Pack It In, Everybody, We Used Up the Earth

[Geee]

The Federalist:

Here’s how it is: the Earth got used up.

 

No, not in some science-fiction future, but yesterday. August 8 has been declared Earth Overshoot Day, the point at which humanity as a whole has used up all of the available natural resources for the year.

 

So pack it in, everybody, we’re through. Bummer.

 

Obviously, we’re not. We reached the point at which we supposedly used up all of our resources, and then we just kept on going, which implies that maybe there were some additional resources left.

 

So where does this calculation of Earth Overshoot Day come from?

The day is declared every year by Global Footprint Network, a nonprofit research group that focuses on sustainability. The first Earth Overshoot Day was in Oct. 2006. It’s been creeping up the calendar ever since, landing on Aug. 19 in 2014, and just last year, reaching Aug. 13. The earlier Earth Overshoot Day falls, the more rapidly we’ve been using the planet’s natural resources.

 

The exact date of Earth Overshoot Day is determined by a simple formula. Global Footprint Network takes the planet’s biocapacity, or the amount of natural resources available, divides it by humanity’s ecological footprint, or how much of the planet’s resources we use up, and then multiplies it by the days in a year.