‘Earth Overshoot Day’ moves forward by nearly a month
The COVID effect didn’t last. In 2021, Earth Overshoot Day lands on July 29. Humanity has already consumed more natural resources than the planet can regenerate this year.
In 2021, Earth Overshoot Day lands on July 29. Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year. For the rest of the year, we are maintaining our ecological deficit by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We are operating in overshoot.
This is worryingly the same date that the world reached two years ago in 2019. This means that the modest gains accrued from the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as far as humanity’s ecological footprint is concerned have been lost.
As much of the world was living under coronavirus lockdowns in 2020, last year’s Overshoot Day fell on August 22, nearly a month later than the high of July 25 set in 2018. But this year, even though carbon emissions from air travel and road transport are still lagging 2019 highs, a rallying global economy is pushing emissions and consumption back up.
To determine the date of Earth Overshoot Day for each year, Global Footprint Network calculates the number of days of that year that Earth’s biocapacity suffices to provide for humanity’s Ecological Footprint. The remainder of the year corresponds to global overshoot.
This spending was currently some of the largest since the world entered into ecological overshoot in the early 1970s, according to the National Footprint & Biocapacity Accounts based on UN datasets, noted the WWF.
Wealthy countries are leading the way in resource use. For instance, if the world’s population lived like the the US, Overshoot Day would fall on 14 March. And if everyone lived like the UK, the date would fall on 19 May.
A Country Overshoot Day reflects the ecological footprint of a country by comparing the population’s demand and the nation’s biocapacity. Meanwhile, if humanity lived like the people of Indonesia, Overshoot Day would land just weeks before the end of the year on 18 December.
With inputs from: overshootday.org
