Not long ago we received word that William R. Catton, Jr. passed away in January.

Catton, known for his influential ecological book Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, was eighty-eight years old.

The Rev. Michael Dowd at the Huffington Post collected tributes to Catton and links to blog posts and articles celebrating Catton’s far-seeing—indeed paradigm-altering—work and thought. As Richard Heinberg said, Overshoot “calls into question the very foundations of industrial civilization in a more radical fashion than Das Kapital.”

Alan Weisman of The World Without Us fame told Dowd: “William Catton was prescient enough to see what was coming from a long way off, and responsible enough to spend his life warning us. Peace on his soul, and heaven help our own.”

Polite and calm, but never a shrinking violet, Catton spent decades forcefully arguing for his ecological beliefs. A 2008 interview archived by YouTube offers a representative sample of the man and his theses, and his book remains available.