands and croplands - indicate that in many places these systems have already reached the breaking point. Expecting these systems to withstand a tripling or quadrupling of population pressures defies ecological reality."

— Lester R. Brown, The Twenty-Ninth Day

Ecological Deficits and Biological Carrying Capacity

Public Data Package, 2023 edition – data years 2019 (blue) and 2022 (red)https://data.footprintnetwork.org

Source: York University Ecological Footprint Initiative & Global Footprint Network

As can be seen from the above charts, many African and South American nations are living within their biological carrying capacity. All other nations have ecological deficits which they will need to address. In future economic terms, their preservation of natural capital stands them in good stead - in terms of the value of Nature and ecosystem services they have. This is in contrast to many developed nations who have enjoyed affluence but who are also in ecological deficit and 'hooked' on such affluence, with greater future cost of adjustment.

The National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts (NFBAs) measure the ecological resource use and resource regeneration capacity of countries over time. Based on approximately 15,000 data points per country per year, mostly from UN data sets, the NFBAs contain the Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity of over 200 countries, territories and regions from 1961.

Under the mandate of the Footprint Data Foundation (FoDaDo), the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts 2023 Edition are produced by the Ecological Footprint Initiative of York University in collaboration with Global Footprint Network.

Earth Overshoot Day

July 28th, 2025 will mark this year’s Earth Overshoot Day, compared to August 1st (2024), Oct 20th (1991) and Dec 25th (1971). This is the day that humanity’s demand for ecological resources exceeds the resources Earth can regenerate within that year.

Over the decades, the ecological and carbon footprint of humans has gradually increased, while Earth’s biocapacity (its ability to regenerate resources) has diminished significantly. That has led to Earth Overshoot Day arriving earlier and earlier, moving from December 30th (1970). During the 2020 pandemic, it did move back - from July 29 to August 22.

The concept of Earth Overshoot Day was first conceived by Andrew Simms of the UK think tank New Economics Foundation, which partnered with Global Footprint Network in 2006 to launch the first global Earth Overshoot Day campaign. WWF has participated in Earth Overshoot Day since 2007.

Earth Overshoot Day = (Planet’s Biocapacity / Humanity’s Ecological Footprint) x 366

Of course the most ecologically-sustainable countries are those with no overshoot.

Global Ecological Trends

The long-term process of funding and restoring Nature is an immediate imperative for humanity. When we clear forests for example, we also affect the essential ecosystem services (rainfall /bioprecipitation, climate cooling, biodiversity, bioproduction) that were there, supporting the environment and offsetting latent risks (aridity, degradation, wildfires etc).

To save ourselves, we must massively scale up the Global Restoration of Nature, alongside the solutions to the EEI / GHG emissions / climate change crisis. Only by doing this, will we begin to restore the damage already done to water cycles, ecosystems and their bioproduction capacity.

Extraction

Resources Extraction

To continue to sustain and power the global economy, requires colossal extraction and thus depletion of resources - fossil fuels, water, minerals, building materials, agricultural products etc. With a current and still growing global population of 8.2 billion, this leads to highly unsustainable ecological footprints. Displacement of communities, conflicts and socio-economic tensions have tended to accompany much of this development activity.

Systemic Extraction

Within the economic systems and modes of operation we have created, extraction of value inevitably also takes other forms. For example the systemic extraction of value / equality from (i) current and future generations, (ii) the under-represented and vulnerable, (iii) more generally, "the 99%". And this has been perpetuating for a very long time, with regular conflicts and huge distortions in global equity, value and governance.

This is an unfortunate fact of life of the modern society. Governments are supposed to correct for this over time, to safeguard the general population and provide true balance, rather than become 'captured' and complicit in the same unbalanced system.

Such structural social problems are also getting in the way of global agreements around climate change action. Past polluter nations know the right thing to do, and believe they are doing it, but also suffer from cognitive dissonance and a 'hierarchy maintenance' reality. Current polluter nations are rising in this hierarchy, and will refuse to reduce their own national wealth generation (from fossil fuels) when there is no sense of true recompense, cooperation and commitment from others. The major outlier and largest polluter of course being the USA.

Sources: World Inequality Database, World Population Review

As the globally-extractive nature of the economy continues, so we continue to encroach on and destroy Nature and its supporting eco-services. But we have reached an inflection point - Nature is sending us some increasingly alarming warning signals. We must protect and restore Nature in all its forms, with designated Protected Areas and robust enforcement thereof.

Self-imposed Limits

The corollary of BAU is collective self-annihilation. Our societal goal must be to have sufficient self-restraint. In the same manner that China has been able to slow then end its population growth, a remarkable achievement.

This means self-imposed limits on population, on extraction of resources, on energy production and consumption, on land use changes (with restoration and conservation the priorities), and on waste and pollution.

As part of our transition to a truly sustainable society, we must also self-impose limits on our power and capital structures - economic power, political power, corporate power and how we govern ourselves.

The current structures do not prevent overshoot. They do not protect Nature or promote prosperity for all. Instead we have a number of paradoxes, which are self-reinforcing under the prevailing economic system:

Record corporate profits and market capitalisations, yet wages have barely improved
Huge wealth excesses for the elites, but very few societal contributions in the other direction
Continuation of an economic and governance system that destroys Nature and does not serve the vast majority of the world's nations and population
Severe climate change, famines and wars in some parts of the world, with no real sense of collective responsibility to own the problems, from those in much better situations
In short, the current economic system promotes a fixation on the 'money code' (and status quo) as prevailing value, in preference to 'life capital'. Hard economic logic rides roughshod over environmental and social necessities.

“Beneath much confusion on the values we live by, there are in our epoch two primary sequences of value - in unseen but cumulative conflict with each other. The first is the money sequence of value which uses life as means to become more money for money possessors (producing money capital value over time as its regulating objective). The second is the life sequence of value which creates and uses means of life to enable more flourishing life (producing life capital over time as its regulating objective).”

“In accordance with the money sequence of value, unpriced ecological elements and systems are continuously wasted, polluted and exhausted as “externalities” of turning money into more money and commodities for private money possessors at maximum velocity and scale across continents. Over time, no level of life organization is untouched by the ruling global value mechanism.”

Prof. John McMurtry, The Global Crisis Of Values, PHILOSOPHY AND WORLD PROBLEMS-Vol . I and book

The mechanisms for this are perpetuated through the 'economic logic' and myopic nature of the system, alongside a collective system-wide dissonance in morality and responsibility.

Ours is an economic system that systematically extracts capital in exchange for the loss of 'life capital'. A transition to satisficing, balance and global community is long overdue.

Conclusion

With Earth's sinks currently exhibiting reduced capacity, and more surprises coming through (methane release, marine heatwaves, water deficits, cloud feedbacks etc.), the outlook is more bearish than previous. All of the realistic solutions above must be funded and prioritised now to buy as much time as possible, as climate changes and the EEI exhibit their progressively alarming impacts.
Global primary energy production has grown 60% since 2000 and is expected to more than double by 2050. Accordingly the BAU path to ecological destruction is already set. And the current default path needs to be speeded up and expanded. The global transition to clean energy must move faster still - clean energies need to crowd out fossil energies in the 2030s.
All solutions must be funded and prioritised - renewable energies, nuclear energy (including SMR), geoengineering approaches and Nature restoration, with an 'all of the above' approach to mitigation. We need to achieve real results by 2030, with a view to realistic closing of most of the NZE gap in the 2030s. Global cooperation and innovation are necessarily part of this scaling up, as are addressing legacies.
We have reached an inflection point - Nature is sending us some increasingly alarming warning signals. We must protect and restore Nature in all its forms, with designated Protected Areas and robust enforcement thereof. Nature Restoration is of particular importance as it is (i) a scalable and near-term climate change mitigant; (ii) a counter to continued ecological destruction / land-use change; (iii) a drawdown solution (for 10-20 Gt p.a.).
Energy system metrics should reflect efficiency, sustainability and emissions reduction, so that we better align with the NZE future and move away from fossil energy-based metrics and actual energy delivered to end-users.
Economic system metrics should reflect what we are doing in the real world. A move away from GDP is needed, as the main measure of economic health. Global consumption of goods and services have exceeded Earth’s renewal capacity since the early 1970s. A range of more holistic measures are needed, such as GPI (Global Progress Indicator) which peaked in 1978.
Unsustainable energies, resource extraction and industrial production have led to the destruction of ecosystems and habitats, deforestation, climate change, the global waste and pollution legacies. Displacement of communities, conflicts and socio-economic tensions have tended to accompany much of this development activity.
Global resource scarcity will continue to drive increasing insecurity, resource conflicts, inequality, and the permanent loss of some resources (e.g. aquifers, forests). The proliferation of environmental impacts arises from both the extraction and consumption of resources - leading to exponentially increased costs in the future.
Major financial transitioning can be expected, as our existing financial systems struggle to adjust to the triple-impact combination of (i) increasing resource scarcity; (ii) the costs of soaring environmental damages; and (iii) the increased obligations implied by increasing debt to GDP burdens.
From a future perspective, this may be seen as medicinal. It will force nations to become longer term and more cooperative in outlook, as they seek to adapt to the new world where (i) Nature Restoration and Natural Capital resilience become the prime objectives; (ii) resource extraction is in decline; (iii) economic activity becomes further polarised; (iv) the short-termist socioeconomic model is displaced.
Businesses and the financial sector in particular will come to understand and own up to long-known but unaddressed climate risks. Future risk pricing will become an epicentre of the green financial transition - as we move away from existing finance and fund real world risk mitigation and adaptation solutions.
In the process Nature (and its ecosystem services) will become a balance sheet item. Providing surety of future value through regeneration (there is no alternative) and a viable transition away from extractive economics.
The inclusion of Nature and ecosystem services will be a positive force for equity among nations. It will necessarily need to be supported by technological solutions that foster true (ecological) sustainability, such as global mapping (and valuation) of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
The Economics of Nature provides for security of capital (physical assets, managed in long-term partnership with stewards of Nature) and real asset growth (most physical assets grow reliably, they don't read the FT).
All nations will be grappling with the same legacy risks and the search for workable solutions. Debt fuels demand in good times but also creates economic vulnerability in worse times. Economies can collapse when the twin risks of debt and energy volatility crystallise at the same time. In such a scenario, we can expect that debt cancellation and swaps / debt transformation will become commonplace.
And ultimately a structural solution will be needed as part of this trend - a Global Environmental Funds and Taxes system - in order to achieve greater structural supplies of Nature Positive funding.
With rising debt levels and distress across the world, societal integrity and safety nets will over time become policy priorities once more, in the developed world. The leveling up of nations and populations - the common prosperity of nations - may yet become a consensus amongst all countries. A transition to satisficing, balance and global community is long overdue.

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Overshoot - Of Energy, Economics, Ecology and Extraction