Earth Overshoot Day Arrives this Week

This graphic depiction from The New York Times indicates our worsening predicament. 

The black bars represent the Earth's capacity to deliver the resources that sustain humanity. The battery is fully charged in January. By March, it's down to 60 per cent. That drops to 20 per cent in June. And now, in August, capacity has fallen to zero. We have reached Earth's annual carrying capacity.

We've got almost five months left to go. We need to consume resources that Earth can't provide. The biosphere is tapped out. But, hey, it could always be worse. We've got Covid-19 to thank.

Demonstrating its role as a high-level indicator, this year’s Earth Overshoot Day will, for the first time, arrive later than it did the year before. (By more than three weeks!) That’s a direct result of the coronavirus shutdowns, which reduced humanity’s ecological footprint by 9.3 percent, according to estimates from Global Footprint Network researchers.

“The fact that Earth Overshoot Day is later this year is a reflection of a lot of suffering, and the reflection of imposed changes to our lives,” said Laurel Hanscom, chief executive of the Global Footprint Network. “I don’t think there’s a silver lining to that.”