13 May 2021 is Italy's Overshoot day: we have exhausted the quantity of resources the planet is capable of regenerating for the current year.
Four and a half months out of twelve. Italy has already exhausted the quantity of natural resources it can "ask" of the planet. In just over a third of the current year, we have already reached the so-called Overshoot day. This means that, from now until the end of next December, we will be living by asking the Earth for more than it is able to give us.
The date falls one day earlier than in 2020, when it was recorded on 14 May. Every year, the Global footprint network, an international sustainability association working on environmental accounting, calculates the planetary ecological footprint to determine the Overshoot day. The "overshoot day" for each nation is then calculated accordingly, by comparing the ecological footprint of its inhabitants with the planet's capacity to regenerate its own resources.
In other words, ecosystems around the world will be able to recreate the resources that Italy has consumed up to this point — something that will not be possible for all those we will use during the rest of 2021. Our country therefore contributes heavily to the progressive depletion of the planet's natural resources. This is further confirmed by the fact that last year the global Overshoot day arrived "only" in the second half of August.
This means that, to meet the demand of a nation like Italy, almost three planets would be needed. Five in the case of the United States, and slightly fewer for Australia, which ranks second in the far-from-virtuous global table — with Russia in third place, followed by France, Germany and Japan. Our country sits in seventh place.
