Posts Tagged ‘Global Footprint Network’

Earth Overshoot Day

  Posted By:  Amanda Gillen

Well, this is just depressing. The Global Footprint Network has calculated “Earth Overshoot Day”:

Every year, Global Footprint Network calculates nature’s supply in the form of biocapacity, the amount of resources the planet generates, and compares that to human demand: the amount it takes to produce all the living resources we consume and absorb our carbon dioxide emissions. Earth Overshoot Day, a concept devised by U.K.-based new economics foundation, marks the day when demand on ecological services begins to exceed the renewable supply.

This year, Earth Overshoot Day was Saturday, August 21. This means that we are now living off of credit from the earth and building upon our past debts. The Global Footprint Network expects that this year we will use 150% of the resources the earth can generate this year.

Not only is this unsustainable but we are setting ourselves up for a disaster. Why don’t we do something about it?