In an unprecedented collaborative endeavor, Slovenia's Ministry of Environment, Climate and Energy, in partnership with Global Footprint Network, announces a critical date for the planet: this year’s Earth Overshoot Day, lands on August 2nd.
You might be interested in looking into carrying capacity of an ecosystem, and what happens when it is exceeded, aka overshoot.
The accounting methods and the underlying models vary. E.g. without cheap fossil energy the global carrying capacity is under one billion, perhaps as low as 100 million.
From the article, because it explained it much better than i was going to:
The date, calculated by Global Footprint Network each year using National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts data, marks the point when humanity’s demand for biological resources exceeds the Earth’s capacity to regenerate them within that year.
So basically, lets say 1000 tons of coal is formed every year (this is not a real number, its a hilariously high overestimate), “Earth Overshoot Day” marks the day we actually use up that years resources. So if that day is Aug. 2nd, that means we already used the 1000 tons that would have formed that year, on that day.
What’s Earth Overshoot Day?
It’s the day when we’ve collectively used as many resources as the earth can produce in one year. This year, it was August 2.
I see.
You might be interested in looking into carrying capacity of an ecosystem, and what happens when it is exceeded, aka overshoot.
The accounting methods and the underlying models vary. E.g. without cheap fossil energy the global carrying capacity is under one billion, perhaps as low as 100 million.
From the article, because it explained it much better than i was going to:
So basically, lets say 1000 tons of coal is formed every year (this is not a real number, its a hilariously high overestimate), “Earth Overshoot Day” marks the day we actually use up that years resources. So if that day is Aug. 2nd, that means we already used the 1000 tons that would have formed that year, on that day.