In September 2023, a group of scientists and writers had a paper published in a niche academic journal. The paper “World scientists’ warning: The behavioural crisis driving ecological overshoot” might have quietly retired in a graveyard along with a thousand other important but forgotten tomes - except it didn’t. At last count the paper has had 70,000 downloads and ranks in the top 1% of academic papers. In short, the paper describes how our modern human behaviour means we consume too much and waste too much. That’s called overshoot - as terrible as it is, it's now new news. What’s novel, is the paper’s proposition that it’s human behaviour - not technology, not law, not economic systems not even our values - that are the drivers: it’s human behaviour. And just as our maladaptive behaviours got us here, so too can better behaviours get us out.

To expand on the paper and to explain its popularity, Vincent was joined by the lead author, Joseph Merz of the Merz Foundation.

Merz Institute

New Paper Identifies ‘Behavioural Crisis’ Driving Overshoot – Merz Institute