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What is Earth Overshoot Day?
The Earth Overshoot Day is also called World Overshoot Day and is a campaign day for sustainability. It indicates on which day the resource budget for a sustainable life for a year is used up. That means: After this day we live wastefully and overstrain the earth to continue to provide us with sustainable resources. Today, July 29, 2019, is the earliest date in human history. This is confirmed by research by the Global Footprint Network , which developed the method for determining the ecological footprint.
Earth Overshoot Day – earlier each year
According to the Global Footprint Network, Earth Depletion Day advances a little each year. In 1979, 40 years ago, Earth Overshoot Day was October 29th. Twenty years later it fell on September 29th and now this year on July 29th. Frightening, because that means we are using the environment 1.75 times faster than it can regenerate. Thus, with the current resource consumption, we would need 1.75 Earths.
How is World Overshoot Day calculated?
In the first step, the biocapacity, i.e. the ability of the earth to renew the resources used and to break down pollutants, is calculated. The result is compared to the global ecological footprint, which measures people’s consumption of natural resources. If this consumption is greater than the replenishment, this is called “overshoot”. This value is then placed on the scale of the year, resulting in the date for Earth Overshoot Day.
Who’s to blame?
In fact, it’s all our fault that Earth Overshoot Day moves forward every day. The problem is that we consume and economize too much and live beyond our means. Germany alone consumes three times as many resources as it can reproduce. In general, it is the industrialized and emerging countries that consume more and more fuel and food, and produce more waste and greenhouse gases than the earth can cope with.
Calculate your own overshoot
- The Global Footprint Network Ecological Footprint Calculator .
- The Water Footprint Network calculator to calculate the individual consumption from the global average water consumption for specific products and raw materials.
- The my-ecological-backpack-calculator calculates the imprint of a life and shows it in comparison to the average and the optimal .
- CO2 calculators help to calculate your own climate balance .
The consequences for the earth
We are already feeling the consequences of excessive consumption. The seas are warming up and no longer provide optimal habitat for animals, the polar ice caps are melting, freshwater sources are drying up, forests are shrinking and landscapes are drying up, animals are losing their habitat and are dying out along with the plant world. The weather extremes from tropical heat with heavy rain in summer to Siberian cold in the double-digit minus range in winter are particularly noticeable for us. As Earth Overshoot Day approaches, the consequences will be more extreme, affecting poor countries in particular.
Saving the environment & climate: We can do that!
Everyone can do something to reduce their ecological footprint, so that at best Earth Overshoot Day will be postponed. It is important that we consume less, produce less waste, save energy, rely on seasonal products and reconsider and reduce our meat and fish consumption. According to the Global Footprint Network, there are 5 key areas we should build on to save our planet:
- Earth Overshoot Day will be pushed back 15 days if everyone on Earth cuts their meat consumption in half.
- If we halve food waste, the date will be pushed back by 10 days.
- If we reduce all car journeys by half and use a third of all car journeys by public transport and walk or cycle the rest of the way, the day shifts back by 12 days.
- Planting 350 million hectares of forest pushes the date back by 8 days.
- If we reduce all CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, we could push back Earth Overshoot Day by 93 days.
