On 2 August we will have consumed all the renewable resources the planet offers each year. We had never exhausted our annual natural budget so early.
We are racing headlong in a car towards a cliff edge – we cannot see where the drop begins, but we know it is getting closer and closer, inexorably, and the only way to avoid it is to make a decisive U-turn. This, in simplified terms, is the situation facing our species, which is overexploiting natural resources by taking more than the planet is able to provide, and in doing so is signing its own death warrant – because there are some resources (such as drinking water, air and plants) we simply cannot do without.
Humanity has a "budget" of renewable natural resources that the Earth is able to regenerate over the course of 365 days. These resources are being consumed ever more rapidly; Overshoot Day is the day that marks their official exhaustion. This year the fateful date, calculated by the Global Footprint Network (Gfn) – an international organisation working on environmental accounting by calculating the ecological footprint – falls on 2 August.
According to Gfn calculations, we are using natural resources at a rate 1.7 times faster than ecosystems are able to regenerate them. To meet our current resource needs, we would therefore need 1.7 planet Earths. We have "only" one, of course, which means we are drawing ever more heavily on the natural wealth that should belong to future generations.
Never has the official exhaustion of natural capital arrived so early since, in the early 1970s, we first used more resources than the world was able to provide and regenerate. At the end of the 1990s, Overshoot Day fell towards the end of September; gradually that date crept earlier and earlier, until 2 August this year.
Not all, however, seems lost – we can still reverse this trend. "Our planet is finite, but human possibilities are not," said Mathis Wackernagel, CEO of Global Footprint Network and co-creator of the Ecological Footprint. "Living within the means of one planet is technologically possible, financially advantageous, and it is our only chance for a prosperous future." According to Wackernagel, if we were able to push back Overshoot Day by 4–5 days each year, by 2050 we could return to using the resources of just one planet.
Each of us can contribute directly, by reducing our own environmental impact, to achieving this fundamental goal. The Global Footprint Network has launched the #movethedate campaign and suggests a number of actions to take to that end, estimating their impact on the date on which Overshoot Day will fall in the coming years. Food waste, for example, is a global scourge; in Italy alone, at least ten million tonnes of perfectly edible food are thrown away every year. Reducing waste by 50 per cent worldwide could push Overshoot Day back by eleven days; lower meat consumption and a reduction in the use of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles would also have a positive impact on the planet.
To encourage individuals to contribute to the #movethedate campaign and to become aware of their own ecological footprint, the Global Footprint Network has developed a tool that allows every user to calculate their own personal Overshoot Day.