Earth Overshoot Day: humans ‘using resources faster than ever’

Earth Overshoot Day - which marks the point at which consumption exceeds the capacity of nature to regenerate - has moved forward two days to 1 August.

This means that the world has consumed a year’s worth of carbon, food, water, fibre, land and timber in a record 212 days.

Global Footprint Network, an international research organisation, says the world’s economies are running a “Ponzi scheme” with the planet by borrowing from the future to run up ecological debt in the present.

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“Fires are raging in the Western United States. On the other side of the world, residents in Cape Town have had to slash water consumption in half since 2015,” said Mathis Wackernagel, CEO of the Oakland, California-based Global Footprint Network. “There are consequences of busting the ecological budget of our one and only planet.”

“We are borrowing the Earth’s future resources to operate our economies in the present. Like any Ponzi scheme, this works for some time. But as nations, companies, or households dig themselves deeper and deeper into debt, they eventually fall apart,” said Wackernagel.

What is Earth Overshoot Day?

Earth Overshoot Day is the notional point in the year at which humans have used up more resources than the Earth can provide that year. Each nation has a biocapacity - its ability to generate renewable resources, for example, trees or fish, and to absorb wastes such as carbon dioxide.

Each nation then leaves an ecological footprint by using natural resources and emitting carbon dioxide.

“When our footprint is larger than our biocapacity, we overshoot the planet's ability to regenerate its natural resources,” says the Huffington Post.

“In seven months, we emitted more carbon than the oceans and forests can absorb in a year, we caught more fish, felled more trees, harvested more, and consumed more water than the Earth was able to produce in the same period,” said the WWF and Global Footprint Network.

Is Earth Overshoot Day on the same date each year?

No. With each passing year, the day we overshoot Earth's resources comes earlier and earlier.

Thirty years ago, the overshoot was on 15 October. Twenty years ago, 30 September. Ten years ago, 15 August. There was a brief slowdown, but the pace has picked back up in the past two years. On current trends, “next year could mark the first time, the planet’s budget is busted in July”, says The Guardian.

What can be done to stop this?

The situation is reversible. Research by Global Footprint Network indicates “political action is far more effective than individual choices”.

For example, the group says, efficiency improvements in building and industry could make a difference of three weeks, and a 50% reduction of the carbon component of the footprint would give an extra three months of breathing space.

A Move the Date initiative asks people to look at what changes can be made to their lifestyles to help delay Earth Overshoot Day by 4.5 days a year.

It has six pledges people can take to make an individual or societal difference, ranging from trying a new vegetarian recipe to pledging to pressure city leaders for broader change.

"It's a way to translate something that feels insurmountable into kind of bite-sized opportunities," Wackernagel said.