I hadn’t heard the term overshoot before this week.
Since then I’ve heard it twice, telling me that though it’s existed for decades it’s fast becoming one of the buzzwords of the new climate crisis vocabulary. The first time was in a scientific study released in the Fall of 2023 which finally explores the deeper roots of climate denial and the human motivations that fuel the crisis. The term essentially refers to humans’ consumption surpassing our ability to replenish resources, global warming being one symptom. It describes our failure to come to terms with our unsustainable lifestyle.
Resilience is another one that’s starting to become ubiquitous in corporate messaging. As companies market the greening of their products and processes with the left hand, they emphasize how they’re helping us become more resilient to the inevitable effects of failure with the right. It’s a mixed message.
The second time I heard overshoot was in an article about violence. Peter Marchese interviewed the Swedish climate activist Andreas Malm for the New York Times Magazine about violence as a response to climate change. Marchese is a terrific interviewer. He’s as intelligent as any of his subjects and he prepares well, so his conversations are substantial, and he brings an honesty to his questions which give them added weight. I haven’t read Malm’s book. This piece is a response to the interview.
Andreas Malm wrote “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” and is an advocate for direct violent action against the infrastructure of the fossil fuel industry. I’m deeply ambivalent about this. The urge to directly interfere with fossil fuel companies’ ability to poison the planet resonates with me, because this is a lethal crisis. Violence is being done to my species. But on the other hand, it’s being done, to one extent or another, by my species itself. It’s too easy to target the rich and the companies who profit from the pollution. It’s far more complicated than that, and the solution ultimately must be political, which means it will be societal.
Malm specifically discourages violence against people, more because he knows that the messaging will be counterproductive than out of a moral equation, apparently. It’s clear that the violence won’t impact the companies financially. The infrastructure is insured and easily repairable. So the goal would be to bring home the depth of the crisis, the stakes, to an apathetic population — to show them that things have gone so wrong that people are willing to blow things up to stop it.
This may feel like progress to the activist but it resembles an act of revenge more than a coherent step toward the solution. It will never be enough. There just aren’t enough humans in any culture willing to go there. And obviously Malm doesn’t see it as a silver bullet or a single solution. It’s a part of the response picture that he’s decided is appropriate; and again, I respect his choice. But it’s a sideshow.
Humans have voted for an industrial world with their wallets, with all the comforts that world provides, no matter the opportunity cost, for centuries. If first world populations chose a lifestyle that didn’t fund an exacerbation of the pollution, those companies would stop polluting tomorrow. Yes, the lifestyles of the wealthy typically contribute to climate change far more than the middle class, but these are the expressions of the same desires, biases, blind sides and instincts shared by all of us. Far too many humans, suddenly possessing great wealth, would adopt the same deeply unsustainable patterns.
This is the first element of the interview that I thought missed an opportunity. Too often the climate discussion settles on oil companies as enemies who are doing this to us. For sure they are manipulating the conversation and directing us away from scientific facts. But we let them. If we’re so willing to accept narratives that defy what we can see in front of our eyes after a five-hundred-year tradition of solid science, it doesn’t say much about ourselves as an intelligent species. We have the tools to see the truth and act on it. We have to earn the survival of our civilization by rising to the challenge and using our big brains. This moment in the human story is a litmus test, establishing whether we are exceptional.
The second is a recurring subject of the interview. Marchese asks Malm to explain where to find a reason to live. He can’t do it, but I can. It relates to the first. I do believe humans are exceptional. I believe we deserve the chance to learn from our mistakes and reorder our way of life. I think if we succeed and meet the climate challenge we can do that. I believe in us. We’re worth believing in. Humans are the only species which can choose its destiny. That’s never happened before, possibly in the entire universe. That alone makes it imperative that we try.
Most climate scientists don’t realistically think we’re going to stay below 1.5oC. Whatever that means for us will reveal itself soon enough. Science suggests that the consequences will be bad. The tragedy of what we’ve allowed to happen does encourage drastic actions as the need for any sort of response becomes clearer. Even scientists themselves are becoming activists, which raises new ethical questions. When researchers are willing to don lab coats (most working scientists don’t wear them) and protest in the streets, things are definitely getting bad.
I can’t criticize these protests. This moment requires all hands on deck. But the change we need will come from a new awareness of where humanity sits in the big picture. We will only succeed by taking a hard look at ourselves and making extremely difficult choices. I believe we can.
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