Over recent years it’s become clear that the human race has been overshooting global limits in a number of crucial areas and looks set to continue this process for some time to come. This, in turn, raises very serious questions about the future – not only for human life but for all life on this planet. For the last several years political leaders have been preoccupied with financial and other economic issues. They appear paralysed when it comes to deeper concerns about, e.g. species extinctions, global warming and the onset of peak oil. These and similar threats that arise from escalating human demands and multiple human impacts seem to remain in the ‘too-hard’ basket.

In the light of the above an invitation has been posted on the Work in Progress 2 page for anyone interested in contributing to a themed issue of On the Horizon, edited by Tom Abeles, on the topic of ‘overshoot and collapse’ futures. To the extent that we take such an outlook seriously we can together perhaps craft appropriate responses. What we cannot and should not do is to pretend that there’s any future at all in a continuation of ‘business as usual.’ That, I suggest, is the most dangerous future of all.

The following paper on ‘Evaluating overshoot and collapse futures’ was adapted from chapter 3 of BIggest Wake-Up Call… and published in the August / September issue of World Future Review (To open click here)