August 08, 2016

It’s less than eight months into 2016 and the ominous day is already nearly upon us: Earth Overshoot Day, previously known as Ecological Debt Day, is a reminder of the enormous toll we take on the Earth. The day marks the juncture when humanity’s demand for ecological resources exceeds what the planet can replenish annually. In 2016, it falls on Monday, which means people have already consumed an entire year’s worth of the world’s resources ― and we still have four months to go until the year’s end.

For the rest of 2016, we’ll be “living on resources borrowed from future generations,” as the World Wildlife Fund pointed out when we failed last year.

Troublingly, this year’s Overshoot Day is happening earlier than ever before.

Earth Overshoot Day, previously known as Ecological Debt Day, is the date on which humanity’s resource consumption for the year exceeds Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year. Earth Overshoot Day is calculated by dividing the world biocapacity (the amount of natural resources generated by Earth that year), by the world ecological footprint (humanity’s consumption of Earth’s natural resources for that year), and multiplying by 365, the number of days in one Gregorian common calendar year:

( World Biocapacity  /  World Ecological Footprint  ) × 365 = Ecological Debt Day. When viewed through an economic perspective, EDD represents the day in which humanity enters an ecological deficit spending. In ecology term Earth Overshoot Day illustrates the level by which human population overshoots its environment.

Earth Overshoot Day is calculated by Global Footprint Network and is a campaign supported by dozens of other nonprofit organizations. Information about Global Footprint Network's calculations and national Ecological Footprints can be found at www.footprintnetwork.org/public.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/earth-overshoot-day-2016_us_57a4258fe4b056bad2151b49