What a cool guy!!! He just tells it like it is. Whenever I get an opportunity to explain all this people can’t grasp the scale of the disaster that is approaching.

Here we are nearly two decades on still pillaging the earth and killing 80 billion sentient beings that is the biggest contributor to climate change. Overshoot is on our students recommended reading list.

A classic, thank you so much for the interview.

I've read Overshoot twice and listened to many of the late Michael Dowd "Post Doom, No Gloom" presentations which frequently references Catton.

Really incredible- Seattle resident

Only love remains.

Very enlightened individual. "Overshoot" has been important to my development as a human.

Eleven years later in 2023, fossil fuel use hit a new high along with CO2 and temperatures.

Even birds don't poop in their own nest. We are dumber than chickens.

Isn't 98% of annual global CO2 production due to oceanographic and geological activity? Only 2% due to anthropogenic cause?

He is truely missed ..... Overshoot is showing its effects Now

Sense is ever more rare in a dying civilization

The bottle neck is in view and is being blame on everything but reality. What does it matter, it's far to late to mitigate. We go the way of every civilization preceeding us, we will be no exception in history. Great man, great foresight.

"then we got trouble coming..." and sure it did. Near term collapse is almost here.

MALTHUS? GSRBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT.

I did my part, didn't ask to be born, but I have no children, and will die having no children. Also live a minimalist life. Wish I could have done more.

Now the USA postal service is used to deliver products bought from the Amazon corporation.

Finding this today was awesome!!!! Sandy ~ECH~

Lots of Guy McPherson’s perspective seems to come from this great mind

I am making my students watch this interview for their assignment this week. So much here. So much that people refuse to accept.

Fabulous interview with a fabulous interviewee

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays Edward_Bernays was one of many culprits, William R. Catton, Jr. is incorrect here that no individual is responsible ravenous consumption.

Only 1,224 views since 2008?

Nice.

Who's willing to show an example of how he thinks we should be. I believe what he is saying. I felt the same way before I ever heard him. I cut back on resource usage. I cut back on my carbon footprint. I just had one child and she graduated valedictorian and is now in college. Something tells me that he uses many more resources than I do. If he thinks we should cut back, than maybe he should set an example. No one in government is setting a example. Poor Africans set a pretty good example of using less resources but the women have 9 children. Americans on average have less children but use more resources. If the ones that educate us on the problem use more resources than we're getting nowhere. If the President and congress uses more resources than why should anyone else cut back. All it means is that if he is correct than we are in deep shit. Shits going to hit the fan. Even tho I cut back, he hasn't. Even tho I cut back, the President hasn't. Fuck it. I'm old and I will die before it happens. So I say once again, fuck it. It can't be fixed and it's pointless to worry about it. If we were to get lucky and fix it, Yellowstone would blow. Near mass extinction event are natural. Ask the dinosaurs. All you can really hope for is that when your time comes it will be as painless as possible. I am pretty sure that when my time come that I will be sleeping.

RIP Bill Catton

Thank you for posting this full-length format. I learned of "Overshoot" via a superb essay by Catton on Easter Island in Wild Earth magazine back in the 90s. My husband, Michael Dowd, and I just bought Overshoot and Bottleneck this week and look forward to reading them. Watching this video I see why blogger John Michael Greer credits Catton with helping him ground all his economic and resource outlooks on an ecological foundation. It is Jan 14, 2015, as I write. Is this the year that the long descent becomes undeniable to the majority?

facebook.com/notes/thoughtful-alternatives/the-healthy-minimum/774654415878747

'Overshoot' is a fact of Nature. The 'Boom/Bust' cycles of animal populations is well researched. All that out knowledge of science has done is 'put off' the bust part of the cycle. By pushing it farther and farther into the future, the magnitude of the final bust just keeps growing. When our ingenuity can no longer keep up with the ever increasing challenges being thrown at us by Nature, the BUST side of the cycle can be nothing less than catastrophic. - What could we have done? - Use some sense. Ever heard of a 'backfire'? It's where firemen will light a controled fire ahead of a forest fire in order to exhaust the fuel where the uncontrolled fire is headed, thereby extinguishing it.

This should be a must see video for everyone. We need informed citizens and don't allow corrupt advertisers, corporations, greedy people to lead us....where is our humanity -empathy for our fellows and other species???

In a micro perspective: If 10 fisherman work a lake with 1,000 trout, the trout depletion rate will be much lower than 100 fishermen sharing that same lake. Why argue with that? Subsides of various types only account for marginal waste, not exponential depletion. Look at timelines of human population growth vs. fishery depletion, oil depletion, deforestation, species extinctions, farmland loss, lower river flows, and so on. It's a classic inverse correlation. Denial doesn't change the math.

You are seriously claiming there's NO relation between human numbers and the number of fish caught? That's insane. Do you think the human stomach has been getting exponentially bigger over time? I can't debate such nonsense.

"Another example is overfishing, which you can't rationally detach from human population size." No, you can. More importantly there is no connection. I suggest you read the chapter "Fished Out" in the book The Subsidy Scandal to see how wrongheaded Malthusianism is to "apply" it to fishery depletion as you do without any case analysis at all. This shows you are talking in un-empirical generalizations, i.e., ideology of Malthusianism you ready-made apply before analyzing any real fish depletion.

Try to get this through your ideology: there is no necessary connection between population scale and environmental degradation. There are many more variables involved than this simpleminded 200 year old ideological millenarian ideology that still grips some minds. Such Malthusian ideas are so easily falsified it is unfortunate that anyone believes them. Countries can have low population expansion or even contraction and still have degradative influence. Suggest you pick up Lappe's recent book?

This video and the book, published in 1980 that Dr Catton is talking about what is now beginning to occur and is largely being ignored by our politicians and business leaders. In response those in power frack, drill, blow up ever more portions of our planet. As a grandfather I worry greatly about my descendants.

who gives a shit about the "amazing developments" in "environmental sociology". try to work this through your brain - the human population in the year 1800 was 1 billion. the human population today is 7 BILLION. a growth of 700% in 3 human lifetimes. there is no way we can EVER mitigate our ecological impact when our population keeps growing by tens of millions every year. there is NO solution to this problem without lowering human population significantly, if not drastically

Repeating: "Ex: many low population countries outconsume high population countries, so the direct connection between population and degradation is missing." Malthusianism is just a 200 year old ideology greencoated from the late 1960s (Hardin). It is not social science. For a good critique of how Malthusianism mystified itself as science, find David Harvey on it. Others have tested it and falsified it easily: read Elinor Ostrom, Amartya Sen, Ester Boserup, or ecological modernizationists.

@TheBioregionalState, by diminishing the importance of population growth, politically-correct enviros have created a false sense of progress that dwells on per-capita improvements. Example: vehicle emissions are improving in theory, but with more cars on the road, benefits are negated. We see smog in formerly rural areas that didn't have it before. Another example is overfishing, which you can't rationally detach from human population size. At the end of the day, "more people demand more stuff."

RE 3:24, why are "housing starts" considered a leading economic indicator, as if housing can grow forever? It's a classic pyramid scheme. The construction industry thrives on cancer-like growth, and building materials are a big part of resource depletion. Dead trees and mined ore don't "produce" net resources. Man just rearranges existing materials into more sterile forms and nature loses out. New home construction should be called "nature stops," not just "housing starts."

Sad really. He's still constructing this as a population issue. All the amazing developments of the past 30 years in environmental sociology completely passed him by. For those unaware, he is talking about only one of several ways to think about environmental degradation--one increasingly fallen by the wayside for organizational blames for degradation. Ex: many low population countries outconsume high population countries, so the direct connection between population and degradation is missing.

Sounds like Catton's critque is rooted in his personal desire to have fewer people around. Sounds more like NIMBY than science.

@nataliewhat agree 100 per cent...we're on it - watch this space!

another 2 years gone by ... too late now. Endgame is upon us. People get it or they dont. Be food secure.

Thank you for sharing this!

Excellent interview and comments. I especially liked the "Ancient Photosynthesis" comment, I've heard our dependence on fossil fuels described a myriad of ways but that one is succinct and so fitting.

This helped me greatly on my World Issues project. Thanks so much=]