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Overshoot of the earth's carrying capacity is an acute concern for sustainability initiatives that seek to equalize access to the natural resources that are requisite to meet the basic needs of humanity. Demands on nature that exceed ecological capacities compromise crit- ical ecosystem functions that provision the inputs necessary for life. This paper draws on concepts and analytical frameworks from the natural, physical, and social sciences to assess the drivers of sustainability at the global and national level. Integrative theoretical predictions are tested in a structural equation model that advances empirical research on overshoot and outflows of foreign investments that is relatively lacking in the literature. Findings highlight the differential impacts of key aspects of economic globalization on both development and overshoot across nations. Current ecological crises, bouts of economic instability, and seemingly insurmountable social problems such as hunger and disease permeate virtually all nations in the world and underscore the importance of sustainability initiatives that seek international solutions that comprehensively address all three dimensions. As articulated by the United Nations (1987) report, ''Our Common Future,'' the concept of sustainability comprises three pillars of consideration (i.e., environmental, eco- nomic, social) for meeting current and future needs, but emphasis on the environment is significant for at least two reasons. First, the sustainability approach to development pioneers the view in the international policy arena that environmental concerns deserve equal weight to social and economic ones. Second, ecological inputs are necessary for social well-being and economic advance. Resources garnered from the environment provision the imperatives for human life such as food, clothing, and shelter; harnessing energy and harvesting resources are essential components of production processes that contribute to economic advance. Thus, the foundational importance of the environmental dimension should not be overlooked. This paper advances a conceptual framework for understanding of sustainability by introducing the laws of thermody- namics—with particular emphasis on the role of ''entropy'' and its relation to overshoot of resource capacities. While a num- ber of empirical examinations in the social sciences interrogate the effects of various global and national phenomena to explain components of environmental degradation, this paper makes a unique contribution to the literature in assuming an explicit interdisciplinary approach to analyze the drivers of overshoot, which is an essential aspect of sustainability. Another novel feature of this paper is the consideration of outward and inward foreign direct investments (FDI), which have not yet been treated in tandem. The inclusion of these terms in the models advances the empirical evidence on global invest- ment dynamics that are crucial to a number of theoretical perspectives in the social sciences. Further, the application of