Overshoot Day has been arriving earlier every since, right in step with global population growth and resource consumption. The Earth Overshoot Day determines the date when humanity’s annual demand on natural resources exceed what Earth can provide in that year.
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Thursday marked a worrisome event: the continuation of humanity plunging the Earth into ecological debt -we’re taking more than the Earth can regenerate in a given year.
According to GFN, if we don’t rapidly shift things, by 2030, we’ll be using the equivalent of two Earths’ worth of natural resources and ecological services, and the pressure put on these natural systems could possibly lead to significant damage to the long-term biocapacity of the planet, which will then negatively affect the amount of resources available for our ever-growing population.
“If you consider the entire yr as a complete price range, it seems we have now used it up by August 13”, based on Mathis Wackernagel, president of Global Footprint Network (GFN).
According to the study, humans would require 1.6 planet Earths to satisfy their 12 month demand.
The calculation comes from Global Footprint Network, an environmental think-tank that monitors mankind’s impact on the planet.
The costs of this ecological overspending are becoming more evident by the day, in the form of deforestation, drought, fresh-water scarcity, soil erosion, biodiversity loss and the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The day is six days earlier than the August 19 date it was in 2014, as determined by sustainability activist group Global Footprint Network.
This “overshoot”, which most people don’t really seem to know about or at least care about, actually has some big implications for humanity, for obvious reasons. Second on the list is Italy which would need 2.8 more countries of its size to sustain its economy. A NASA camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite has captured one of the most epic views yet of our planet, Earth. Had the world done the same (while not changing the rest of the Footprint), Earth Overshoot Day would be on October 3 this year. But Overshoot Day creep has kicked in ever since. “That doesn’t mean they use their resources wisely, but that’s the privilege of being rich”.
“There are some worldwide negotiations, like what’s going to happen in Paris”, he says, referring to the UN Conference for Climate Change, where nations will try to reach a global agreement for how to address the environmental issues we’ve been seeing recently.
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The findings show that Earth’s resources are finite; not only that, but policies should be instituted to limit how much we consume on a yearly basis.
