Di Laetitia • On monday, August 8th 2016 the “Earth Overshoot Day” was celebrated, and this means that for this year we have already used all the ecological resources that our planet can produce in 365 days.

In 1970s the date of this aniversary was at the end of December, and from that moment we gradually got worse, until now, when the entire global population would need 1.6 “Earths” to continue with our lifestyle. In 2000 the “Earth Overshoot Day” was at the beginning of October and it’s been creeping up ever since, happening on August 19 in 2014 and reaching August 13 last year.
This “Expiration Date” reminds us that we are living well beyond our planet’s means. Humans use more resources and services that nature can regenerate through overfishing, overharvesting forests and emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than forests can reabsorb.

In December 2015, the COP21 –United Nations Climate Change Conference– was held in Paris, and the 196 parties attending it have agreed to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (°C) and to reach a greenhouse gas emission equal to zero during the second half of the 21st century

Calculating the waste of resources country by country would give very different results. Some countries, like Australia and U.S.A., would need respectively 5.4 and 4.8 planets to support the needs of these populations, and these data fall up to 1.8 planets for Brazil and only 0.7 for India.

The Global Footprint Network encourages countries to produce their electricity with solar panels and wind turbines as well as eat vegeterian, shrink energy use and reduce paper waste. It will take more that recycling paper to move
Earth O
vershoot Day toward 31st December, but if each and everyone of us works together, then maybe (I hope so!) we will able to celebrate this day in the fall instead of in the middle of the summer.