Overshoot Quotes

“Posterity doesn't vote, and doesn't exert much influence in the marketplace. So the living go on stealing from their descendants.”
― William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

“Fate, he explained, is shaping history when what happens to us was intended by no one and was the summary outcome of innumerable small decisions about other matters by innumerable people.”
― William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

“Posterity doesn't vote, and doesn't exert much influence in the marketplace. So the living go on stealing from their descendants.”
― William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

“…any area of land will support in perpetuity only a limited number of people. An absolute limit is imposed by soil and climatic factors in so far as these are beyond human control, and a practical limit is set by the way in which the land is used. If this practical limit of population is exceeded, without a compensating change in the system of land usage, then a cycle of degenerative changes is set in motion which must result in deterioration or destruction of the land and ultimately in hunger and reduction of the population.”
― William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

“The faster the present generation draws down the fossil energy legacy upon which persistently exuberant lifestyles now depend, the less opportunity posterity will have to live in anything like the same way or the same numbers. Yet most contemporary political proposals for solving problems of economic stagnation or inequity amount to plans for speeding up the rate of drawdown of non-renewable resources.”
― William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

“It was as if a family whose members were living far beyond their current income should urge the head of the household to solve their problem of overspending by increasing his proficiency in filling out withdrawal slips at the bank. It was as if they were to commend rather than reprimand him for withdrawing more each week than the week before. Newspeak: “Extraction is production.”
― William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

“The “Ostriches” in this analysis represent the truest adherents of the old cornucopian paradigm. The “Realists” are the truest adherents of the new ecological paradigm. The world looks very different to people who think in terms of such different perspectives. Communication between them can be as difficult as between people who share no common language. Paradigm differences were thus bound to make painful the process of adjusting to post-exuberant realities.”
― William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

“America's history has thus exemplified the dependence of political liberty upon ecological foundations.”
― William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

“Doctrines may be a frightful burden, Sumner said, for, with the prestige of antiquity and tradition, they deprive the living generation of an open-minded capacity to face facts.”
― William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

“By not recognizing the ecological pattern, we have misconstrued our own history.14. Our misunderstanding enabled us to overshoot carrying capacity. If misunderstanding persists, it can turn the ecological kind of antagonism into the emotional kind, making an unkind fate crueler than necessary. As other mammalian species have moved into a post-exuberant stage, increased antagonism and competition typically have led to increased violence and behavioral degeneracy.”
― William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change