What On Earth!

A new analysis of climate breakdown, suggests this phenomenon is a simply a symptom of 'ecological overshoot' by the human species. The 'levers' of this 'overshoot' are consumption, waste and population per se. All the current postulated 'solutions' to climate breakdown (e.g. 'Energy farms'; 'greener' living styles; taking fewer flights etc.), it's claimed in the analysis, only tackle the symptoms, rather than the cause. This situation may have been exaccerbated, because humans are 'socially engineered' to expect ever-increasing resources ('growth'). If this is true, the only way to 'cure' climate breakdown, is to reduce global human demand for resources to a level, the Earth's biocapacity can regenerate (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/13/human-behavioural-crisis-at-root-of-climate-breakdown-say-scientists). This analysis points out, that humanity would need 1.7 Earths, to maintain the current level of resource consumption, at a level the planet's biocapacity could regenerate. There's only one planet, so this is obviously unsustainable. The situation is, however, probably actually worse, because 1.7 Earths is a global average. The Earth Overshoot Day calculation, reveals that resource consumption is, globally, highly variable. If everyone on the planet lived like an 'average' citizen of the UAE or the USA, our species would need 5.1 Earths. Conversely, if we adopted the more modest life-styles of folk in Afghanistan or Timor-Leste, humans would consume 'only' 0.4 of the Earth's biocapacity (still a very big chunk for a single species). The trouble is, that there's not even such thing as an 'average citizen'. Within countries, there are minorities of mega-consumers and much larger numbers of poorer folk, who place much lesser demands on the planet. Human behavioural attributes, result in people aspiring to become rich mega-consumers. Even folk in poorer countries, generally aspire to have some of the trappings of richer nations. Folk in those richer nations are naturally unwilling to stop taking 'their' excess 'share' of resources. For example, the UK would need a land area 4.1 its size, to be self-sufficient in resources. Even the USA would have to be 2.4 its size, to maintain the life-style of its citizens, without topping them up with imports. The richer nations importing resources to maintain life-styles, can obviously reduce resource availability especially to poorer folk living in exporting countries. There will, of course, also be mega-consumers generally controlling resources in these exporter nations, from which rich countries take their resources. Is it possible to counter climate breakdown, without major changes to the global human population and average human resource utilisation? Perhaps my comment on this post has relevance?