https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/earth-overshoot-day-natural-resources-july_n_5d39a020e4b004b6adbbd643
[images and links in online article]
07/29/2019 05:45 EDT | Updated 07/29/2019 06:55 EDT
Earth Overshoot Day Shows We're Tearing Through Resources Faster Than Ever
July 29 marks the point at which we start to consume more than the Earth
can replenish. And this date is getting earlier each year.
By Laura Paddison, HuffPost US
On July 29, we cross an alarming threshold. This date marks Earth
Overshoot Day, the point each year at which humanity starts to consume
the world’s natural resources faster than they can be replenished.
It’s taken us only 209 days to burn through a year’s worth of resources
— everything from food and timber to land and carbon. We are using up
nature 1.75 times faster than it can be replenished. To do this
sustainably, we would need the resources of 1.75 Earths.
These latest figures come from Global Footprint Network, an
international nonprofit that calculates our annual ecological budget and
the date at which we exceed it. Once we bust through this budget, we
start devouring resources at an unsustainable rate.
“It’s a pyramid scheme,” said Mathis Wackernagel, CEO and founder of
Global Footprint Network. “It depends on using more and more from the
future to pay for the present.”
It’s like being in financial debt, only much harder to recover. “There’s
nothing to kickstart the economy if we overuse our resources,” he said,
“because every economic activity depends on natural capital, and without
that, it’s not going to work.”
The burden of this ecological debt is getting heavier. We started
overconsuming resources back in the 1970s, and since then it’s gotten
progressively worse. Over the last 20 years, Earth Overshoot Day has
crept forward by more than two months. And this year, it falls on the
earliest date yet.
Forests are being felled at an alarming rate to provide timber and clear
land for agriculture — two football fields’ worth of Amazon rainforest
were cleared every minute in May. We are overexploiting water resources
for industry and agriculture, and to provide drinking water for
ever-expanding cities. And our addiction to fossil fuels means we are
producing carbon emissions at levels that will push us further into
dangerous temperature rises.
As with financial debt, we can only avoid the consequences for so long.
The impact is already becoming frighteningly clear. Wildfires are
becoming more frequent and more destructive. Cities around the world,
from Cape Town to Chennai, are running out of water supplies, and a
landmark U.N. biodiversity report published in May said up to 1 million
species could go extinct thanks to human actions.
While the consequences are likely to affect poorer nations more starkly,
it’s the populations of richer nations that live further beyond their
means, according to the Global Footprint Network. If everyone lived like
people in the United States, for example, we would need five Earths. If
we all consumed resources at the same rate as people in India, we would
only need seven-tenths of a planet to meet our demands.
It’s an untenable situation, and one that will not continue
indefinitely, Wackernagel said. Whether it stops through disaster or by
design is up to us.
Wackernagel blames the current inaction on the failure of politicians
and economists to understand that the economy depends on, and is
inextricably linked to, natural resources. Instead, the tendency is to
treat environmental considerations as secondary, rather than fundamental
to the economy’s ability to survive. But the costs of ignoring them will
be huge, he said.
“So as long as, for example in the United States, the Trump government
doesn’t think climate action is a great investment for the United
States, they will do anything they can to avoid the topic,” he said.
Global Footprint Network has launched a campaign to end Earth Overshoot
Day for good, aiming to conserve enough resources to move the date later
by five days each year — so that by 2050, we can live within the
resources of one Earth.
This year’s Earth Overshoot Day will be July 29th. We can
#MoveTheDate – 5 days a year, so that humanity will be using less than
one planet before 2050. This is our mission to @EndOvershoot.
pic.twitter.com/fnxt6TrKPy
— Christiana Figueres (@CFigueres) June 5, 2019
The organization has identified several areas in which we can reduce
consumption: more efficient and low-carbon city design; moving away from
fossil fuels, which make up the biggest share of our overall footprint;
fixing the broken food system; and protecting nature through
regenerative agriculture and large-scale conservation.
Overpopulation is also a key pressure point, Wackernagel said, adding
that one of the best solutions is to provide women and girls with the
same educational and economic opportunities offered to men.
“It’s not about sacrifice,” Wackernagel said. “It’s all about investing
in a future where our next generation, our children, can thrive. There
are tons of solutions possible with very high impact. Again, the
question is, do we want them?”
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