You undoubtedly know about the designated day every year when you have earned enough money to pay for the taxes you will owe. It’s called Tax Freedom Day, and it varies from state to state. Alaska and Louisiana, for instance, have the least tax burden of the fifty. Their Tax Freedom date this year was March 26, or 85 days from January 1. Connecticut, on the other hand, came up on April 27, or 117 days into the year! (Wisconsin was @ 102 days, on April 12.)
There is a similar type of calendar point for global sustainability. It has a much more serious implication. Today, August 21, is officially Earth Overshoot Day. It is a single global date that has been steadily moving on the calendar, but moving forward from December 31.
The Global Footprint Network was begun in 2003 to develop a measure of human impacts on Earth relative to its optimal balance for sustainability. The measure is the Ecological Footprint.
Like a bank account statement, the Footprint analyzes resource consumptions against the planet’s ability to renew them. This is a budget. A Nature budget. Are we, then, underbudget or overbudget relative to planet sustainability?
As the (fuzzy) graph shows, the number of days in a year with a deficit budget (overshoot) has gone from zero in 1976 to nearly 140 in 2010. The approximately 140 days from today to December 31st are, technically, days where the planet’s population is operating beyond its resources for the year. Hence, the Earth Overshoot Day.
Another way to look at the imbalance of resources to consumption is to estimate the current number of Earths needed for human sustainability. Because we have an overshoot day that falls at less than a complete year, we must need more than one Earth’s resources to reach December 31st, right?
Consequently, the planet’s occupants currently consume at a rate of 1.4 Earths per year. The United States, of course, consumes everything possible at a higher rate than any other country.
Using the carbon footprint to determine your affect on the Earth is not an unknown concept. But applying this concept to the population as a whole reveals the over-consuming that is wearing the planet thin.
Take some time to wander through the Global Footprint Network site. Be mindful of the fact that we are running an ever higher deficit, beginning today.
