ABSTRACT
In this chapter we offer a useful story about shooting past an importantlimit, observing the consequences, and then struggling with great success to bring human activity back down to sustainable levels. The story concerns the limited capacity of the stratospheric ozone layer to absorb human-made chlorofluorocarbon chemicals (CFCs).1 The final chapter of our story will not be written for at least several more decades. But so far this narrative gives the basis for hope. It shows that people and institutions, despite common human failings, can come together on a global scale, diagnose an overshoot problem, then design and implement solutions. In this case the global society will sacrifice relatively little for accepting the necessity of living within a limit.
