Earth’s Resources used up on August 1

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This year, Earth Overshoot Day will be celebrated on August 1. As the environmental organization Germanwatch announced on Thursday, this is the day on which, according to the Global Footprint Network, the world’s population will have used up all the resources the planet could naturally replace within a year.

“For decades, the Earth’s overload has increased almost every year, and it has now been hovering at a high level for almost ten years,” explained Christoph Bals, Political Director of Germanwatch. However, a turning point can be recognized. Congestion could soon decrease with the help of renewable energies, storage technologies, e-mobility, and heat pumps. “But these and other encouraging trends must be greatly accelerated in order to prevent irreversible climate tipping points and massive further losses of species.”

According to the report, air travel is particularly harmful to the climate – even though, according to the experts, more than 80 per cent of the world’s population never boards an aeroplane. Only a very small proportion of the world’s population is responsible for one of the major drivers of the climate crisis with its flying behaviour, according to Jacob Rohm, Germanwatch’s expert on climate-neutral mobility. Therefore, technical solutions for nearly climate-neutral flying must be worked on “at full speed”.

Earlier every year
The global Earth Overshoot Day has been continuously moving forward for 20 years. In 2000, the date fell on September 23, more than a month later than today. The coronavirus pandemic made an exception: in 2020, reduced economic activity and lockdown measures caused CO2 emissions to fall, delaying the symbolic date until August 22.

To calculate this, the experts at the Global Footprint Network compare two mathematical values: the Earth’s capacity to build up resources and absorb waste and harmful emissions, and the amount of land consumed by humanity’s way of life. The world’s population would need 1.7 Earths to cover current resource consumption sustainably.