The world is on the cusp of one and a half degrees of warming – just the rise it has committed
itself to avoiding. Heat at such levels would be intolerable. Even before one and a half
seasons of climate disaster have struck with ever more devastating force and yet a notion has
taken hold that the cause is now lost: the intolerable has become unavoidable. The limit will
be overshot – perhaps two degrees as well – and the best we can do is cool down the Earth at
some later point towards the end of the century by means of technologies not yet proven. How
did this happen? How could the idea of overshoot gain such traction? What forces are driving us
into a climate that people – particularly poor people in the global South – won’t be able to
cope with? In Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown Andreas Malm and Wim
Carton present a history of the present phase of the crisis likely to extend decades into the
future as the fossil fuel industry swims in the largest profits ever made. Money continues to
flow into the construction of pipelines platforms terminals mines – assets that will have to
be destroyed for the planet to remain liveable. Too much heat has become officially acceptable
because such revolutionary destruction is not. But should the rest of us abide by that
priority? Unflinchingly critical of business-as-usual and the calls for surrender to it
sweeping in scope stirring and sobering Overshoot lays out the stakes for the climate
struggle in the years ahead.
