---
title: "Overshoot (book)"
chunk: 4/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(book)"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:33:30.380117+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In his 2015 obituary for Catton, John Michael Greer put this ecological term into its activist context: The core of Overshoot, which is also the core of the entire world of appropriate technology and green alternatives that got shot through the head and shoved into an unmarked grave in the Reagan years, is the recognition that the principles of ecology apply to industrial society just as much as they do to other communities of living things.
The manuscript itself attracted an icon of the environmental movement, former U.S. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. To write the book's foreword was a sign of the popular (and activist) reach the book would garner. That reach included wilderness advocate Dave Foreman, a cofounder of Earth First! and of Wild Earth magazine. In a reflection upon Catton's death, Foreman wrote:William Catton's Overshoot is one of the most important books I've ever read, and Bill was one of my greatest teachers." Catton attributed his own wilderness experiences in national parks of the USA as the source of his drive to understand ecological systems and ecological limits — including the fundamental ecological principle of carrying capacity.In a 2021 guest post titled "Overshoot: Where We Now Stand," Michael Dowd wrote that Catton's book is "the single most important book I have ever read." He also quotes Richard Heinberg, saying:Climate change is not our biggest problem; overshoot is. Global warming is but a symptom of ecological overshoot.The 30th anniversary of the book's publication elicited an 8-page article in Human Ecology Review urging academics to reacquaint themselves with Catton's synthesis:Environmental sociology and related disciplines should seek to rediscover the message in Overshoot and actively pursue a cohesive theoretical direction that challenges the assumptions that drive environmentally destructive behaviors and threaten humanity’s very survival.Summing up the purpose of all his sociological writings after the publication of Overshoot, Catton wrote in 2008:From about 1980 onward, my writing, either solo or in tandem, has sought to spread awareness of the urgent need for everyone, including sociologists, to recognize that our lifestyles, mores, institutions, patterns of interaction, values, and expectations are shaped by a cultural heritage that was formed in a time when carrying capacity exceeded the human load. A cultural heritage can outlast the conditions that produced it. That carrying capacity surplus is gone now, eroded both by population increase and immense technological enlargement of per capita resource appetites and environmental impacts. Human life is now being lived in an era of deepening carrying capacity deficit. All of the familiar aspects of human societal life are under compelling pressure to change in this new era when the load increasingly exceeds the carrying capacities of many local regions — and of a finite planet. Social disorganization, friction, demoralization, and conflict will escalate.Kurt Cobb, in his 2015 tribute to Catton, wrote:Perhaps the most important thing to note about Catton is that he did not blame anyone for the human predicament. To him that predicament is the natural outcome of evolutionary processes and the powers given to humans through those processes. That predicament is no more a product of conscious thought and intention than is the beating of our own hearts.Tom Butler, former editor of Wild Earth magazine, inserted a dedication to Catton in the 2015 book he edited, which was titled Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot. There, Butler described Catton as a "peerless teacher on the perils of overshoot." In his 2023 review of the book, Paul Mobbs examined how humans resist obvious facts, notably about ecological limits and society's collapse. Mobbs emphasizes Catton's claim that humanity's development and resource exploitation have created an unsustainable scenario. In addition to warning about ecological fate, Mobbs emphasizes that Overshoot challenges the belief in technological salvation, suggesting that there must be a profound change in how we perceive and react to ecological crises, helping us understand humanity's relationship with the Earth and the need for change:[Overshoot] is not about the ecological processes of ‘overshoot’ and ‘collapse’ specifically; it is about us!, and how we collectively react to those issues.

== References ==

== External links ==
Official site