Humans have now consumed the Earth's natural resources for the year

Authored by euronews.com and submitted by HotDamnGeoff
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It's called "Overshoot Day", the moment each year when we humans have used up more natural resources that the Earth can renew in 12 months.

And this year that day came on Saturday, August 22nd.

Put another way, it would take 1.6 Earths this year to meet the needs of the world's population in a sustainable way.

The calculations were made by American NGO Global Footprint Network -- since 2003 it's been raising the alarm on the ever faster consumption of an expanding human population on a limited planet.

On the one hand there is our ecological footprint, which includes the spewing out of greenhouse gases -- then there is the capacity of the earth's ecosystems to absorb our waste products and renew ones we have consumed, such as wood from cut down trees in forests.

The worrying part is that overshoot day has been falling earlier and earlier every year.

Global Footprint Network estimates it was December 29th in 1970, November 4th in 1980, October 11th in 1990, September 23rd in 2000 and August 7th in 2010.

This year has been an anomaly because the coronavirus pandemic slowed down human activity, delaying the grim milestone slightly compared to last year.

In 2019 Overshoot Day actually fell on July 29th.

The 2015 Paris climate deal saw nations commit to limit temperature rises to "well below" two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels through sweeping emissions cuts.

It also set a safer goal of a 1.5 C cap.

The United Nations says global emissions must fall 7.6 percent annually this decade for that number to be possible.

Mr_Belch on August 22nd, 2020 at 20:08 UTC »

Coronavirus had a pretty big impact on this. We are three weeks later than last year.

CouldOfBeenGreat on August 22nd, 2020 at 19:14 UTC »

More than a month later than last year. It hasn't been this late in the year for over a decade.

Just a few more pandemics and we'll be back on track!

Bozinthecalm on August 22nd, 2020 at 18:33 UTC »

For those who don't understand what this means.

Overshoot day pertains to absolutely nothing... but global emission rates. There is only so much emissions humanity can spew into the air that the earth can naturally offset. Humanity overshoots this natural offset by roughly 160% each year... and has done so since 1950s; at least that's when we started measuring. Even if the whole planet went full 100% renewable and no dirty stuff... It would still likely take decades in order to not have an overshoot day on the global scale. That's just the ugly reality of when you spent many decades doing the worst you could.

So again for those wondering what this means.

We heavily polluted; surpassing the natural offset of the earth, and it's going to take a long time to fix this. So prepare to see Overshoot days for quite a few years.