If everyone on Earth had the same lifestyle as your average Australian, we’d need 4.8 planets.
This year, Overshoot Day falls on 13 August – click here to go to the Global Footprint Network's "Overshoot Day" website for more details.
Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year. For the rest of the year, we will maintain our ecological deficit by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We will be operating in overshoot. While only a rough estimate of time and resource trends, Earth Overshoot Day is as close as science can be to measuring the gap between our demand for ecological resources and services, and how much the planet can provide.
Earth Overshoot Day is an initiative of the Global Footprint Network (GFN) and is supported by a global network of groups concerned about humanity's overshoot. For more information about the GFN please click here to visit their website or scroll down to the bottom of this page for a summary of their work.
AELA is an official partner of the GFN and is part of the global campaign to promote Overshoot Day, as it helps raise awareness of humanity’s failure to live within its ecological limits and our urgent need to rein in human consumption of the natural world. For more information about AELA's work to create law and governance to help us reduce consumption and live within our ecological limits please click here.
AELA’s PROGRAMS
AELA believes it is critical that we create legal and governance structures to help human societies live within our ecological limits. For information about our ‘Ecological Limits’ Program, please click here.
For information about our 2015-2016 national workshop and publication series – ‘Let’s Talk About Consumption’ please click here.
If you’re involved in collective projects – for example, with a community group or organisation - to reduce your consumption of natural resources and consumer goods, we’d love to hear from you. Please click here to visit our info webpage and share your stories of success (or frustration!) by filling out our survey.
THE COST OF ECOLOGICAL OVERSPENDING
Throughout most of history, humanity has used nature’s resources to build cities and roads, to provide food and create products, and to absorb our carbon dioxide at a rate that was well within Earth’s budget. But in the mid-1970s, we crossed a critical threshold: Human consumption began outstripping what the planet could reproduce.
According to Global Footprint Network’s calculations, our demand for renewable ecological resources and the services they provide is now equivalent to that of more than 1.5 Earths. The data shows us on track to require the resources of two planets well before mid-century.
The fact that we are using, or “spending,” our natural capital faster than it can replenish is similar to having expenditures that continuously exceed income. In planetary terms, the costs of our ecological overspending are becoming more evident by the day. Climate change—a result of greenhouse gases being emitted faster than they can be absorbed by forests and oceans—is the most obvious and arguably pressing result. But there are others—shrinking forests, species loss, fisheries collapse, higher commodity prices and civil unrest, to name a few. The environmental and economic crises we are experiencing are symptoms of looming catastrophe. Humanity is simply using more than what the planet can provide.
ABOUT THE GLOBAL FOOTPRINT NETWORK
Global Footprint Network is an international think tank working to advance sustainability through use of the Ecological Footprint, a resource accounting tool that measures how much nature we have, and how much we use. This tool is unique in making planetary overshoot measurable through detailed resource accounts for nations, cities and individuals. By working with governments, investors and opinion leaders Global Footprint Network demonstrates the advantages of making ecological limits central to decision-making. During its ten-year history, Global Footprint Network has engaged with 57 national governments on six continents with one overarching goal: that all people live well, within the means of one planet.
For more information please visit the following links:
- Calculate your Personal Footprint
- Read about the Footprint Methodology
- Watch a brief introduction video to the Ecological Footprint
- General Information on Global Footprint Network
