By Michael Mills: How to Avoid Population Overshoot and Collapse

Dr. Michael Mills

Thanks to James at Megacancer for bringing my attention to this 2011 essay by Dr. Michael Mills, an associate professor of psychology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles California. The interests of Dr. Mills include the evolutionary psychology of peak oil.

In this essay Mills demonstrates an excellent understanding of human overshoot, and uses his expertise in evolutionary psychology to offer strategies for shifting human behavior in a more sustainable direction.


As shown in the graph below, this is an example of a general phenomenon.  All species suffer population collapse or species extinction if they overshoot and degrade the carrying capacity of their ecology.

Carrying Capacity &amp; Overshoot

This is also the fate that awaits bacteria growing in a Petri dish, as you might remember from your high school biology course.  Imagine a Petri dish with enough nutrients to support a growing bacteria culture until the dish is completely full of them.  One bacterium is placed inside the dish at 11:00am, and the population of bacteria doubles every minute — such that the Petri dish will be full by noon.





Generally it is healthy to be optimistic, but optimism can be deadly if it produces a Pollyannaish denial of real problems. We should not ignore ecological problems by assuming “someone else” will take care of it, or that “the free market” or “technological breakthroughs” will always come to the rescue in time. Solutions may not come in time, and we may get quite a rude Malthusian smack down later.


One example of resource depletion is the gradual depletion of fossil fuels, especially oil.  The amount of oil produced by a particular oil field, or a region, shows a regular pattern: first oil production increases, then it reaches a peak, and, finally, as the oil field begins to dry up, oil production starts to  decline.   World “peak oil” is when world oil production peaks, and then starts an inexorable decline as oil fields start to dry up.  Many experts believe that world oil production has already peaked, or that it will occur within the next few years. This presents us with a problem:  as of now, no combination of renewable energy sources can scale up quickly enough, or provide anywhere near the energy equivalent of oil.   We can anticipate that the world is about to enter a severe, worldwide energy shortage. Since food production is so dependent on energy production, following an energy famine will be a food famine.  Many poor people, especially in developing countries, will literally starve to death as oil energy depletes.


Optimists will be quick to rebut that shale oil has pushed oil production to record highs since Mills wrote this. I would remind those optimists that it took unprecedented zero percent interest rates, many trillions of unrepayable debt to force growth equal to only 25% of the debt, investors willing to pour money into unprofitable fracking companies, and a socially destabilizing increase in the wealth gap to achieve this increase in oil production.


The 1972 book Limits to Growth  also made some pretty frightening predictions back in 1972, as did the follow-up book in 2004  Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Update.  Using computer simulations, they predicted a world peak population around mid-century, followed by population decline.

Given that these predictions are now approaching 40 years old, how accurate were they?  Are they still on track today?

The analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compares favorably with key features… [of the Limits to Growth] ‘standard run’ scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st Century.”  To prevent this scenario, the Limits to Growth authors suggested that we must achieve ecological sustainability by 2022 to avoid serious ecological overshoot and population collapse.

Limits to Growth Predictions


Mills then gets to the meat of his essay:

Can evolutionary psychology provide insights to aid in our survival?

Can humans be “smarter than yeast?” Can we be the only species that can successfully anticipate and avoid ecological overshoot and collapse?  Issues of sustainability are psychological problems.  Are we sufficiently psychologically sophisticated to manage our own collective behavior to achieve sustainability on a finite planet?

One sobering answer provided by evolutionary psychology is that we, like all other species,  have no evolved psychological adaptations designed specifically to perceive, anticipate and avoid ecological overshoot. In fact, we have just the opposite.

One problem is that inclusive fitness, the “designer” of psychological adaptations, is always relative to others; it is not absolute.  That is, nature doesn’t “say,” “Have two kids (or help 4 full sibs), and then you can stop. Good job! You did your genetic duty, you avoided contributing to ecological overshoot, and you may pass along now…” Instead, nature “says” (relative inclusive fitness): “Out-reproduce your competitors. Your competitors are all of the genes in your species’ gene pool that you do not share. If the average inclusive fitness score is four, then you go for five… “In other words, our psychological adaptations are designed to not just “keep up with the Joneses” but to “do better than the Joneses.” This is in whatever means that may have generally helped to increase inclusive fitness, such as status, conspicuous consumption, and resource acquisition and control.

If we are to have a fighting chance to be “smarter than yeast,” we have to out-smart our own psychological adaptations; we have to “fool Mother Nature.” Garrett Harden recognized that the problem of ecological overshoot is the tragedy of the commons writ large.  He suggested that the way to solve the tragedy of the commons was “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.”  That is, we must consent, collectively, to use our knowledge of our psychological adaptations to tweak them in the service of sustainability.

For example, we can use such knowledge to manipulate our own perceptions of status so that we actually compete to reduce our consumption of finite resources, such that we compete to “keep down with the Joneses.”


Mills thinks we can hack our behavior with psychological tricks if the majority of citizens understand our overshoot predicament and consent to being manipulated.

He then provides some examples of psychological techniques that have been, or could be, successful at changing human behaviors:

  • Foster competition (and status) for being more sustainable than your neighbors.
  • Manipulate women to prefer men with more sustainable lifestyles.
  • Use virtual reality to trick ourselves into treating all humans as if they belonged to our tribe.
  • Create psychological illusions that cause us to treat ecological issues as personal issues, and the entire planet as our tribal territory.
  • Use Public Service Announcements (PSAs) to change behaviors, like the successful campaign to promote seat belt use.


Mills concludes by saying we need a new sustainability movement that makes being a “consumerist” as toxic as being a “racist” or “sexist”.

A new social movement is needed – a sustainability movement.  This is particularly important for anyone who plans to live in the future. A grass-roots movement of the magnitude of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and the women’s rights movement of the 1970s, is needed. Today no one wants to be called a racist or a sexist (but being called a “consumerist” does not yet sting). Those movements had clearly defined out-groups to vilify as the “enemy” — and that may have helped to mobilize and motivate activists.

But who is the enemy now?  There is no out-group. The enemy is us. We are fighting against ourselves — our base psychological adaptations to compete for relative status, mates and resources.  Evolutionary psychology can help by identifying which of our “psychological buttons” might be manipulated to promote sustainability.  But we must collectively agree to manipulate our psychological adaptations to attempt to “transcend” our self-ecocidal nature.  If we succeed, there may be a glimmer of hope of mitigating our own ecological overshoot, and the potential Malthusian nightmares of the future.


I like the creative ideas offered here by Mills and wish we would try them. Unfortunately it seems we must first find a way to break through our denial of overshoot reality before we can obtain the consent of citizens to be manipulated.

On the other hand, we allow ourselves to be manipulated every day without consent by the commercial advertisements and agenda driven media messages that crowd our daily lives. There’s a clear precedent here to proceed without consent.

Perhaps all we need is a wise government to get on with hacking our behavior to have fewer children and consume less.

But then we’d need a government that was not in denial, which means we’d have to elect genetic mutants, which I’ve proposed in the past.

Which brings us full circle to the core problem discussed many times on this blog:

Finding a way to pick our genetic reality denial lock is the key to any progress, and possibly the survival of our species. This is a hard lock to pick because denial of denial is the strongest form of denial.

I wish Mills would study Varki’s MORT theory and write another essay.

As an aside, check out the comments left by the readers of Mill’s essay. They offer a nice snapshot of the human belief system. Several intelligent people attempt to poke holes in Mill’s thesis, and Mills then calmly and rationally responds with the facts on why they are wrong. Not one reader changes their views. Not one reader stands up and says “great ideas, let’s try them”.


8 thoughts on “By Michael Mills: How to Avoid Population Overshoot and Collapse”

  1. The one thing with the petri dish analogy that I think is missing and helps bring the exponential factor in focus for a lot of people I discuss this with is ,”when is it 3% full?”. Answer “11.55”. You can smell the wheels spinning when they start to realize how quickly you get from plenty to nothing.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. I mentioned at James’ Megacancer site that this Mills piece is at odds with the MPP/MEPP.

    On the subject of intellectual prognosticators who should know better… I tried to reply to your “polymath” post, but it would not go through. I still thought this link was worth sharing… from people who think they can influence the world with their Big Thoughts:

    “What Is the Last Question?”
    Directions: “Ask ‘The Last Question,’ your last question, the question for which you will be remembered.”

    Read the entries and cringe.

    I didn’t go through them all, but maybe 1 in 10 seems to be a question worthy of the exercise. An interesting insight into what Important People think is Important.


    1. Hi Lidia, you are probably right that MPP conflicts with any behavior that could be characterized as sustainable, at least on average. It’s possible that MPP is another reason, in addition to awareness of mortality, that intelligence cannot exist without denial, although it’s easier to imagine how mortality denial could have been selected for than the more general case of behaviors that conflict with MPP.

      Many people choose not to have children, and many people who want children cannot yet still live fulfilling lives. I think it would be worthwhile to research these MPP contradictions to see if any useful policies to mitigate overshoot could be gleaned.

      Sorry your comment on the Last Question was lost. I checked my spam folder and it was not there so I don’t know what happened. You are right that the last questions our best and brightest can think of are pretty dire.

      My last question would be:

      Is it possible for intelligence to evolve without denial, and if not, is it possible for a species to override denial before denial causes the species to go extinct?


      1. Re. “MPP contradictions”.. I don’t think there are any, since humans who voluntarily do not reproduce have their genes strained out by the (gene-)pool filter. Those who cannot for other reasons, likewise.

        I think your Last Question is a good one, and characterizes your work here at this site. I think the answer to the first part is “no”. The answer to the second part is more ambiguous, since I can easily imagine our species going extinct even without denial. There’s really no such thing as a steady state (I flunked thermodynamics twice, so I should know!) much as we like to think we can establish one.


        1. My assumption is that people who choose not to have children do so not because of their genes, because as you point out those genes would have been weeded out long ago, but rather for some combination of learning, environment, and chance. It would be a good thing to figure out.

          You’re right that all species eventually go extinct, but I’m thinking 100,000 years for behaviorally modern humans is a little too hasty. We’ve got more science to understand first.


          1. “people who choose not to have children”/”some combination of learning, environment, and chance.”

            Well, that is a socially-conventional assumption which favors Nurture over Nature. My own understanding is that Nature holds the upper hand, and that Nurture is a fairly minor aspect. (The Nature emphasis never escaped our predecessors, incidentally, who were by-and-large staunch eugenicists.)

            I was never particularly interested in having kids, and my Nature is skeptical/contrarian, iow non-denialist. When I was eight years old I remember thinking, “there’s no such thing as ‘progress'”.

            “Too hasty” as opposed to what? The very aspects which have made humans one of the most successful species are precisely those which guarantee a rapid denouement. Less successful would mean a longer run. It’s pretty clear (imo) when reduced to energetical terms.


          2. “We’ve got more science to understand first.”

            Ha ha!! The more science we understand, the faster we burn through our patrimony! This is our paradoxical trap.

            Liked by 1 person

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