Posted by Unknown
-
Some countries fortunately are still classified as ecological creditors, such as Brazil and Australia.
These ecological creditors are countries that have been able to generate a surplus, meaning they manage pretty well on their allowance, and even save up some extra for a rainy day.
However, their reserves are shrinking, because everyone else keeps borrowing from them. It is unknown exactly how much is being ‘loaned’ to ecological debtors to make up for their shortfalls.
The infographic below outlines the declining ratio of ecological reserves over time.
What is the status of your country over the course of the last 50 odd years?
Have they become debtors or remained as creditors?
If your country is in ecological deficit, when did it first start?
Click here to find out.
Sources: # #
Back
Posted by Unknown
-
Let's take China for an example.
China’s 1.38 billion citizens consume resources that need km2 of land area to make...and we only have 149 million km2 of land on Earth to begin with. The extra resources they are consuming are either meant for the future or imported.
What we consume today needs 1.5 Earths to make. That’s 223.5 million km2. That figure only increases year after year. By 2050, we will need 2 Earths to satisfy our demand.
The environmental and economic crises we are experiencing are symptoms of looming catastrophe, and signs of human pressure of the planet’s finite resources.
However, not every country owes a debt to Mother Nature. Where there are debtors, there are creditors - countries that are being owed.
Back
Posted by Unknown
-
Note the numerator and denominator of that equation.
You couldn’t possibly find two variants which were harder to accurately derive.
You would have to figure out the land mass of each individual country on Earth, the amount of natural resources available to each individual country, decide how to draw boundaries in oceans to calculate how much fish belong to which country, take into account that fish, uh, swim and therefore ocean resources fluctuate...and that’s the tip of the iceberg (that the Captain of the Titanic probably scoffed at).
This difficulty in precise calculations means that for convenience purposes, figures are input into this formula using aggregated country datasets and as such Earth Overshoot Day becomes an approximation instead of being really precise.
Still, the data shows that humanity’s demand on nature is at an unsustainable level — one year is no longer enough to regenerate humanity’s annual demand on the planet.
Sources: # #
Back
Posted by Unknown
-
However, the 1970s brought about a small phenomenon we know as globalisation. This meant that different countries who were once strangers suddenly became friends with benefits.
We could trade our stuff with their stuff, so that everyone could have more stuff. The world became a global market place to sell things.
That more stuff companies could produce and sell, the more money they got.
This was accompanied by rapid development, so it was easy for companies to mass-produce things. However, in the process of globalisation, we crossed a critical threshold: Human consumption began outstripping what the planet could reproduce.
Basically, we looked at our bank account and noticed that we were spending well within our means and told ourselves collectively “We should spend more”. And for a while, we arguably could. But hey, that’s probably also what Alan Greenspan told himself for twenty odd years before his bubble burst.
When this concept of
Earth Overshoot Day was first calculated in 1987, the actual date of overshoot
was December 19. Within the last 26 years, we’ve managed to over-consume so
much resources that Earth Overshoot Day has been brought forward by almost four
months.
That’s ⅓ of a year earlier in comparison.
Every kid loves the idea of
Christmas coming early, but what’s that kid going to say when he/she grows up
and has to live with the consequences of our reckless ‘spending’ now?
However, in the real world, the number of users are increasing at an exponential rate. Suddenly, everybody is cutting down all the trees everywhere. And trees aren’t the only resource.
Everybody is mining and using Mother Nature’s resources without planning for the future, and these resources are disappearing.
This is the consequence of overshooting; our mining is no longer sustainable unless we start planning for the future and giving Mother Nature time to replenish herself.
Back
Posted by Unknown
-
The term “overshoot” might make you think of the time you slept on the train and ending up 5 stops away from where you should have been.
Environmentally, the stop you were supposed to get off is the amount of ecological resources that the planet can provide.
However, the stop you actually get off at are the amount of resources we actually consume.
Earth Overshoot day is as close as science as be to
measuring the gap between the two, in other words, the amount of
stops that we missed.
Earth Overshoot Day is the day that we should stop consuming resources, because we have already exhausted nature’s budget for the year. This year, Earth Overshoot Day fell on August 20.
However, we can’t just stop consuming.
We should note, though, that not every country is consuming more than they can produce yearly.
Some countries are debtors, who owe the environment, and are consuming future resources. Some are creditors, who produce a surplus, and contribute to the environment. It’s just that there are much more debtors than creditors, thus leading to a world debt.
So you’ve come in right at the climax of the story, where the hero (Earth) is about to be pushed off the cliff by the villain (mankind). Let’s grab the figurative remote and rewind back to 1970, to see how this story all began.
Credits for images on this website: #
