We’re Back In Nature’s Overdraft, Again…

Yesterday, July 29th 2021, marked World Overshoot Day. You may be familiar with the concept from previous years, but if not let me explain:

World Overshoot Day marks the day in the calendar each year in which as a global population we have used up as much natural resource as the Earth can regenerate in one year. In essence, it’s the point at which we are now taking resources from the future. The exact date is calculated by the Global Footprint Network by evaluating the planet’s Biocapacity and dividing it by humanity’s Ecological Footprint, then multiplying it by 365. The result for 2021, day 210 = July 29th.

This date is a rather stark and clear-cut view on our overconsumption of the resources Earth provides. Climate issues are often hard to visualise for anyone outside of the researchers studying it due to the vast and complicated science behind it. Putting a date on when we’ve used up our lot for the year however, makes it much more digestible. They also state that this year we will therefore use 1.7 Earth’s worth of resource. 

It’s safe to say, that’s not a positive. We are borrowing from the future. As with your bank overdraft, that debt will come knocking. Across the world, it already is. This past couple months has shown Nature’s debt collector ramping up its knocks on the door already. From the heat dome over West Canada, causing record high temperatures, to the flash floods in Belgium and West Germany destroying homes, livelihoods and taking over 150 lives. You have likely seen footage of citizens in China waist high in flood water on the subways, or of raging wildfires in California. Us Brits have felt some of the impacts too, though luckily not as severe. We have seen floods followed a short-sharp blistering heatwave before returning once more to flash floods, also filling up Underground stations in London. This is the rich, global north and we’re finally feeling the impacts that poorer nations have been facing for a decade or more. No one likes to see a debt collector, and Mother Nature’s is even more terrifying.

So, how are doing? How does this year’s date compare to previous?

Well, last year was a blip due to the vast number of lockdowns halting industries across the globe which resulted in an Overshoot Day of August 22nd. However, we’re back to where we were in 2019 now which held its Overshoot Day on July 26th. It’s important to note that Global Footprint Network re-evaluate the dates for every year back to 1970 every year as the science and understanding of climate change develops. 

1970’s Overshoot Day would’ve been on December 30th. As you can see in the graph they published, the date has rapidly moved forward since then - Though it has slowed down ever so slightly in the past decade. However, all that red, that’s our debt. We not only need to start reversing back up the calendar, we need to go beyond Dec 31st to start paying back our loan.

They also publish data on a per country basis. This instead takes the footprint of each nation and scales it up to what that would equate to if everyone were to live like that. Obviously, if a nation’s impact is less than Earth’s biocapacity then they are not included. I was surprised to see the United Kingdom as far along the calendar is, yet that reaction is rather telling. The UK is still on May 19th, meaning that if everyone were to live like we do we would need just over 2.7 Earth’s to sustain everyone. 

Now I don’t want to leave you on a downer, clearly there is a lot that needs to be done but we have done impossible things before. There is a long road ahead of us, but we can pave the way. Our greatest abilities are those of foresight, innovation and care for each other. Sometimes it’s easy to look at the news and feel like the world is ruined, a mess of villainy but it’s not. For every natural disaster, act of violence or social injustice there is thousands if not tens of thousands of stories of people helping each other, collaborating to save natural wonder or campaigning for environmental or social justice - or even just making someone else smile or laugh. By taking that approach once more, working together for the greater good of everyone not the selfish desires of the few, we can move the date.