E-Paper
Earth has overshot its resources budget
We humans have exhausted all the natural resources that our home, the Earth can sustainably supply over the year. The alarming part is that we have finished those resources – that should have lasted an entire year -- in just 7 months.
Calculated since 1986 by Global Footprint Network (GFN), the Earth Overshoot Day is the day on which humanity’s consumption of resources such as water, soil and clean air for the year far exceed the Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources in the same year. Originally based in US, Belgium and Switzerland, GFN is an international research organisation that observes humanity’s use of natural materials as well as the environmental damage they cause.
Earliest in 2 decades
The 2019 Earth Overshoot Day is the earliest ever with the Day moving up by two months every year in the past two decades. In 1993, it fell on October 21, in 2003 on September 22, and in 2017 on August 2. Rich nations use up resources faster than poor ones, says the GFN report. The US, Australia, Denmark and Canada use up their resources before the end of March, while Cuba, Nicaragua, Iraq & Ecuador don’t do so until December.
Severe consequences
The cost of this global ecological overspending is evident in the form of “deforestation, soil emission, biodiversity loss, or the buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere,” says the GFN report The latter leads to climate change and more frequent extreme weather events. If we are able to move the Earth Overshoot Day by five days each year, humans can live sustainably on this planet till 2059, the report adds.
