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Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot
Every problem facing humanity, from poverty to violent conflict over resources, is exacerbated by a ballooning human population – and so is every problem facing nature, including ecosystem loss, species extinctions, and climate chaos. But why is the demographic explosion and its effects ignored by policymakers and the media? Why do important people within the global environmental movement itself avoid the great challenges of the population issue?
Isn’t it time to start talking about the equation that matters most to the future of people and the planet? Overpopulation + Overdevelopment = Overshoot.
In a book as large and dramatic as the topic it covers, Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot (OVER) will ignite that conversation around the world.
In an exhibit-format treatment with provocative photos from across the globe, OVER moves beyond insider debates and tired old arguments (yes, population numbers AND consumption both matter). Framed by essays from population experts Eileen Crist and William Ryerson, as well as a forward by human rights activist Musimbi Kanyoro, the heart of OVER is a series of photo essays illuminating the depth of the damage that human numbers and behavior have caused to the Earth—and which threatens humanity’s future.
Isn’t it time to start talking about the equation that matters most to the future of people and the planet? Overpopulation + Overdevelopment = Overshoot.
In a book as large and dramatic as the topic it covers, Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot (OVER) will ignite that conversation around the world.
In an exhibit-format treatment with provocative photos from across the globe, OVER moves beyond insider debates and tired old arguments (yes, population numbers AND consumption both matter). Framed by essays from population experts Eileen Crist and William Ryerson, as well as a forward by human rights activist Musimbi Kanyoro, the heart of OVER is a series of photo essays illuminating the depth of the damage that human numbers and behavior have caused to the Earth—and which threatens humanity’s future.
330 pages, Hardcover
First published May 12, 2015
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684 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 20, 2016
A book that I will definitely pick up again and recommend.
I really wish that this issues was addressed and talked about a lot more. I wish people heard as much about overpopulation and overdevelopment as they do about issues like breastfeeding in public, or the anti-vaccination debate.
It just seems like this is a topic that is often swept under the rug of denial.
I really wish that this issues was addressed and talked about a lot more. I wish people heard as much about overpopulation and overdevelopment as they do about issues like breastfeeding in public, or the anti-vaccination debate.
It just seems like this is a topic that is often swept under the rug of denial.
February 24, 2017
To try to enjoy life when you are surrounded by pollution and all that human crap is one of the saddest things we as human beings are condemned to do. Even billionaires with all their wealth, are prisoners in their clean bubbles, no matter how pristine and spacious. The sad reality is that we are so many people in this planet, and we are contaminating at such high rate, that we are pretty much breathing our own waste all the time. We have known nothing better, and our descendants will know even worse. Why bringing more and more and more people to a world that has no space for any more? These are the emotions the editor is trying to elicit from all the pictures the reader is exposed to. They are not pretty pictures. In fact, the least horrible is the one I chose for this header: a surfer in a blue wave that is contaminated with trash and crap. Sad, pathetic and horrible.
This is the cover of the book I read. It is a heavy book because it is made of high quality photographic paper. Not very ecological, I shall say.
Next, three pages with beautiful pictures. But don't get me wrong. This are going to be all the not-so-stressful pictures you are going to get in this book. Everything else in this pages makes you think as though you cannot breathe anymore.
This is the dedication of the book. "To the wild beauty, ecological richness, and cultural diversity being swept away by the rising tide of humanity" and
This is a question that leaves a ton of questioning in our minds: "Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term resolution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally or globally?" For me the answer is a resounding "NO!"
This is a very beautiful picture of a woman with her child. Children are beautiful, but overpopulation is not.
This is a picture of our planet, and a quotation from Wangari Maathai: we have a big problem, it is a life-and-death matter, and it needs immediate attention:
Here are the kinds of photos that make the big of this book: photos of ugly things: lots of people, lots of contamination, no space to breathe, big machinery killing trees, pollution, oceans full of trash:
This is the picture of ocean life drowning in crap. And then a picture of a large city with no green spot whatsoever:
This is a picture of a city with a clear division: on the right, a high-scale neighborhood with tennis courts, swimming pools and green areas. On the left, a slum; poor houses, no green areas, trash everywhere. I think this is in Brazil, but not sure:
Human women in advanced pregnancy status:
A numerous family: a couple who apparently did nothing more than reproduce themselves:
A big city with all its lights and no nature to enjoy:
Another big city. If a martian came in to our planet, he would ask, but how can they breathe with all these crowding and artificial construction?
Another slum:
Another ugly sighting: thousands of human beings in a swimming pool, supposedly having fun. I look at this picture and feel as if I could not even open my eyes!
And the we have miles upon miles of land devoted to agriculture, of course: to feed all those mouths.
Here are the poor victims of all this: animals that are farmed, harvested, tortured, killed and consumed. I am a sinner too, I eat those animals, I eat from those plants. But we have to stop bringing more and more people to do the same, we have to do something about this horrid problem!
A picture of poor people living in their hopeless state. If we can't do anything to change their conditions, why in the world are we bringing more and more souls to this planet?
An overpopulated city:
Some cattle eating trash:
Poor people trying to do things in a river surrounded by a mountain of trash. This photo looks like a horror movie, only that it is our current reality:
A man washing his hair in the middle of the trash. I have no words:
Photo of a market, and an animal. Words of hope (scarce in this book):
This is the conclusion of the book: even if we can make a world with 10 billion people work, it would be a very unhappy world; with no natural landscape, only mills and farms. And the other problem is how to organize all those people. Violence will skyrocket, and everything we have seen until today will be nothing compared with the chaos coming from so many ignorant, poor and angry new people. We don't have the technology to control that, and the politicians only can do their magic to certain extent.
This is the list of collaborators in this book. All of them big names in the Deep Energy and the Reproductive foundations. There are also good photographers and researchers. Take a look:
I hope you liked this review. Did you know that I also have a blog? Take a look here:
http://lunairereadings.blogspot.com
March 9, 2015
I have seen the future, it is completely terrifying. It's hard to read this, hard to see what we're doing to our beloved home, but unless we get the word out, we're all doomed.
Read
June 4, 2024This book lets pictures taken around the world tell the earths story. Our story. The message hits hard. Here are some quotes from it:
“It is through the sheer mass of society, not simply from malevolence, that the rising human tide has become deadly to the rest of life. The collective weight of a bloated humanity has dire ecological and social consequences. Every pressing problem, from poverty and malnutrition to biodiversity loss and climate change, is linked to human numbers and behaviour. In aggregate, the prosaic actions of people—eating, manufacturing, polluting, shopping, warring—have made our species the functional equivalent of a geological force, able to affect even the global life support systems and climate in which our species evolved.”
“We have geared the machines and locked all together into interdependence; we have built the great cities; now there is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable of free survival, insulated from the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all dependent. The circle is closed, and the net is being hauled in, They hardly feel the cords drawing.” (Robinson Jeffers)
“Not until man sees the light and submits gracefully, moderating his homoecentricity; not until man accepts the primacy of beauty, diversity, and integrity of nature, and limits his dominion and numbers, placing equal value on the preservation of natural environments as on his own life, is there hope that he will survive.” (Hugh. H. Iltis)
“In ecology, the term overshoot describes the phenomenon of a species becoming so numerous that it outstrips its habitat.”
“In the developing world, the problem of population is seen less as a matter of human numbers than of western overconsumption. Yet within the development community, the only solution to the problems of the developing world is to export the same unsustainable economic model feeling the overconsumption of the West.” (Kavita Ramdas)
“There are some things in the world we can’t change—gravity, entropy, the speed of light…and our biological nature that requires clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy, and biodiversity for our health and well-being. Protecting the biosphere should be our highest priority or else we sicken and die. Other things, like capitalism, free enterprise, the economy, currency, the market, are not forces of nature, we invented them. They are not immutable and we can change them. It makes no sense to elevate economics above the biosphere.” (David Suzuki)
“Human domination over nature is quite simply an illusion, a passing dream by a naive species. It is an illusion that cost us much, ensnared us in our own designs, given us a few boasts to make about our courage and genius, but all the same it is an illusion.” (Donald Worster)
“I don’t understand why when we destroy something created by man we call it vandalism, but when we destroy something created by nature we call it progress.” (Ed Begley Jr.)
“A country can cut down its forests, erode its soils, pollute its aquifers and hunt its wildlife and fisheries to extinction, but its measured income is not affected as these assets disappear. Impoverishment is taken for progress.” (Robert Repetto)
“It is through the sheer mass of society, not simply from malevolence, that the rising human tide has become deadly to the rest of life. The collective weight of a bloated humanity has dire ecological and social consequences. Every pressing problem, from poverty and malnutrition to biodiversity loss and climate change, is linked to human numbers and behaviour. In aggregate, the prosaic actions of people—eating, manufacturing, polluting, shopping, warring—have made our species the functional equivalent of a geological force, able to affect even the global life support systems and climate in which our species evolved.”
“We have geared the machines and locked all together into interdependence; we have built the great cities; now there is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable of free survival, insulated from the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all dependent. The circle is closed, and the net is being hauled in, They hardly feel the cords drawing.” (Robinson Jeffers)
“Not until man sees the light and submits gracefully, moderating his homoecentricity; not until man accepts the primacy of beauty, diversity, and integrity of nature, and limits his dominion and numbers, placing equal value on the preservation of natural environments as on his own life, is there hope that he will survive.” (Hugh. H. Iltis)
“In ecology, the term overshoot describes the phenomenon of a species becoming so numerous that it outstrips its habitat.”
“In the developing world, the problem of population is seen less as a matter of human numbers than of western overconsumption. Yet within the development community, the only solution to the problems of the developing world is to export the same unsustainable economic model feeling the overconsumption of the West.” (Kavita Ramdas)
“There are some things in the world we can’t change—gravity, entropy, the speed of light…and our biological nature that requires clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy, and biodiversity for our health and well-being. Protecting the biosphere should be our highest priority or else we sicken and die. Other things, like capitalism, free enterprise, the economy, currency, the market, are not forces of nature, we invented them. They are not immutable and we can change them. It makes no sense to elevate economics above the biosphere.” (David Suzuki)
“Human domination over nature is quite simply an illusion, a passing dream by a naive species. It is an illusion that cost us much, ensnared us in our own designs, given us a few boasts to make about our courage and genius, but all the same it is an illusion.” (Donald Worster)
“I don’t understand why when we destroy something created by man we call it vandalism, but when we destroy something created by nature we call it progress.” (Ed Begley Jr.)
“A country can cut down its forests, erode its soils, pollute its aquifers and hunt its wildlife and fisheries to extinction, but its measured income is not affected as these assets disappear. Impoverishment is taken for progress.” (Robert Repetto)
December 15, 2017
An incredibly beautiful, incredibly sad book, this is the story of the stunningly gorgeous, rich planet we were given. Bloated humanity will be the ending of this story, our lives, and all the unfortunate flora and fauna along with us.
October 31, 2015
This book, “Over,” illustrates the human impact on nature with a set of magnificent photographs. In sequence, the photographs first show how we are damaging the planet and then they show the beauty that can be ours if we want to fight for it.
The beautifully written essays that accompany the photos discuss the consequences of feeding the 10 billion or more people the United Nations projects will be alive by this century’s end. The authors explain that producing enough food will require conversion of the Earth into a factory farm for humans.
The writers point out that reducing our birth rate will not require any form of coercion. Evidence from developed countries clearly shows that with education and access to birth control, women freely choose to have fewer children. [I added information from other sources to the review on my website: http://garryrogers.com/2015/10/19/pop...].
Title: Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot
Authors: Tom Butler, Musimbi Kanyoro, William N. Ryerson, Eileen Crist
Hardcover: 330 pages
Publisher: Goff Books (February 17, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN: 978-1939621238
The beautifully written essays that accompany the photos discuss the consequences of feeding the 10 billion or more people the United Nations projects will be alive by this century’s end. The authors explain that producing enough food will require conversion of the Earth into a factory farm for humans.
The writers point out that reducing our birth rate will not require any form of coercion. Evidence from developed countries clearly shows that with education and access to birth control, women freely choose to have fewer children. [I added information from other sources to the review on my website: http://garryrogers.com/2015/10/19/pop...].
Title: Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot
Authors: Tom Butler, Musimbi Kanyoro, William N. Ryerson, Eileen Crist
Hardcover: 330 pages
Publisher: Goff Books (February 17, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN: 978-1939621238
July 5, 2017
If I could, I would give this book ten stars and mandate that every person on Earth read it. As soon as possible. Chanced upon it at my public library and sat with it there for several hours, turning the pages and meditating on its images and message. Beautiful and disturbing; essential. Heavy, both literally and in its emotional and intellectual impact.
August 20, 2024
Humans tend to react strongly to visuals; if you're human, this book is for you. Some choice quotes are included for added oomph. You can ignore the text if you like.
Available for free at https://issuu.com/globalpopulationspe...
(Use a big screen)
Available for free at https://issuu.com/globalpopulationspe...
(Use a big screen)
January 21, 2021
Heartbreakingly stunning photography, powerful quotes, and illuminating essays illustrating the precariousness of our current ecological crises and their roots in human overpopulation, consumption, and delusions of endless "growth" (read: converting Life into dead consumer products and monetary "profits"). Despite these grim realities, we can change our trajectory. I think Eileen Crist puts it best in the Afterword's concluding paragraph:
"We need an authentic green revolution. Instead of holding demographic growth as given, and a biosphere-wrecking food system as normal, let’s imagine what the world could look like if we actively renounced both. Such a world would be dramatically more beautiful and sane following expansive rewilding—with abundant food, ecologically and ethically produced; with streams, rivers, lakes, and estuaries returned to being living waters; with deforestation halted and grassland ecologies reinstated; with the extinction crisis arrested and seas thriving again with Life; and with climate change made more manageable via carbon-sequestering forests and grasslands and decelerated emissions. If all these things can be achieved, what is keeping us from pursuing such a world? Indeed, what is detaining us from creating a civilization in harmony with wild Earth?"I'd highly encourage everyone to view the book and learn more about these issues on Speak Out's website: https://populationspeakout.org/
February 27, 2022
No saving paper to produce this monster. The book is very oversized.
There are wonderful edge to edge pictures throughout the book identifying the beauty of nature but also pictures depicting what has become of the natural spaces man has over taken and destroyed in our quest to conquer and improve. The pictures serve as a wake up call that all countries need to be concerned with our ecosystem.
The author says little in the book after the opening pages, sending home his message in pictures. He says a small blurb on the chapter heading pages but the rest of the pages in the chapter are very telling pictures accompanied by quotes from other people concerning the environment.
I did not like that the author promoted his business in the book. It'd be fine to reference it, but don't devote paragraphs to it.
There are wonderful edge to edge pictures throughout the book identifying the beauty of nature but also pictures depicting what has become of the natural spaces man has over taken and destroyed in our quest to conquer and improve. The pictures serve as a wake up call that all countries need to be concerned with our ecosystem.
The author says little in the book after the opening pages, sending home his message in pictures. He says a small blurb on the chapter heading pages but the rest of the pages in the chapter are very telling pictures accompanied by quotes from other people concerning the environment.
I did not like that the author promoted his business in the book. It'd be fine to reference it, but don't devote paragraphs to it.
February 11, 2018
Awesome and very scary. I highly recommend anyone who wants to understand the reality of our perilous planet.
February 17, 2025
Pleasing writing just a perfect story
March 4, 2018
Horrifying and necessary but the overheated rhetoric and mythological silliness are off-putting.
January 17, 2017
Depressing.
April 17, 2015
A book really worth-reading for all of you who call yourself human.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews