qz.com
Earth Overshoot Day is earlier than ever this year—and it underestimates the crisis
Each year, we use far more resources than the Earth can replenish, and produce more waste than it can absorb.
On Monday, July 29, we will be 209 days into the calendar year. And we will have used up all the resources the Earth could regenerate in 365 days.
At least, that’s according to the Global Footprint Network, a group that uses an array of mostly United Nations data to calculate what it calls Earth Overshoot Day: the day when humanity overshoots the planet’s ability to recover from what resources we consume within each year—like regrow the trees we cut down, absorb the carbon dioxide we emit, and replenish the seas with the fish we harvest, to name a few. At this rate, it would take 1.75 Earths to sustainably meet the current demands of humanity, according to the available data.
It’s a useful visualization. But here’s the most sobering part: Earth Overshoot Day is probably a vast underestimation of the actual level of unsustainable planetary wreckage, and the scientists behind the numbers are the first to admit it.
David Lin, the chief science officer of the Global Footprint Network, likes to use the analogy of a bank account: If you have $100 in the bank and spend $200, that puts you in the red. You’ll have a deficit of $100. If you keep living like that, spending what you don’t have, eventually you’ll be in trouble. It’s not a sustainable way to live.
Each year, the human population grows. We consume more natural resources than the planet can regenerate in a year, and emit far more carbon dioxide than our forests and oceans can possibly sequester. Thus, our deficit grows. We fall further and further in the red. Last year’s Earth Overshoot Day was Aug. 1, three days later than this year’s. The date has crept up by two months over the last 20 years.
