With nearly three months' lead over the global average, we have already consumed all the resources our planet is capable of producing — transport and food consumption the main causes: this is the Italian Overshoot day.
On 24 May, Italy — that is, all of us — consumed all the renewable resources that nature makes available each year, with nearly three months' lead over what happens at a global level (last year the Earth's Overshoot day fell on 2 August). This is the Italian Overshoot day.
The announcement was made by the Global Footprint Network, an international environmental research organisation, which assessed the ecological footprint of Italians by calculating their annual demand and comparing it with that of the entire world population. Once calculated, it can be measured against biocapacity — that is, the planet's ability to regenerate those resources in a year — yielding the productive planetary surface area needed to cover total demand.
The result is that Italians have an ecological footprint of 4.3 global hectares (or gha), above the Mediterranean average of 3.2 gha per capita; lower, however, than that of the French (4.7 gha per capita), and higher than that of Spaniards (3.8 gha per capita).
"If all the inhabitants of the Earth consumed resources as Italians do, we would need 2.6 planet Earths," said Mathis Wackernagel, co-founder of the Global Footprint Network. "But we clearly have only one Earth available, and failing to adapt to its limits becomes a risk for all of us. If our planet has limits, human ingenuity seems to have none."
Since the 1970s, homo sapiens has been living in ecological deficit. And every year the Overshoot day date arrives earlier and earlier. Entire generations are born already carrying an enormous debt — not only economic. Deforestation, soil erosion, loss of natural habitats and biodiversity, and rising CO2 emissions (we are already above 410 parts per million) are the current consequences we are already recording at a global level.
Read also: Fao, "From 2 August we have used up the Earth's resources — it's Overshoot day 2017"
The Wwf explains that "today less than a quarter of the land surface remains free from substantial human impacts: wetland environments alone have suffered an 87% loss over the last 300 years and 54% since 1900. The degradation of the world's soils is completely undermining the wellbeing of at least 3.2 billion human beings."
And that, due to the "loss of biodiversity and the ecosystem services that derive from it, costs are estimated at more than 10 per cent of the world's gross global product. In Italy, land consumption has meant that approximately 23,000 square kilometres of national territory have now been lost along with their respective ecosystem services, and that the share of consumed land has risen from 2.7 per cent in the 1950s to 7 per cent in 2016. In Italy, land is being converted at a rate estimated at 3 cubic metres per second."
First of all, get informed. The Global Footprint Network itself has made the Footprint calculator available, which allows you to get an initial idea of how your daily activities affect your impact on the planet. This can be a good starting point for changing the habits and daily choices that have the greatest impact. "Living within our planet's capacity to sustain us," Wackernagel confirms, "is technologically possible, economically advantageous and is our only option for a more prosperous future. Building a sustainable future for everyone must be our priority."
From there, we should act on the items that weigh most heavily on the annual environmental bill: diet, transport, energy. Consuming fewer animal-derived products and favouring products whose origin we know. Leaving the car parked if the journey is under 5 kilometres. Installing renewables, or choosing a supplier that can guarantee that the energy we use daily comes from renewable sources. The options exist; the excuses do not.