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Overshoot or Revolution?

A Review of Overshoot

January 14, 2025

OvershootCover
Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown
by Wim Carton and Andreas Malm
Verso
2024

In May 2024, a survey of the world’s leading climate scientists was released with unfortunate news for people and the planet alike.1Damian Carrington, “World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target,” Guardian, May 8, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/world-scientists-climate-failure-survey-global-temperature. According to this survey, scientists expect us to greatly exceed 1.5ºC of global warming by the end of the century, with the majority of survey participants anticipating a planet heated by at least 2.5ºC and 50 percent of scientists expecting at least 3ºC of warming. This spells catastrophe given the severe climate impacts we are already experiencing at 1.3ºC before passing major climate tipping points. This threat is heightened for the world’s poor and racialized populations, largely in the Global South, who are simultaneously experiencing economic losses due to climate damage and have to use already limited funds to adapt.2Monica Pronczuk, “African nations are losing up to 5% of their GDP per year with climate change, a new report says,” AP News, September 2, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/africa-climate-change-flooding-droughts-af5beebf70f414098ad2a4a73a19b76c.

This should, in the words of climate activist Greta Thunberg, provoke panic. Instead, even as the world experiences record-breaking levels of climate harm, fossil fuel extraction continues apace. More than 80 percent of the world’s energy still comes from fossil fuels despite recent record increases in renewable energy, and there are plans and policies in place to expand fossil fuel production well into this century. The United Nations estimates we plan to produce double the fossil fuels in 2030 that the 1.5ºC limit allows, while the IEA suggests 73 percent of energy will still come from fossil fuels by 2030.3“Governments plan to produce double the fossil fuels in 2030 than the 1.5ºC limit allows,” United Nations Environment Programme, November 8, 2023, https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/governments-plan-produce-double-fossil-fuels-2030-15degc-warming; “The energy world is set to change significantly by 2030, based on today’s policy settings alone,” International Energy Agency, October 24, 2023, https://www.iea.org/news/the-energy-world-is-set-to-change-significantly-by-2030-based-on-today-s-policy-settings-alone. How, despite all the evidence and deteriorating material conditions, can politicians, economists, and even some scientists remain optimistic in the face of planetary collapse?

The “saving grace” for maintaining business as usual underlying most climate science models and policies is the idea of overshoot. In environmental science, overshoot signifies when the demand on a natural ecosystem exceeds its capacity to regenerate. However, in this rapidly warming world, overshoot has taken on an additional meaning beyond the strictly biophysical. Overshoot is an ideology, a technical blueprint, and in the words of Andreas Malm and Wim Carton in their new book, Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown, “an actively championed programme for how to deal with the rush into catastrophe.”4Wim Carton and Andreas Malm, Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown (New York: Verso, 2024). Through a chronicling of this paradigm’s history, its influence on climate politics and science, and the dangers associated with its “promise,” Malm and Carton make a compelling case against reliance on overshoot for technical, political, and ecological reasons.

Overshoot offers one of the most detailed explorations to date of how overshoot technologies like solar radiation management, geoengineering, and carbon removal came to be so dominant in scientific models like the IPCC’s Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs). IAMs are “integrated” models  for pathways towards decarbonization (or a certain temperature limit). These models take into account both natural and social dynamics with the intention of influencing policy decisions by assessing the state of society as it relates to things such as technology and progress on sustainable development goals. However, as Carton and Malm demonstrate in their chapter on “The Rise of Overshoot Ideology,” rather than science influencing policy prescriptions, policy (or more properly ideology) helps dictate the outcome of these models. Overshoot explores how the neoliberal roots of these black boxes bias them towards rationalism, economism, and presentism. These biases allow IAMs, like the economist William Nordhaus’s now infamous DICE model, to suggest that 6ºC of warming might be optimal because more immediate and drastic emissions reductions could potentially cut into GDP growth rates. This, despite a growing body of research showing that climate change itself may cut into growth rates far more than such models presume.5“38 trillion dollars in damages each year: World economy committed to income reduction of 19% due to climate change,” Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, May 17, 2024, https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/38-trillion-dollars-in-damages-each-year-world-economy-already-committed-to-income-reduction-of-19-due-to-climate-change; Maximilian Kotz, Anders Levermann, and Leonie Wenz, “The economic commitment of climate change,” Nature 628, (2024): 551–57, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07219-0.

While acknowledging its significance, Carton and Malm look beyond the underlying neoclassical economic ideology of many IAMs by bringing out the central role of politics in shaping their goals and outcomes. A popular anecdote pinpoints the origin of the 1.5ºC target to Nordhaus arbitrarily jotting it on the back of a napkin, without any consideration or evidence from the actual science. This narrative is a way for neoliberal economists and their capitalist backers to make themselves appear more important than they are. The story Malm and Carton tell is more compelling and grounded in the political history of temperature limits. Carton and Malm argue that the negotiation and ratification of the 1.5ºC limit by nearly every country on Earth became possible when the European Union commissioned scientists to develop a pathway for a 1.5ºC world incorporating advances in overshoot technology—most notably bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). They built this technology into the models despite the fact that, according to best estimations, the amount of land needed for BECCS to have a significant influence on decarbonization ranges from 25 to 80 percent of global crop land.6Mathilde Fajardy et al., BECCS Deployment: A Reality Check (London: Imperial College London, 2019), https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/grantham-institute/public/publications/briefing-papers/BECCS-deployment—a-reality-check.pdf. By building in a buffer for business as usual to be cleaned up at some later point, the 1.5ºC limit became politically palatable, even though Global South nations and the environmental justice movement had been advocating for this temperature limit for much longer and with different priorities.

The political need for such a buffer makes perfect sense when one considers the magnitude of assets that would be stranded were we to meet the 1.5ºC target without overshoot. This, as a reminder, includes not only known reserves but all the pipelines, appliances, and other machines that would need to be actively downscaled and decommissioned within just a couple of decades. One study in Nature calculates that the “value of future lost profits in the upstream oil and gas sector exceeds US$1 trillion under plausible changes in expectations about the effects of climate policy.”7Gregor Semeniuk et al., “Stranded fossil-fuel assets translate to major losses for investors in advanced economies,” Nature 12 (2022):532–38, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01356-y. However, this is likely on the low side. Malm and Carton reference multiple studies related to asset stranding in a 1.5ºC or 2ºC world where the price tag ranges from $4 trillion to $185 trillion. The authors note that, while premature obsolescence of capitalist stock is a historical feature of capitalism, the scale and speed for any kind of a low carbon transition presents major challenges for capitalism’s ability to strand fossil assets.

If overshoot technologies are based on political considerations rather than scientific or technological reality, Carton and Malm ask, why should we endorse overshoot over other possibilities? If warming approaching or exceeding 1.5ºC will be dire for billions of people, and if leading political institutions and corporations have no prospect for limiting fossil fuel production and instead rely on nonexistent and nonscalable technologies to ensure sustained capital accumulation, revolution appears to be the only other option. Carton and Malm recognize that revolution is outside the common sense among institutions, activists and the relevant existing political movements—neither the term nor the question of necessity on revolution is typically even posed within mainstream climate politics. But they argue that this must change; as they put it, “climate politics had become revolutionary politics. More precisely, from now on – if not earlier – any attempt at meaningful mitigation of the crisis would have to waylay the dominant classes with a force and confrontational resolve unlike anything in the common memory or imagination.” By making the choice between overshoot or revolution so stark and straightforward, they hope to make this conversation a compulsory starting point within the climate movement and beyond.

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This point is sharpened even further when one considers that Malm and Carton’s analysis only concerns the stranding of fossil assets. While we undoubtedly need to completely remake our energy system in terms of both production and consumption, Malm and Carton have still not scratched the ecological surface of the amount of additional assets  that need to be stranded to develop any form of a sustainable society beyond the achievement of climate stability (as important as that is). In other words: we are not (only) in a climate crisis. We are in an ecological emergency. According to the Planetary Boundaries framework—which looks at nine essential Earth systems processes that provide a safe operating space for humans and nonhumans alike—we have transgressed at least six, with all but one of the boundaries headed in the wrong direction. This is one of several recent syntheses that come to similar conclusions about the future of the biosphere and humanity: according to another recent report, twenty-five of Earth’s thirty-five “vital signs” are at the worst levels ever recorded, showing “a planet on life support.”8Damian Carrington, “Earth’s ‘vital signs’ show humanity’s future in balance, say climate experts,” Guardian, October 8, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/08/earths-vital-signs-show-humanitys-future-in-balance-say-climate-experts. We are (literally and figuratively) missing the forests for the trees by reducing the problem to fossil capital and carbon emissions.

Carton and Malm recognize that revolution is outside the common sense among institutions, activists and the relevant existing political movements—neither the term nor the question of necessity on revolution is typically even posed within mainstream climate politics. But they argue that this must change….By making the choice between overshoot or revolution so stark and straightforward, they hope to make this conversation a compulsory starting point within the climate movement and beyond.

Take agriculture as an additional example in the context of stranded assets. Malm and Carton do not examine agriculture in any detail (this remains a somewhat taboo topic even amongst the socialist left), but agricultural emissions produce roughly a quarter to a third of global carbon emissions and are the largest source of methane emissions.9Leah Douglas, “How food and agriculture contribute to climate change,” Reuters, December 2, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/factbox-how-food-agriculture-contribute-climate-change-2023-12-02/; “Methane and Climate Change,” International Energy Agency, accessed December 28, 2024, https://www.iea.org/reports/methane-tracker-2021/methane-and-climate-change. Beyond this, agriculture is also a massive source of biodiversity loss, water pollution, and highly exploitative labor practices. In a 2013 study by The Stranded Assets Programme at Oxford University, scholars mapped out three stranded assets scenarios based on different levels of environmental risk.10Ben Caldecott, Nicholas Howard, and Patrick McSharry, Stranded Assets in Agriculture: Protecting Value from Environment Related Risks (Oxford: University of Oxford, 2013), https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2022-03/stranded-assets-agriculture-report-final.pdf. They found that somewhere between $6.3 and $11.2 trillion in agricultural assets are at risk due to imminent and future environmental threats. This makes agriculture a hugely vulnerable industry based on the trajectory we are on.

It is worth emphasizing that this study examines agricultural assets at risk based on phenomena associated with environmental impacts (like climate change and overfishing) and policy mechanisms like regulation, rather than assets that would be stranded as a result of transitioning to a sustainable model (which is what Malm and Carton are concerned with in the context of fossil fuel emissions). Unfortunately, to my knowledge, no data exists on this latter question  demonstrating a larger gap in the research field with regard to stranded assets. Some academics are beginning to examine this topic and we should expect more research to emerge over the coming years.

Regardless of the dearth of data, it is clear that the timely transition to a more sustainable society would strand assets extending far beyond those directly related to greenhouse gas emissions. For example, biodiversity loss ranks alongside climate in severity and consequence. According to the United Nations Resource Panel, 90 percent of biodiversity loss can be attributed to the extraction, processing, and use of various kinds of natural resources.11Inger Andersen, “Global Resources Outlook press statement by UNEP Executive Director,” United Nations Environment Programme, March 1, 2024, https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/speech/global-resources-outlook-press-statement-unep-executive-director. Biomass has historically been the biggest source of resource extraction, but the Resource Panel projects nonmetallic minerals to be the overwhelming driver of resource use over the next several decades (mostly used for construction and industrial applications) with overall resource use estimated to grow by 60 percent between now and 2060. This suggests that the extent of asset stranding involved in addressing only the biodiversity and climate crises—to say nothing of other facets of ecological crisis—would greatly exceed Malm and Carton’s estimates, even if the exact figures remain a mystery.

All of this begs the question of what a genuine alternative to the overshoot conjecture would entail. In the Western world, at least, it appears that the only unified research program taking this question seriously is the degrowth movement. One can find leading degrowth scholars and theorists making pointed criticisms of the overshoot conjectures via critical essays, scientific research on low energy scenarios, and even developing degrowth IAMs.12Jason Hickel, “On Technology and Degrowth,” Monthly Review 75, no.3 (2023): https://monthlyreview.org/2023/07/01/on-technology-and-degrowth/; Joel Milward-Hopkins et al., “Providing decent living with minimal energy: A global scenario,” Global Environment Change 65 (2020): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102168; Lorenz T. Keyßer and Manfred Lenzen, “1.5ºC degrowth scenarios suggest the need for new mitigation pathways,” Nature Communications 12 (2021): https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22884-9. Degrowthers argue for a rational reduction of material throughput, mainly through reduced forms of economic activity that do not achieve ecological or human wellbeing. One can point to car dependency, meat-intensive diets, planned obsolescence of technology, the size of homes and apartments (especially in the United States), artificial intelligence, and so on as industries or forms of infrastructure that could be scaled down, abolished or replaced with behavioral alternatives. Surprisingly, Malm admits he has not engaged with much degrowth literature.13Tweet by Andrew Ahern (@AndrewsonEarth), X, November 23, 2023, 10:55 a. m., https://x.com/AndrewsonEarth/status/1727717617513726088; “Andreas Malm on Palestine, climate activism, and over-shooting 1.5ºC,” YouTube video, 1:51:48, posted by “Verso Books,” November 23, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVC8lL84UrU. While the degrowth movement has its own work to do to turn its insights into a viable political project, engaging more deeply with the degrowth literature might have helped the authors to see the problem of stranded assets as extending beyond fossil capital, and thus to understand the needed revolution in broader ecological terms as well.14Kai Heron, “Forget Eco-Modernism,” Verso (blog), April 2, 2024, https://www.versobooks.com/en-ca/blogs/news/forget-eco-modernism?srsltid=AfmBOoq2yA3sdGErqvuTbssSwqfMqem0pOQjSiYICpXAdVbqj–xSwOB.

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If the choice is between overshoot and revolution, what do Malm and Carton suggest for a revolutionary climate program and politics? The authors direct us to Ecuador and the Yasuni rainforest as a start. In 2007, newly elected president Rafael Correa adopted a plan to protect the Yasuni area of the Amazon from oil and gas drilling by soliciting international funding to compensate for lost revenue; when this funding was not forthcoming, he gave the green light for extraction. Instead of accepting this outcome, the Yasunidas got organized around a national referendum, knocking on nearly a million doors to gather support to stop the drilling. Ecuadorians approved the referendum with a 58 percent vote. Although Correa tried to void the referendum, the Ecuadorian Supreme Court ultimately upheld it. Malm and Carton deem this the first time ever that a democratically elected referendum on stranding fossil fuel assets was approved. They write, “it was the culmination of decades of mass mobilization against oil in Ecuador, spanning the tactical spectrum from litigation to sabotage.” Taking this as an example, the political North Star for environmental mobilization is to get a Yasuni victory in a country like the United States, Canada, Norway or other major fossil fuel producers.

There is much to explore and ask about the Yasuni victory and its broader lessons, much of which is beyond the scope of this review. But one might question whether this model requires electing progressive politicians first and then pushing them once in power. We might wonder whether this is really what revolution looks like. Further, the Yasuni victory took roughly fifteen years of struggle; are such campaigns compatible with the timeline of preventing runaway warming?

Malm and Carton provide us with certain ways of thinking about the ecological and climate crisis, even if they pose more questions than they answer in depth. While we wait for part two of the Overshoot series, these questions may or may not be answered. Either way, the first installment leaves us with important strategic questions and conversations to have amongst global climate activists, workers, and academics, none more important than building out the revolutionary arm of the global climate and environmental movement.

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