“Earth Overshoot Day” falls a month earlier than last year
British think-tank the New Economics Foundation measures how much resources humans are using and this year’s results aren’t good. The NEF says we’ll reach “Earth Overshoot Day”—the moment in the year when we’ve used more resources globally than the earth’s ecosystems can handle—will come a month earlier, on August 21, compared to September 23 last year. Growing demand for everything from cars to fish in developing countries like China has fueled much of the growth, said the NEF’s policy director, Andrew Simms. But he noted that rich countries also showed growth in consumption, despite government policies to fight climate change and increase energy efficiency. “The banking crisis taught us the danger of a system that goads us to live beyond our means financially,” Simms told The Telegraph. “A greater danger comes from a consumer culture that pushes us to live beyond our means ecologically.”