Overshoot and collapse: How 1.5°C breach reveals systemic climate inertia and the limits of late-stage mitigation
Original framing: “Some climate damage is now unavoidable even if we clean up our act” — New Scientist
Marginalised communities, particularly in the Global South, are already experiencing overshoot’s consequences—such as the *Sahel’s* desertification or Bangladesh’s coastal erosion—yet their voices are often reduced to statistics in overshoot narratives. The *Loss and Damage* negotiations at COP27 highlighted how wealthy nations’ historical emissions have disproportionately harmed small island states, but these demands are frequently dismissed as 'unrealistic' in overshoot framing. Indigenous land defenders, like those in the *Standing Rock* or *Amazon* conflicts, have long warned of the ecological and cultural costs of extraction, yet their resistance is framed as 'obstruction' rather than a necessary corrective. Women in climate-vulnerable regions, who bear the brunt of water scarcity and food insecurity, are rarely consulted in overshoot discussions, despite their critical role in adaptive strategies.
The overshoot narrative is not just a scientific observation but a *symptom of deeper structural failures*—where fossil fuel subsidies, corporate lobbying, and growth-dependent economies have systematically delayed action until irreversible damage is locked in.
Indigenous knowledge systems, historical precedents like the ozone crisis, and marginalised voices all reveal that overshoot is not an inevitable technical outcome but a *moral and political choice*, enabled by institutions that prioritise short-term extraction over ecological limits. The framing’s focus on 'damage control' obscures the role of trickster-like forces—corporate denial, political inertia, and the absurdity of treating collapse as manageable—while artistic and spiritual responses expose the emotional and ethical dimensions missing from technocratic solutions. To move beyond overshoot, we must dismantle the power structures that enable it (via treaties, degrowth, and reparations) and replace them with Indigenous-led restoration, truth courts, and economies that operate within planetary boundaries. The synthesis of these dimensions shows that overshoot is not a problem to be solved but a *system to be transformed*—requiring nothing less than a reimagining of power, progress, and our relationship with the Earth.