Green DYRT: Earth’s resources in overdraft for the year
Earth is officially overdrawn! With four months left of the year, we have now used up all the renewable natural resources the planet has to offer this year, leaving the world with depleted stocks, degraded land and carbon dioxide building up in the atmosphere.
Environmental economists have identified August 20 as “Earth Overshoot Day,”- the day when humanity has consumed as much renewable natural resources as the planet can regenerate in one year.
For the rest of the year, the world is in ecological debt, with fish stocks and forests being depleted, land degraded and carbon dioxide building up in the atmosphere, the Global Footprint Network said.
Earth overshoot day is calculated by comparing the demands made by humans on global resources – our ‘ecological footprint’ – with the planet’s ability to replenish resources and absorb waste.
This year, in less than nine months we have used as much of nature as the Earth can regenerate in a year. Earth overshoot day has fallen a couple of days earlier than it did last year.
The Global Footprint Network said that in 1961, humanity only used around two-thirds of the available natural resources on Earth, but by the 1970s increased carbon emissions and consumption began to outstrip what the planet could provide.
Andrew Simms, climate economist at Global Witness, who came up with the concept of earth overshoot day at UK think tank the New Economics Foundation, said: “The Government consistently tells us that we must buckle down and live within our financial means, but seems intent on pushing us to break our environmental budget.
“The maths is simple – the UK consumes and produces waste at a rate three and a half times greater than we can sustain, and today humanity has already exhausted what the planet’s ecosystems can provide in a year.
“We’re in the red and gambling with ecological bankruptcy, as the fracking debate shows. If it chose to, the Government can always print more money, but it can’t print more planet. Ecological overshoot should lead the political agenda.”
