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.
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