Earth Overshoot Day is coming!
In 9 months, humanity exhausts the Earth’s budget for the year
Just as a bank statement tracks income against expenditures, Global Footprint Network tracks human demand on the planet–from filtering CO2 to producing the raw materials for food–against its capacity to regenerate those resources and absorb the waste. And the data is sobering. Global Footprint Network estimates that approximately every nine months, we have demanded a level of services from nature equivalent to what the planet can provide for all of 2012.
In 2011, Earth Overshoot Day, the approximate date our demands on nature for a given year exceeds the planet’s ability to replenish, fell on September 27. We have since been in ecological overshoot, with a projected consumption of 135 percent of the resources the Earth will create this year. We make up the deficit by depleting stocks of fish, trees and other resources, and by accumulating waste such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and oceans.
Earth Overshoot Day, a concept originally developed by Global Footprint Network partner and U.K. think tank, new economics foundation, is the annual marker of when we begin living beyond our means in a given year. While only a rough estimate of time and resources, Earth Overshoot Day is as close as science can be to measuring the gap between a sustainability level of ecological demand and how much is currently required to support human activities globally.
The Cost of Ecological Overspending
Click here to watch a video on overshoot
Throughout most of history, humanity has used nature’s resources- to build cities and roads, to provide food and create products, to absorb the CO₂ generated by human activities-at a rate that was well within the means of what the Earth could regenerate. But, sometime in the mid-1970’s, we crossed a critical threshold. Human demand began outstripping what the planet could renewably produce, a gap known as ecological overshoot.
According to Global Footprint Network’s calculations, we are now using the Earth’s resources at a rate that would take between 1.3 and 1.5 planets to sustainably support. The research shows us on track to require the resources of two Earths well before mid-century.
The fact that we are using or “spending,” natural capital faster than it can replenish is similar to having expenditures that continually exceed income. In planetary terms, the cost of our ecological overspending are becoming more clear by the day. Climate change–a result of carbon being emitted faster than it can be reabsorbed by the forests and oceans–is the most obvious and arguably pressing result. But there are others–shrinking forests, species loss, fisheries collapse and freshwater stress to name a few. The environmental crises we are experiencing are symptoms of looming catastrophe. Humanity is simply using more than the planet can provide.
Have We Reduced Global Overshoot?
Earth Overshoot Day in 2010 came a few weeks earlier in the year than it did in 2011. Does this mean we are reducing global overshoot? The answer, unfortunately, is no.
Earth Overshoot Day is an estimate, not an exact date. It is not possible to determine with 100 percent accuracy the day we bust our ecological budget. Adjustments of the date that we go into overshoot are due to revised calculations, not ecological advances on the part of humanity. Based on current assumptions, Global Footprint Network research now suggests that since 2001, Earth Overshoot Day has been moving three days earlier each year.(See the Media Backgrounder for more information.)
Global Footprint Network is constantly working toward better data sets and methodology that can more accurately capture the extent to which human demand exceeds nature’s supply. Global Footprint Network scientists, for example, are revising the way they compare productivity across different geographies and land types-such as how to incorporate the output of a forest in Russia and fishing grounds in Chile into a single standardized number.
As Global Footprint Network methodology changes, projections may continue to shift. But every scientific model used to account for human demand and nature’s supply shows a consistent trend: We are in significant overshoot, and overshoot is growing.
By any analysis we are well over budget, and that debt is compounding. It is an ecological debt, and the interest we are paying on that mounting debt—food shortages, plummeting wildlife populations, disappearing forests, degraded land productivity and the build-up of CO₂ in our atmosphere and oceans—comes with devastating human and monetary costs.
Click here to learn more about Earth Overshoot Day, and how it has changed over time.
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