Editor’s Note: Technology has created a virtual lifespace for all: a lifespace that gives us calculated doses of dopamine and gets us addicted to it. The following piece urges us to remove ourselves from the technological world that we have unwittingly been entangled into and to place ourselves within the natural, real world.
Praise the Technology!
By Mankh
89% of Americans say they check their phones within the first 10 minutes of waking up.
75% of Americans feel uneasy leaving their phone at home.
75% use their phone on the toilet.
69% have texted someone in the same room as them before.
60% sleep with their phone at night
57% consider themselves “addicted” to their phones
55% say that they have never gone longer than 24 hours without their cell phone.
47% of people say they feel a sense of panic or anxiety when their cell phone battery goes below 20%.
After a Hewlett-Packard BIOS update fried my computer’s motherboard I had four-and-a-half days without a computer while the part was in transit to the neighborhood repair guy I found because of guidance in a dream from a Carolina Wren reminding me to look local; then Internet via cell phone helped find the repair guy.
The night before I had decided to go to Best Buy’s Geek Squad, and later on learned that they typically don’t replace motherboards.
I am not much adept with cell phone internet usage so without the habitual computer checking of email and news-hounding web-searching, I wondered: What is that habit, that urge, that compulsion that has so many people hooked to their gadgets?…hooked as if the gadget is the Oracle of Delphi and everyone doesn’t have a clue what’s going on or what the future will bring UNTIL they beseech the high priestess of technology.
Various online stats indicate that people check their phones anywhere from every three to twelve minutes! Without doing that, what else is there to check, to tune-in to?
How about: the natural world, meaningful symbols, mental exercises, deep listening, dreams, to name but a few.
Perhaps people too-often feel something lacking or the need to feel complete by having interacted with someone, or a message, news article, video, or game. Normal urges yet when obsessively habitual, I venture to say that there is the searching for such a tech moment so as to save one’s self.
But save one’s self from what? Boredom?
Or to riff the old saying attributed to Socrates, the examined life which makes life worth living?
In that case, the gadget becomes a lazy savior, but not an individual savior rather a conveyor of little techno savior moments which while temporarily satisfying, the feeling doesn’t last long so one must check the gadget again for another little savior moment, and again.
Some of the hooks of this religion of technology are: the promises put forth by the advertising merchants of veneer from their pixel pulpits; keeping up with the corporate news sports-style coverage of “perpetual war for perpetual peace,” as historian Charles A. Beard phrased it; an incessant need to be in communication with human beings, at the neglect of the non-human beings.
Little techno savior moments also lean toward mechanical, robotic and unemotional forms of communication, well, except for emojis and exclamation points!!!!!
(wow! he-she-they must really omg like me!!!!!)
Yet here I am scribbling with pen and paper looking forward to my computer’s born-again status so that I may type and share this missive with whomever may happen to read it.
Ay, there’s the rub, the to tech or not to tech rub . . . or how much to tech.
I can’t begin to address the big picture of technology usage as it is the backbone of global and local business transactions, plus personal interfacing, whether you can touch the face or not. So I simply address the consciousness of the usage as I see it playing out in society at large.
Little techno savior seekers move in lockstep with their electronic marching orders of selected, scripted, distorted or outright lies news-feeds; shop till you reach the top of social status clicks; assuage deep-rooted personal insecurities by amassing more ‘likes.’
Yet in the AI world, even the concept of a savior has been depersonalized and reduced to a drive-thru fast-food fleeting moment.
I propose that how we use the gadgets is one starting point for re-evaluation, the how being the consciousness with which we use them and a weighing of what we are not using enough: our feet, our hearts, our minds, dreams, intuitions, hunches, meditations, messages from our so-called neighbor the natural world and how those messages intertwine with the dreaming time that is beyond time, beyond rational thought, beyond click and ye shall find.
The good news is that all that good stuff is readily available inside you and outside your window if you’re willing to work for it, work as hard as a child working in an underground mine in the Congo for cobalt so you can have the facility to send an emoji that a new day is dawning.
And by “work” I don’t mean job for money rather the discipline and receptivity to serving something bigger than your ego, something bigger than appeasing your momentary fancy of a feel-good hook.
Bob Dylan sings in “My Back Pages”:
“In a soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not I’d become my enemy
In the instant that I preach…
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now.”
And so I must dismiss any notion that this scribbling will save anyone, though I would like to think that it may tilt the scale of consciousness so that more people will be able to save themselves.
After four-and-a-half days with minimal gadget use, I am reminded that it is a tool and the manner in which humanity produces and uses such tools will determine their functionality or lack there of, with ever the questions: At what cost to habitats where massive mining occurs; at what cost to the well-being of the workers, too-often slave laborers; at what cost to one’s self and the natural world for the lack of selfless service to that very world?
In his book The Religion of Technology, David F. Noble cites technology as often spurred by a “masculine millenarian mentality,” often exhibited with the military and science frame of mind, along with a sense of religious redemption. Yet this sense of redemption is deceptively foolhardy.
According to J. D. Bernal, quoted in the book:
“The cardinal tendency of progress is the replacement of an indifferent chance environment by a deliberately created one. As time goes on, the acceptance, the appreciation, even the understanding of nature, will be less and less needed. In its place will come the need to determine the desirable form of the humanly controlled universe.” (p. 175)
What this boils down to is if we as a species go the route of playing materialistic God . . . or are willing to play along with and be played by the Earth and the spiritual energies above and within Her.
While perhaps too cute or quaint or unbelievable to some human beings, the likes of little Carolina Wrens can show the way. But such guidance can not be bought rather is the fruit of relationship, as for many years I have put and let stay up undecorated holiday wreaths on my patio, keep them up even when they have dried from scented fresh woods green to brown.
Why? Because the wrens often sleep and, while I can’t scientifically prove it, dream in them.
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is a verbiage experiencer, in other words, he’s into etymology, writes about his experiences and to encourage people to learn from direct experiences, not just head knowledge.
He writes, small press publishes, and is the author of 17 books. Mankh travels a holistic mystic Kaballah-rooted pathway staying in touch with Turtle Island and the cycles of the Seasons. His works can be found here. You can also find this article on his blog post.
Editor’s note: A new report that microplastics pollution is hampering photosynthesis in plants, and that the result is the loss of some 10% of the world’s primary productivity, including food crops. We are now risking to blot out the planetary photosynthesis machine, just because we think that stopping the growth of the plastics industry is a subversive idea. But the report gets something in reverse: it is not that these effects “extend from food security into planetary health.” It is the opposite .But that changes little in a situation in which nothing changes, except for the desperate attempt of solving problems by killing the messenger, that is, “driving a dagger into the climate change religion”
We got rid of acid rain. Now something scarier is falling from the sky. Here’s why you should never, ever drink the rain. A number of studies have documented microplastics in rain falling all over the world — even in remote, unpopulated regions. Plastic particles have infiltrated the entire planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. Also, the microscopic shards of plastic found in every corner of the planet may be exacerbating antibiotic resistance, a new study has found.
Plastic Pollution: So Much Bigger Than Straws
by Jackie Nuñez, The Revelator
March 14, 2025
Over the past couple of weeks we’ve seen the current U.S. administration grasping at straws, mocking restrictions on single-use plastics, and trying to distract from the real issue: Plastic poisons people and the planet, and the industries that produce it need to stop making so much of it.
When I started “The Last Plastic Straw” movement in 2011, the sole purpose was to bring attention to a simple, tangible issue and raise awareness about the absurdity of single-use plastic items and engage people to take action.
So what are the real problems with plastic? Plastics don’t break down, they break up: Unlike natural materials that decompose, they fragment into smaller and smaller pieces, never benignly degrading but remaining forever plastic. All plastic items shed plastic particles called microplastics and even smaller nanoplastics, which we inhale, ingest, and absorb into our bodies. Plastics, depending on their manufacturing composition, contain a mixture of more than 16,000 chemicals, at least 4,200 of which are knownhazards to human health. When we use plastic straws, cups, plates, utensils, and food packaging, we are literally swallowing those toxic plastic particles and chemicals.
Plastic particles have also been found in placenta and breast milk, so children today are being born plasticized. This is a toxic burden that today’s youth should not have to bear.
🧠 A new study found the amount of microplastics & nanoplastics in human brains increased by 50% between 1997 to 2024. Researchers found that in people with dementia, plastic particles were six times more numerous than in people without dementia. It was also found that plastic particles in human livers are increasing over time.
🔬75% of the plastics found in human tissue samples were one of the most common types of plastics: polyethylene. Polyethylene (PET) is used in everyday items like food packaging, bottles, bags, toys, and more.
📈 With microplastics and nanoplastics building up in our bodies it’s time to put plastic-free solutions in place, for people and the planet.
Source: The Journal of Nature Medicine
It goes without saying that plastic’s harms to our health come at an enormous cost to us, who must suffer through the heartbreaking and painful diseases it causes. It’s estimated that every 30 seconds, someone dies from plastic pollution in the Global South, an area overburdened by mountains of plastic pollution that is shipped away from the Global North under the guise of “recycling” only to be dumped and often burned, releasing additional toxic pollution. Financially too, plastics are expensive: The chemicals in plastic alone cost the U.S. healthcare system $250 billion in just one year.
We can’t recycle our way out of this. Plastic was never made to be recycled and is still not made to be recycled.
Our leaders who support continued or even increased plastic production seem ignorant of the facts about plastic pollution. Let us enlighten them: All plastic pollutes, and single-use plastic items like straws are not only hazardous to our health, they’re especially wasteful.
We could all save money if our government prioritized building up plastic-free reuse and refill systems, where we hold on to our stuff rather than continuously buy it and throw it away. Such reuse and refill systems were the reality before single-use plastic was mass-produced and marketed. And they worked. Most U.S. voters support reducing plastic production, along with national policies that reduce single-use plastic, increasing use of reusable packaging and foodware, and protecting people who live in neighborhoods harmed by plastic production facilities.
To change this nightmare scenario, our leaders need to support policies that reduce plastic production, not grow it. This means curbing wasteful plastic production and supporting plastic- and toxic-free, regenerative materials and systems of reuse and refill.
As the advocacy and engagement manager at Plastic Pollution Coalition, my work continues to support the solutions to this massive global crisis — strong policies that focus on plastic pollution prevention, better business practices, and a culture shift. We work together with our allied coalition organizations, businesses, scientists, notables and individual members every single day to make these solutions a reality — no matter how much the U.S. administration or other leaders try to undermine, belittle, or dismiss efforts to minimize the use of straws and other quickly disposed plastic products that poison our planet and our bodies.
Plastic never was and never will be disposable, and neither are people.
This article first appeared on The Revelator and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Banner Credit: Taklamacuwv Lamia on Wikimedia Commons
Once upon a timeless . . . the non-human Light-Beings of the Sun cast their rays like life-giving nets upon the waters and the lands of the Earth . . . and all beings stirred awake to do the day’s work (and play) . . . until the nighttimeless when all beings rested and then the stars would guide their dreams . . .
(“Buddha Resisting The Demons Of Mara”)
In the actual living-experience, there is no “happily ever after” because there is constant work and maintenance to do. While work and maintenance can sometimes be enjoyable, they aren’t end-of-rainbow-pot-of-gold ideal. Yet many people cling to the idea of such gold, of ‘making it big.’ And many cling to infantile delusions of a constant comfort zone.
Zen saying: Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.
In general, i’ve noticed that many people have an aversion to talking about or dealing with extremely difficult situations of which for this essay i’ll call such extremities, The Monster. The difficulty is understandable because The Monster is unpleasant and pokes at one’s trauma buttons.
The Merchants of Veneer refers to those who go to extremes to cover-up The Monster. The Monster is genocide, ecocide, deliberately induced fear and terror, violence and greed, all of which i consider as horrid manifestations of what Steven Newcomb refers to as “the domination system,” and what many know of as colonialism, predatory capitalism, totalitarianism, fascism, ad nauseam.
MONSTER: from Latin monstrum — inauspicious portent or sign, abnormal shape, “a derivative of monere ‘to remind, bring to (one’s) recollection, tell (of); admonish, advise, warn, instruct, teach.’”
Teachers and elders “advise, warn, instruct” peers and younger generations with ways to avoid monsters; forewarned is forearmed, and weaponry is not a necessity.
Also, one can figure out stuff on one’s own because typically there are signs or warnings before The Monster does dastardly deeds. I think of those signs and warnings as a pattern of mercy built into the universe.
When not heeded, however, and instead allowed to run amok, monstrums (abnormal shapes and signs) can take on a form — anything from falling down and hurting one’s self, to an addiction, to a river-polluting corporation, a brainwashing media, a flagrantly offensive military force, so-called green/renewables saving the world, AI, genocide, ecocide, and more.
Many of the modern monsters appear as the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. Whether a fancy-car-driving televangelist, a clown pedophile, or a corporation that holds charity events with one hand while destroying natural habitats and cultures with the other — the concept is the same.
Many signs in the world continue to go unheeded, and so: many monsters need to be dealt with.
The deeper root of “monster” is men- “to think, mind, spirit, memory, sage, seer,” indicating that, as mentioned above, one has the ability to ward off monsters, to think ahead, to care for the mind and spirit of all beings.
But our Mother Earth knows that The Monster is running amok and, as Leonard Cohen sang, “Everybody knows that the boat is leaking / Everybody knows that the captain lied… / And everybody knows that it’s now or never” . . . Yet the big question then is: Why do so many choose to ignore?
Enter the Merchants of Veneer and their willing and ignorant minions. Those Merchants are masters of the slick surface level, from the looks real faux wooden cabinet to the media spectacle previews condoning and cheering on the War on Iraq and the Global War Of Terror, while conversely, not tainting the shine by not showing the genocide in Gaza. The Merchants of Veneer shine the shit-show to delusory perfection, and so slickly that masses of people go along with the bumpy ride by ordering an environmentally friendly seat belt rather than finding ways of smoothing the rode.
The Merchants of Veneer are the Public Relations division for The Monster. The PR includes the corporate media, global banking systems, consumerism, enforced religions, revisionist history and cherry-picked educational systems, and governments in bed with corporations aka fascism.
When telling people some tidbit i know, some of the history of America and Turtle Island, i’ve often heard people say to the effect, ‘It’s terrible what was done to the Natives.’ Yes, but then when i add that it’s still going on and cite a specific issue, they may shake their head in disgust, but don’t seem to find it as terrible NOW. ‘Why?’ I’ve asked the air, ‘Why do they avoid and turn away?’
And the answer i get is the impetus for this essay . . . Not wanting to face The Monster, not wanting to make sacrifices with one’s comfort zone which is actually a comfort zone built on the discomforts of others, those who do the work and maintenance with no chance of a pot of gold rather lucky if they get a next meal.
“Every program of exploitation has an ideology bolted on to legitimate it to the world — but also to those benefitting: very few people want to look in the mirror and see a monster staring back.”
~ Matt Kennard, from his book The Racket: A Rogue Reporter Vs The American Empire.
Wake-up Call
The Buddha’s typical subtly serene smile is not one of “happily ever after. My interpretation from experience is that, in part, that serene smile has to do with maintaining one’s inner state of consciousness whether during good times or when facing The Monster.
Many years ago i had a transformative meditation experience, but the details escape me so i’ll attempt to convey the gist: One time meditating i began to see horrible, scary stuff, like scenes of a war. At first i thought: Is this my mind? What i have done? But then i realized i was simply supposed to watch, to witness, be brave enough to witness without flinching or running away, maintain my composure – subtly serene Buddha smile optional – and to allow space for whatever feelings that arose. This inner experience helped me learn to face The Monster, rather than turn a blind eye.
As the story of Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha tells:
Before becoming a Buddha, he saw Four Sights or Signs: aging, disease, death, and devotion to finding the cause of suffering, devotion to participating in the world rather than escaping from it.
And after he became enlightened he began to do the work of dealing with monstrums: “to remind, bring to (one’s) recollection, tell (of); admonish, advise, warn, instruct, teach” in an effort to help others to avoid or deal with The Monster.
(“his hands in the dharmachakra mudra gesture of teaching”)
As the story goes, before Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha, the demon Mara tried to seduce him with beautiful women, then attacked him with monsters, then questioned the validity of his enlightenment.
“Then Siddhartha reached out his right hand to touch the earth, and the earth itself spoke: ‘I bear you witness!’ Mara disappeared. And as the morning star rose in the sky, Siddhartha Gautama realized enlightenment and became a Buddha.”
Each of us has the ability to touch Earth, not only with hands, but with the feet and heart and mind, and actions.
Each of us has the ability to be touched — how much better a mood i have when my day begins with seeing and hearing geese flying overhead.
Since the word “Buddha” means “awakened, to awaken to the natural law,” the Buddha-nature is not of any one individual rather a way of seeing, of being, of living in accord with Sun and Stars and all sentient beings here with Mother Earth. This Buddha-nature is beyond any box of religion and beyond any specific label of spirituality.
We as a species, as well as all species, are faced with a dual dilemma: stopping The Monster that is already in action, already running amok yet pretending with a slick veneer that everything is under control and things will get better soon. And warding off The Monster that is clamoring to get in on the destructive, sucking the life out of life action.
Instead of overreacting to The Monster and counteracting with violence, fear or greed, the experience of witnessing allows for the possibility of one’s inner nature and/or Earth guiding the next step.
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is a writer and small press publisher; he travels a holistic mystic Kaballah-rooted pathway staying in touch with Turtle Island. Mankh meditates, gardens, enjoys music and good humor.
U.S. Supreme Court to Review Apache Stronghold’s Case on Nov. 22, 2024
For Immediate Release: November 7, 2024
Media Contact: Ryan Colby | media@becketlaw.org | 202-349-7219
WASHINGTON – A coalition of Western Apaches, other Native peoples, and non-Native allies yesterday asked the Supreme Court to reject plans by the federal government and a multinational mining giant to destroy a sacred site where Apaches have held religious ceremonies for centuries. In Apache Stronghold v. United States, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to stop the federal government from transferring Oak Flat to Resolution Copper, a foreign-owned mining company that plans to turn the site into a massive mining crater, ending Apache religious practices forever (Watch this short video to learn more). The latest Supreme Court filing rebuts the government’s argument that religious freedom protections in the U.S. Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) do not apply on federally controlled land.
Since time immemorial, Western Apaches and other Native peoples have gathered at Oak Flat, outside of present-day Superior, Arizona, for sacred religious ceremonies that cannot take place anywhere else. Known in Apache as Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, Oak Flat is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and has been protected from mining and other harmful practices for decades. These protections were targeted in December 2014 when a last-minute provision was slipped into a must-pass defense bill authorizing the transfer of Oak Flat to the Resolution Copper company. Resolution plans to turn the sacred site into a two- mile-wide and 1,100-foot-deep crater. The majority owner of Resolution Copper, Rio Tinto, sparked international outrage when it deliberately destroyed 46,000-year-old Indigenous rock shelters at one of Australia’s most significant cultural sites.
“Oak Flat is our spiritual lifeblood—like Mt. Sinai for Jews or Mecca for Muslims—the sacred place where generations of Apache have connected with our Creator,” said Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr. of Apache Stronghold. “The government should protect Oak Flat just like it protects the sacred places of all other faiths in this country—not give it to a foreign-owned mining company for destruction.”
Apache Stronghold—a coalition of Apaches, other Native peoples, and non-Native allies—filed this lawsuit in January 2021 seeking to halt the proposed mine at Oak Flat. The mine is opposed by 21 of 22 federally recognized tribal nations in Arizona, by the National Congress of American Indians, and by a diverse coalition of religious denominations, civil-rights organizations, and legal experts. Meanwhile, national polling indicates that 74% of Americans support protecting Oak Flat. The Ninth Circuit ruled earlier this year that the land transfer is not subject to federal laws protecting religious freedom. But five judges dissented, writing that the court “tragically err[ed]” by refusing to protect Oak Flat.
“Blasting the birthplace of Apache religion into oblivion would be an egregious violation of our nation’s promise of religious freedom for people of all faiths,” said Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel at Becket. “The Supreme Court has a strong track record of protecting religious freedom, and we expect the Court to take this case and confirm that Native American religious practices are fully protected by federal law.”
In addition to Becket, Apache Stronghold is represented by Erin Murphy of Clement & Murphy PLLC, Professor Stephanie Barclay of Georgetown Law School, and attorneys Michael V. Nixon and Clifford Levenson.
Apache Stronghold v. United States is one of the most significant decisions pending the U.S. Supreme Court. To allow Resolution Copper/Rio Tinto to destroy sacred Oak Flat would be like destroying St. Patrick’s Cathedral to put up a McDonald’s just in time for Christmas. The masses (no pun intended) of people would go ape shit cray-cray. Resolution Copper/Rio Tinto is capable of such atrocities; may enough of the judges show true heart-mind and make the right-wise decision in favor of Apache Stronghold and the well-being and balance of the Earth. – Mankh
An example of what Rio Tinto has done… Simandou, Guinea, “with over two billion tonnes of reserves and some of the highest grades [iron ore] in the industry (66% – 68% Fe which attracts premium pricing), has a back-of-the-envelope calculation value of around $110 billion at today’s prices.”
Previously, anthropogenic ecological overshoot has been identified as a fundamental cause of the myriad symptoms we see around the globe today from biodiversity loss and ocean acidification to the disturbing rise in novel entities and climate change. In the present paper, we have examined this more deeply, and explore the behavioural drivers of overshoot, providing evidence that overshoot is itself a symptom of a deeper, more subversive modern crisis of human behaviour. We work to name and frame this crisis as ‘the Human Behavioural Crisis’ and propose the crisis be recognised globally as a critical intervention point for tackling ecological overshoot. We demonstrate how current interventions are largely physical, resource intensive, slow-moving and focused on addressing the symptoms of ecological overshoot (such as climate change) rather than the distal cause (maladaptive behaviours). We argue that even in the best-case scenarios, symptom-level interventions are unlikely to avoid catastrophe or achieve more than ephemeral progress. We explore three drivers of the behavioural crisis in depth: economic growth; marketing; and pronatalism. These three drivers directly impact the three ‘levers’ of overshoot: consumption, waste and population. We demonstrate how the maladaptive behaviours of overshoot stemming from these three drivers have been catalysed and perpetuated by the intentional exploitation of previously adaptive human impulses. In the final sections of this paper, we propose an interdisciplinary emergency response to the behavioural crisis by, amongst other things, the shifting of social norms relating to reproduction, consumption and waste. We seek to highlight a critical disconnect that is an ongoing societal gulf in communication between those that know such as scientists working within limits to growth, and those members of the citizenry, largely influenced by social scientists and industry, that must act.
For Will Steffen (1947–2023), one of the kindest advocates for our planet in a time of crisis.
‘The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of’. – Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928
‘A species causing the extinction of 150 species per day doesn’t need more energy to do more of what it does’. – Hart Hagan, Environmental journalist
Introduction
Modern humans and millions of other species face an unprecedented number of existential threats due to anthropogenic impacts exceeding our planet’s boundaries. We are in dangerous territory with instability in the known realms of biosphere integrity, land system change and novel entities such as plastics and synthetic toxins, climate change, freshwater change and biogeochemical flows.
Considering the dynamic, closed and interconnected nature of Earth’s systems together, these threats pose an increasingly catastrophic risk to all complex life on Earth. Many scientists privately believe it to be already too late to avoid the tipping points that will trigger devastating and irreversible feedback loops.
It is increasingly acknowledged that all of these threats are symptoms of anthropogenic ecological overshoot. Overshoot is defined as the human consumption of natural resources at rates faster than they can be replenished, and entropic waste production in excess of the Earth’s assimilative and processing capacity.
In this paper, we explore the behavioural drivers of overshoot, providing evidence that overshoot is itself a symptom of a deeper, more subversive modern crisis of human behaviour. We work to name and frame this crisis as ‘the Human Behavioural Crisis’ and propose the crisis be recognised globally as a critical intervention point for tackling ecological overshoot. We demonstrate how current interventions are largely physical, resource intensive, slow-moving and focused on addressing the symptoms of ecological overshoot (such as climate change) rather than the distal cause (maladaptive behaviours). We argue that even in the best-case scenarios, symptom-level interventions are unlikely to avoid catastrophe or achieve more than ephemeral progress.
In the final sections of this paper, we propose an interdisciplinary emergency response to the behavioural crisis by, amongst other things, the shifting of social norms relating to reproduction, consumption and waste. We seek to highlight a critical disconnect that is an ongoing societal gulf in communication between those that know such as scientists working within limits to growth, and those members of the citizenry, largely influenced by social scientists and industry, that must act.
Scientists working in limits to growth must join forces with social scientists not only in academia but critically with the non-academic practitioners of applied social and behavioural science. Not only are such practitioners demonstrated masters in the theory of driving behaviour change but crucially also masters of the practical implementation of that theory in the real world.
Lastly, we will provide a possible frame through which to view our species’ ability to consciously drive large-scale behavioural change as an opportunity unavailable to most other species. An implementation of such a framework limiting widespread maladaptive behavioural manipulation may ensure human appetites remain within planetary boundaries, and be key in unlocking a truly prosperous and sustainable future for H. sapiens on Earth.
This paper is not intended to be an exhaustive roadmap to address the behavioural crisis, instead it should be taken as a call to action for interdisciplinary collaboration to achieve just that.
Scope
In this paper, aside from reproductive behaviours which we mention below, our focus is largely confined to socially constructed attitudes, values and behaviours that encourage unnecessary personal consumption, and which have led the world into a state of overshoot.
This focus is critical because, to date, a mere quarter of humanity – the wealthy quarter – is responsible for 74% of excess energy and material use. This, when taken alone, is sufficient to propel the human enterprise into overshoot.
Meanwhile, the quarter of the global population who live below the USD $3.65 poverty line, and the almost half, 47%, who live below the USD $6.85 poverty line9 aspire to achieve equivalent high-end lifestyles, encouraged, in part, by the constant barrage of advertising. To achieve this would certainly increase greenhouse gas emissions, deplete many essential renewable resources from fish-stocks to arable soils and strain global life-support to breaking point, including the risk of triggering runaway hothouse Earth conditions.
We acknowledge that there are many other relevant behaviours and considerations, including genetic pre-dispositions to consume, the role of temporal, spatial and social discounting, socio-political factors (e.g. status hierarchies) and even addiction to conspicuous consumption.
Repeated rewarding experiences help shape the synaptic circuits of the developing brain, predisposing the individual to seek out similar experiences that reinforce the already preformed circuits and to deny or reject contrary inclinations or information.11
We also acknowledge that part of our focus, on media and marketing manipulation, is just one example of how intentional behavioural manipulation undermines planetary and social health. There certainly are other examples – such as how firms and governments limit more sustainable options either by design or consequence. In essence, power dynamics in society underlie the manipulation of needs, wants and desires. This is crucial for understanding how our human predisposition for potentially maladaptive behaviours has been twisted to become actually maladaptive. While we humans are fully capable of regulating ourselves, power dynamics in societies often overcome this. Better understanding this within different societies, and how it perpetuates our ‘polycrises’, will help us move into a wiser and more sustainable civilisation.
In regards to reproductive behaviours, population growth plays, and will continue to play, a significant role in ecological overshoot. Across the globe, the middle class is the fastest-growing segment of the population, projected to grow another billion to reach 5 billion by 2030. Over the coming decades, the majority of projected population growth will be concentrated in the developing world, where the average standard of living must be raised through increases in per-capita consumption. As a result, however, their ecological footprints are likely to increase towards those of the Global North.
Proponents of ‘green growth’ may argue that there is a way to avoid this, however, ‘the burden of proof rests on decoupling advocates’.
To avoid ecological breakdown ‘incrementalist propositions along the lines of green growth and green consumerism are inadequate. The ideals of sufficiency, material thresholds and economic equality that underpin the current modelling are incompatible with the economic norms of the present, where unemployment and vast inequalities are systematic requirements, waste is often considered economically efficient (due to brand-protection, planned obsolescence, etc.) and the indefinite pursuit of economic growth is necessary for political and economic stability’.
Even the relatively conservative IPCC views population growth as a significant factor in climate change (a single symptom of ecological overshoot). Additionally, a recent paper found that population growth has cancelled out most climate gains from renewables and efficiency from the last three decades. For these reasons and more, we have not gone into detail on certain aspects of population dynamics. Instead, we have rooted this paper in ecological economics where population – at any level – plays an important role.
We call for additional research to develop a full understanding of the many dimensions of the behavioural crisis and how we can best address it.
Previous scientists’ warnings
The initial ‘World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity’ was published in 1992, starkly emphasising the collision between human demands and the regenerative capacity of the biosphere. It was followed by a further report, ‘World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice’ which confirmed that the intervening 25 years had merely accelerated environmental destruction driven by a global population increasing by more than 40% – some 2 billion humans. The ‘World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency’ report, so far endorsed by 14,859 scientists from 158 countries, proposed a range of measures for restoring and protecting natural ecosystems, conserving energy, reducing pollutants, reducing food waste, adopting more plant-based diets, stabilising population and reforming the global economy.
Subsequent warnings from the scientific community have added to the evidence of overshoot including insect extinctions, the impact of climate change on microorganisms, the freshwater biodiversity crisis, endangered food webs, invasive alien species, the degradation of large lakes, the illegal/unsustainable wildlife trade, the role of affluence, tree extinctions, an imperilled ocean, and population growth as a specific driver. These papers are gathered on the Alliance of World Scientists website.
Despite so many warnings, there has been a marked lack of action, driving several of us to co-author a ‘World Scientists’ Warnings into Action, Local to Global’ paper, so far endorsed by over 3,000 scientists from more than 110 nations, to set out a framework for concrete action to curb our hyper-consumption of resources. This paper focused on the same six key issues (energy, pollutants, nature, food systems, population and the economy, plus governance and leadership), and on three timelines to 2026, 2030 and 2050. None of the key issues identified by the authors are isolated problems; they are all symptoms of human ecological overshoot.
In the present paper, we contend that an underlying behavioural crisis lies at the root of ‘overshoot’ and probe the implications for humanity if we are to retain a habitable planet and civilisation. While human behaviours were implicit in the various world scientists’ warnings, we believe they need explicit attention and concerted emergency action in order to avoid a ghastly future.
Human behaviour drives overshoot
The main drivers of anthropogenic ecological overshoot are human behaviours and cultures relating to consumption and population dynamics. These two factors are mathematically, though certainly not linearly, related. Like other species, H. sapiens is capable of exponential population growth (positive feedback) but until recently, major expansions of the human enterprise, including increases in consumption and waste, were held in check by negative feedback – e.g. resource shortages, competition and disease – which naturally curbed continued population growth.
H. sapiens took around 250,000 years to reach a global population of 1 billion in 1820, and just over 200 years to go from 1 billion to 8 billion. This was largely made possible by our species’ access to cheap, easy, exosomatic energy, mainly fossil fuels. Fossil fuels enabled us to reduce negative feedback (e.g. food shortages) and thus delay and evade the consequences of surpassing natural limits. In that same 200 year period, fossil energy (FF) use increased 1300-fold, fueling a 100-fold increase in real gross world product, i.e. consumption, and the human enterprise is still expanding exponentially. We are arguably in the late boom phase of a one-off boom-bust cycle that is driving us rapidly beyond the safe harbour of planetary boundaries towards chaotic collapse and worse.
Figure 1. Ecological overshoot in number of Earths required. Data from Global Footprint Network – June 2023.
In this paper, we use the term ‘behavioural crisis’ specifically to mean the consequences of the innate suite of human behaviours that were once adaptive in early hominid evolution, but have now been exploited to serve the global industrial economy. This exploitation has accumulated financial capital – sometimes to absurd levels – for investors and shareholders, and generated manufactured capital (‘human-made mass’) that now exceeds the biomass of all living things on Earth. Significantly manipulated by the marketing industry, which several of us represent, these behaviours have now brought humanity to the point where their sheer scale – through our numbers, appetites and technologies – is driving ecological overshoot and threatening the fabric of complex life on earth.
These behaviours are related to our previously highly adaptive, but now self-defeating, impulses to:
• seek pleasure and avoid pain;
• acquire, amass and defend resources from competitors;
• display dominance, status or sex appeal through size, beauty, physicality, aggression and/or ornamentation;
• procrastinate rather than act whenever action does not have an immediate survival benefit particularly for ourselves, close relatives and our home territories (humans are innate temporal, social and spatial discounters).
Many of our continuing environmental and societal challenges arise from these hijacked impulses. In a global economy that strives to create and meet burgeoning demand, rather than fairly and judiciously apportioning supply, these behaviours are collectively highly maladaptive, even suicidal for humanity.
Drivers of overshoot behaviour
The evolutionary drive to acquire resources is by no means exclusive to the human animal. In H. sapiens however, the behaviours of overshoot are now actively promoted and exacerbated by social, economic and political norms largely through the intentional, almost completely unimpeded exploitation of human psychological predispositions and biases. Here, we explore what we consider to be three critical drivers in the creation and continuation of the human behavioural crisis.
Economic growth
Economists define the ‘economy’ as all those organised activities and behaviours associated with the production, allocation, exchange and consumption of the valuable (scarce) goods and services required to meet the needs and wants of the participating population. But this is a simplistic, limited definition. An ecologist might describe the economy as that set of behaviours and activities by which humans interact with their biophysical environment (the ecosphere) to acquire the material resources required for life, and to dispose of the waste materials that result from both our biological and industrial metabolisms. Economic accounts should therefore record all the energy and material ‘throughput’ from the natural world through the human subsystem and back into nature; they should even account for those produced goods that do not enter formal markets, as these add to gross material consumption. In other words, human economic behaviour helps define the human ecological niche, the role H. sapiensplays in interacting with, and altering the structure, function and species composition of, the ecosystems of which we are a part. From this perspective, economics really should be human ecology. But it is not.
Today’s dominant neoliberal economics conceives of the economy as a self-generating ‘circular-flow of exchange (monetary) value’ that operates separately from, and essentially independent of, the natural environment. We generally measure the scale of economic activity in terms of gross national product, i.e. the abstract monetary value of final goods and services produced in a country in a specified time period. Physical natural resources (i.e. ‘the environment’) are seen as merely one of several interchangeable ‘factors of production;’ should a particular resource become scarce, we need only increase the input of other factors (capital, labour, knowledge) or depend on rising prices to stimulate some engineer to find a substitute.
The same simplistic thinking conceives of humans as self-interested utility maximisers (i.e. ‘consumers’) with unlimited material demands and no attachment to family or community. It was easy for modern techno-industrial society to make the leap from believing that the economy is untethered from nature, people essentially insatiable and human ingenuity unbounded, to accepting the notion of unlimited economic growth fostered by continuous technological progress. This helps explain why real gross world product has ballooned 100-fold, and average per capita income (consumption) has increased by a factor of 14 (twice that in wealthy countries) since the early 1800s.
Interestingly, most people seem unaware that this explosion was made possible not only by improving population health but, more importantly, through technologies that use fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas. Fossil energy is still the dominant means – 81% of primary energy in 2022 – by which humans acquire sufficient food and other resources to grow and maintain the human enterprise. Between 1800 and 2021, global FF use increased by a factor of 1,402, from just 97 TWh to 136,018 TWh. The average world citizen today uses 175 times as much FF as his/her counterpart in 1800. Remarkably, we humans have burned half the FFs ever consumed and emitted half our total fossil carbon wastes in just the past 30 years
Marketing
Up until the early twentieth century, marketers focused on functional differentiation.
The effectiveness of their work was largely contingent on its ability to ‘spotlight’ functional reasons to buy specific products when people needed them. In essence, the role of marketing was to connect functionally differentiated products with willing buyers. As markets matured, however, competition intensified, and businesses looked to find better ways to differentiate themselves beyond the purely functional.
Around this time, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, began experimenting with his uncle’s psychoanalysis work to develop techniques for widespread behavioural manipulation. Bernays later termed this The Engineering of Consent, describing it as the ‘use of an engineering approach – that is, action based only on thorough knowledge of the situation and on the application of scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs’. Bernays successfully commercialised his work and is commonly regarded as one of the founders of the public relations industry. This novel approach, along with others developed in advertising agencies around the globe, proved highly influential on the way products were marketed and sold to consumers.
Suddenly, marketing effectiveness was no longer determined by its ability to ‘raise awareness’ or harvest existing demand but by its ability to deepen and diversify the needs and wants that could be met through personal consumption. This paradigm shift meant that business growth was no longer constrained by people’s mere biological requirements, it could instead be unlocked by attaching greater meaning to an effectively infinite number of market offerings.
In this brave new world of unchecked business growth, multinationals were no longer marketing hygienic toothpaste, but a mint-flavoured confidence boost – a maintenance purchase was suddenly something that could make you feel more attractive. Cars were no longer being sold based on their functional superiority (i.e. space, speed, comfort, price), but by what they suggested about you as a person (i.e. status, sexiness, rebelliousness, appetite for adventure).
In an era saturated by brands and marketing, consumption has become less reflective of our physical needs and more reflective of our runaway psychology. For example, we may buy to boost our mood, reinforce our identity or elevate our social status above others.
The targeting of consumers has become increasingly effective through the collection and use of data and analytics. The collection and sale of individuals’ personal data is rampant. Unsurprisingly, tech giants like Google and Facebook are amongst the most active in this space. These companies track and sell not only what consumers view online but also their real-world locations through what is known as RTB (Real-Time Bidding).
In the US, users’ personal online data is tracked and shared 294 billion times each day (for your average American, that’s 747 times per day). In Europe, that figure was found to be 197 billion times (Google alone shares this personal data about its German users 19.6 million times per minute). Combined that’s 178 trillion times per annum. All this leads to incredibly detailed data about individual user behaviours and preferences. In fact, a 2017 report found that by the time a US child reaches 13 years old, Ad Tech companies hold an average of 72 million data points on that child.
The subsequent egregious overconsumption, which in combination with the resulting creation of waste, disproportionately multiplied by population, gives the wealthy a far greater negative environmental impact than the poor. Individuals with incomes in the top 10% are now responsible for 25–43% of environmental impact and 47% of CO2 emissions, while the bottom 10% contribute just 3–5% of environmental impact, and the bottom 50% contribute only 10% of CO2 emissions. A recent report found the top 20 wealthiest individuals on Earth produce 8000 times the carbon emissions of the poorest billion people.
For sustainability, reductions in FF and material consumption between 40% and 90% are necessary. This may seem unattainable without a proportionate loss in living standards; however, affluent countries exist far beyond sufficiency. In fact, ‘the drastic increases in societies’ energy use seen in recent decades have, beyond a certain point, had no benefit for the well-being of their populations – social returns on energy consumption per capita become increasingly marginal’. As such, multiple studies now demonstrate per-capita energy consumption in many affluent countries could be decreased substantially and quality living standards still maintained.
Pronatalism
Reproductive decision-making is assumed to be a largely personal choice, free from the constraints of cultural and institutional norms. As a result, discussion of reproduction as it relates to environmental degradation and ecological overshoot is often met with concern regarding impingement of people’s personal desires, rights and actions. However, human reproductive behaviours, like most other behaviours, are greatly influenced by cultural norms and institutional policies and deserve to be investigated critically.
Pronatalism is a set of social and institutional pressures placed on people to have children, often driven by forces such as patriarchy, religion, nationalism, militarism and capitalism. Pronatalism exerts enormous influence on people and their choices.
• Positive feedback is often expressed through glorification of motherhood and large families, financial incentives and subsidies for childbearing, including through assisted reproductive technologies.
• Negative feedback is expressed through stigmatisation of use of contraceptives, abortion and lifepaths that do not fit dominant cultural narratives, such as single adults, childless and childfree people, LGBTQIA+ people, adoptive families, those who regret parenthood or those who do not have the ‘right’ number of children.
Depending on the degree of patriarchal and institutional control in a given culture, stigma can take the form of physical and emotional abuse, divorce, economic marginalisation and social ostracisation. The degree of policing individual parenting choices strongly determines the degree of conformity by individuals in a culture or community. This explains why women’s stated preferences for number and timing of children vary in accordance with the norms of the community in which they reside.
Anthropological studies of later hunter-gathering societies as well as evidence of very early agricultural groups show that the shift to settlement societies led to a systematic diminution of female status, as women went from being active gatherers of food to being relegated to the home sphere, as males dominated the fields. The subsequent rise in population, cities and tribal conflict over land and power created the need for more laborers and warriors, which raised the value of women as child bearers to the exclusion of other roles, thereby underpinning the beginnings of pronatalism.
Due to the dangers associated with pregnancy and childbirth, as well as the laborious process of child-rearing, certain ‘social devices’ had to be employed to make reproduction appear more desirable, thereby population increase would offset the wastage of war and disease. Social devices including the institutions of law, religion, media, education and medicine were used to promote and reinforce the universal idealisation of pregnancy and motherhood.
Over the last 200 years, improvements in public health, medicine, disease control and sanitation – all of which occurred on the back of fossil-fuelled industrialisation – significantly lowered the risk of dying, especially amongst children, leading to unprecedented growth in the human population. Pronatalism remains deeply embedded within institutional policies and norms that glorify and reward reproduction to serve external demographic goals – capitalism, religion, ethnocentrism and militarism amongst others.
Despite great advances in gender equality and opportunities for women in education and the economy over the last several decades, pronatalism remains a strong pillar in many societies. Most religious traditions have strong pronatalist teachings and scriptural mandates to ‘be fruitful and multiply’, further buttressed through misinformation about contraceptives and abortion, and proscriptions on their use. Economists, political leaders and corporate elites regularly argue that keeping fertility high ensures a steady supply of workers, consumers and taxpayers, while generating a larger pool of potential inventors.
Neoliberal economic interests are also enacted through popular media and culture that perpetuate pronatalist narratives. From product advertising and women’s magazines glorifying motherhood, and celebrity gossip fixation on the ‘biological clock’ and ‘baby bump’, to popular movies and television programmes that use pregnancy to ‘complete’ the character arc of a protagonist. The marketing, media and entertainment industries exert an enormous influence on people’s reproductive decision-making.
Meanwhile, neoliberal feminism – feminism of the privileged colonised by neoliberal ideology – seeks to advance political goals and enhance market value and has only reinforced the mandatory-motherhood narrative by advocating for women to ‘have it all’, a goal unattainable for the majority of women around the world. This new form of feminism has conveniently been exploited by the assisted reproductive technology industry, growing annually by 9%, with projected growth to a global $41 billion industry by 2026 to market medically dubious technologies such as egg freezing to increasingly younger women.
Concerns about overpopulation in this century led authorities and advocates to institute campaigns and policies to reduce fertility rates. The majority of these policies, which employed measures to combat pronatalism by providing women the means to control their own fertility through access to education and family planning, proved extremely effective. Countries as diverse as Thailand, Indonesia and Iran saw their fertility rates drop from over six to under two in a matter of decades. On the other hand, coercive policies such as China’s one-child policy, and forced abortion and sterilisation campaigns in Puerto Rico and India, not only led to egregious violations of human and reproductive rights but they also backfired. They created the disastrous legacy of tainting all family-planning campaigns – including the majority that have focused on liberating women – with the blemish of coercion. These draconian measures not only led to widespread suspicion of any efforts towards population reduction and stabilisation but they also had the opposite effect of strengthening and legitimising the centuries-old form of reproductive control: pronatalism. Currently, half of all pregnancies globally are unintended and 257 million women are unable to manage their own fertility due to oppressive pronatalist norms within their communities.
Given that the number of children that women desire is largely a social construct within a hegemonic framework of pronatalism, we must create a new cultural landscape that illuminates the fertility levels that women anywhere in the world might truly desire outside this construct. Fertility trends in every geography where women have greater reproductive autonomy point towards a tendency for smaller families – a choice that has been described as women’s ‘latent desire’ for no or few children.
Addressing population growth, and the pronatalism that drives it, must become central to norm-shifting efforts in order to elevate reproductive rights while also promoting planetary health.
Tackling the behavioural crisis
Current interventions at the symptom-level often do more to maintain the status quo than to address the drivers of ecological overshoot. Accepted approaches are generally technological interventions requiring immense amounts of raw materials and generating proportional ecological damage. For example, the much-hyped wholesale transition of our energy systems from fossil fuels to renewables would require daunting levels of raw material and fossil fuels in a futile struggle to meet humanity’s ever-growing demands. Even if successful – which is not likely – the energy transition would address only a single symptom of ecological overshoot, likely worsening other symptoms significantly in the process. As noted earlier, it is humanity’s access to cheap, convenient energy that has allowed us to overshoot many planetary boundaries. Would anything else change simply because we substitute one form of energy for another?
Conversely, interventions addressing the behavioural crisis shift the focus from treating symptoms to treating the core cultural causes. Prioritising psycho-behavioural change over technological interventions may also have greater potential to relieve anthropogenic pressures on Earth. It would certainly greatly reduce the fossil fuels and material extraction required to maintain the human enterprise. An example of an intervention at this level could be the intentional creation of new social norms for self-identity to change human behaviours relating to consumption, population and waste.
Paradoxically, the marketing, media and entertainment industries complicit in the creation and exacerbation of the behavioural crisis, may just be our best chance at avoiding ecological catastrophe. Storytelling shapes appetites and norms: in this paper, we focus largely on the marketing industry, but we believe it important to highlight the potential of the media and entertainment industries for addressing the behavioural crisis also. Modelling behaviour through entertainment can be an extremely powerful way of driving behavioural change. A real-world example of this can be seen through the telenovelas created by the Population Media Centre. PMC’s broadcasts have been remarkably successful in changing reproductive behaviours in many countries through the role modelling of small family norms, delaying marriage until adulthood, female education and the use of family planning. In Ethiopia, pre and post-broadcast quantitative surveys found that listeners were 5.4 times more likely than non-listeners to know at least three family planning methods. Married women who were listeners increased current use of modern family planning methods from 14% to 40%, while use amongst non-listeners increased less than half of that.
It is also worth noting that when it comes to addressing maladaptive behaviours in the current paradigm, there appears to be a focus on raising awareness and education under the arguable assumption that this will lead to the desired behavioural changes. While awareness and education certainly have important roles to play in combating ecological overshoot, they are relatively ineffective at driving behavioural change. Can the same behavioural mechanisms that built and fuelled our immense appetites bring them back within planetary limits to growth?
Lessons from the marketing industry
For more than 100 years, marketers, and recently behavioural scientists, have become proficient at influencing human desires, particularly consumer behaviour. The frameworks of persuasion they have developed could help bring humanity, and countless other species, back to safe harbour by reducing per capita consumption through the celebration of lives of sufficiency, and setting healthy reproductive norms, all without triggering feelings of loss or regret in the general populace.
Though good marketing may seem like black magic, and the exclusive domain of a select number of creative ‘gurus’, it is actually an accessible and highly replicable system of proven practices and principles crafted to influence behaviour.
Broadly speaking, marketers strive to influence individuals’ felt wants and purchasing patterns in one of two key ways: by changing an individual’s perceptions of a product or by changing the social context in which specific forms of consumption take place. It follows that the same strategies can be put to use to redirect consumers’ behaviour rather than reinforcing the present consumption-based crisis. An individual’s belief about a product or service’s value relies heavily on how it is ‘framed’.
Tversky and Kahneman have extensively demonstrated this framing effect, showing that people’s choices can be predictably shifted, not through changing the choices themselves, but by changing what consumers perceive as the salient qualities of available choices. For instance, advertising a yoghurt as 98% Fat Free is much more compelling than promoting the same product as containing only 2% milk-fat. Similarly, people who would be turned off by the promotion of a vegan diet may be completely receptive to the same regime when it is advertised as a plant-based or cholesterol-free diet.
Of the many ways to frame a new behavioural choice, the most successful will offer a clear and relevant benefit to switching. It is not, for instance, as effective to sell nicotine patches merely as a means to quit smoking as it is to promote them in terms of concrete personal benefits (e.g. better relationships, improved health, longer life, etc.). In short, if we were to effectively address the crisis of human behaviour, the desirable alternative behaviours (e.g. flying less, driving less, wasting less, having fewer children) must be creatively framed in ways that accentuate the benefits to the individual rather than highlight their personal sacrifices.
Human behaviour – like that of many other animals – is not driven merely by individual perceptions and values but also by the social context and system in which it occurs. In regards to the former, we act in ways that advertise our wealth, sexual prowess or social status. Much like the peacock with its ornate tail or the stotting Springbok, humans have developed species-specific signals to demonstrate particular attributes or qualities to others.
While the intent of these signals remains largely the same across cultures and over time (i.e. to establish status, attractiveness, dominance, trustworthiness, etc.) the physical means of expression is constantly changing (e.g. from precious gold, silk or ivory in preindustrial times to the prestige automobiles and expensive sound equipment in the 1980s, to the high-end computers, iPhones and understated Airpods of the 2000s). By better understanding what values and qualities people are trying to signal about themselves, we can design alternative perceptual framing that results in dramatically altered behaviour. For example, in one highly successful Australian road safety campaign, a team of marketers was able to effectively reframe the meaning of dangerous high-speed driving from signalling ‘masculine bravery’ to signalling ‘masculine insecurity’. Similarly, between 1979 and 2012, strategic efforts were made to reduce the practice of driving while under the influence of alcohol in the UK. Through decades of targeted marketing, community advocacy and police enforcement, the dangerous behaviour was successfully transformed from exceptionally commonplace (i.e. performed by over half the male driving population) to exceptionally rare (i.e. viewed as unacceptable by 92% of the population).
This idea of signalling becomes particularly significant in light of the disproportionately negative impact that wealthy people have on the ecosphere through ‘conspicuous consumption’. While wasteful excess has historically been a reliable cross-cultural signal of social status, there is now promising evidence that this too is amenable to change in response to increasing eco-consciousness. Recent studies have pointed to a counter-signalling effect amongst wealthier populations, wherein more status is actually conferred to those who consciously try to impress by consuming less (e.g. driving modest cars, taking transit, wearing clothes from the thrift store, etc.). By developing ways to positively socialise responsible behaviour, we can help people maintain their sense of self-worth and social status while reducing their contribution to ecological overshoot.
Although social norms may be shifting slightly in the right direction amongst the wealthy, such a values revolution is unlikely to occur in a time frame rapid enough to restore humanity to a survivable limits to growth scenario. In order to effect the rapid changes necessary to secure our long-term survival, we must consider how marketing, behavioural science and other direct instruments of social influence, including but not limited to the media and entertainment industries, might be used in an emergency response to accelerate the process. At the same time, we must find ways to support the billions of individuals who are greatly in need of increases in consumption to do so without inducing further planetary harm.
While the stigmatisation of ‘driving under the influence’ took decades, recent developments in social networks theory have shown that comparable changes are possible within a timescale of years. With a concerted, multidisciplinary effort by the aforementioned industries, radical change would likely be possible even sooner. The concept of the social ‘tipping point’ shows that as a belief or value spreads through a population, there is a catalytic threshold beyond which there is accelerated widespread adoption of that belief. Evidence suggests that this ‘tipping point’ can occur after just 25% of a study population has accepted the belief as a new norm. This finding may be highly relevant to negate our behavioural crisis in an effective time frame.
Conceivably, there may be a ‘tipping point’ in social acceptance of the values associated with degrowth, where they are likely to become positively reinforced through various forms of media and entertainment without conscious participation. We urgently call for an emergency, concerted, multidisciplinary effort to target the populations and value levers most likely to produce the threshold effect, and catalyse rapid global adoption of new consumption, reproduction and waste norms congruent with the survival of complex life on Earth.
Directing and policing widespread behaviour manipulation
Behavioural manipulation has been intentionally used for nefarious purposes before, and as we’ve just explored, has played a critical role in the creation of the behavioural crisis and consequential ecological overshoot. Eco-centric behaviour is the heart of any sustainable future humanity might wish to achieve. Moreover, we are at a crossroads, with three paths ahead:
• We can choose to continue using behavioural manipulation to deepen our dilemma,
• We can choose to ignore it and leave it to chance, or
• We can use an opportunity that almost no other species has had and consciously steer our collective behaviours to conform to the natural laws that bind all life on Earth.
This raises ethical questions, for example, who is worthy of wielding such power? At present, the answer is anyone with the necessary influence or financial means to exploit it. However, we should not entrust this to any individual human, company, government or industry. Instead, any continued use of widespread behavioural manipulation should be firmly bound by, and anchored within a framework built upon the laws of the natural world, as well as the science on limits to growth.
We urgently call for increased interdisciplinary work to be carried out in directing, understanding and policing widespread behaviour manipulation.
Conclusion
In summary, the evidence indicates that anthropogenic ecological overshoot stems from a crisis of maladaptive human behaviours. While the behaviours generating overshoot were once adaptive for H. sapiens, they have been distorted and extended to the point where they now threaten the fabric of complex life on Earth. Simply, we are trapped in a system built to encourage growth and appetites that will end us.
The current emphasis for overshoot intervention is resource intensive (e.g. the global transition to renewable energy) and single-symptom focused. Indeed, most mainstream attention and investment is directed towards mitigating and adapting to climate change. Even if this narrow intervention is successful, it will not resolve the meta-crisis of ecological overshoot, in fact, with many of the current resource-intensive interventions, it is likely to make matters worse. Psychological interventions are likely to prove far less resource-intensive and more effective than physical ones.
• We call for increased attention on the behavioural crisis as a critical intervention point for addressing overshoot and its myriad symptoms.
• We advocate increased interdisciplinary collaboration between the social and behavioural science theorists and practitioners, advised by scientists working on limits to growth and planetary boundaries.
• We call for additional research to develop a full understanding of the many dimensions of the behavioural crisis (including the overwhelming influence of power structures) and how we can best address it.
• We call for an emergency, concerted, multidisciplinary effort to target the populations and value levers most likely to produce rapid global adoption of new consumption, reproduction and waste norms congruent with the survival of complex life on Earth.
• We call for increased interdisciplinary work to be carried out in directing, understanding and policing widespread behaviour manipulation.
The clock is ticking not only because the health of the natural systems upon which we are utterly dependent is deteriorating but also because broadscale interventions are only possible when a society holds together and is capable of coherent action. As the effects of overshoot worsen, the likelihood of societal breakdown increases. We still have an opportunity to be proactive and utilise the intact systems we have in place to deliver a framework for shifting social norms and other necessities for addressing the behavioural crisis. However, the day may come when societal breakdown will make intervention impossible, locking the planet into an unguided recovery that may salvage much of ‘nature’ but be inhospitable to human life.
