The Big Problem: Overconsumption

In 2015, author, public speaker and change specialist Bart Flos published his fifth book, Vooruitkijken voor gevorderden (‘Futurology for Fanatics’). In this book he paints a hopeful picture of the limitless possibilities of the human species Homo sapiens to shape its own future.

Since the publication of that book, things have quickly gotten out of hand with the environment, biodiversity and climate. It prompted Flos to author his sixth book and Magnus Opus: De mens als grens (‘Our Inner Limits’). Unfortunately, as a plea, it was much less hopeful, but it still contained solutions to turn the tide.

“After the publication of Our Inner Limits, I could not have imagined how quickly things would get só much worse. The year 2023 is the year that we passed the 'elbow' of the exponential curve. What we are left with now is chaos and unpredictability. I authored a thousand posts about it and I didn't want them to get lost in the endless timelines of the social media,” Flos says.

Overshoot or overconsumption, when a population exceeds the carrying capacity of its own living environment, is an existential threat that is easily overlooked. We are so busy fighting the symptoms of overconsumption – environmental pollution, biodiversity loss, climate change – that we forget to tackle the real problem at its root.

This is one of the eleven addenda to Our Inner Limits, in which Flos’s posts are included in book form. It takes you on a head-on confrontational journey from ignorance via climate change to overconsumption and collapse. Together we will break the last ultimate taboo: daring to say that we waited too long, that it is too late now and that we will have to passively suffer the consequences of our destructive collective behavior as a human species.