It's Only The 214th Day But Humanity Has Consumed The Entire Year's Supply Of Earth's Resources

It's Earth Overshoot Day today. An incredible day for all the wrong reasons.

Reuters

Because today,?humans living on this planet have finished consuming the Earth's ability to produce clean air, water and other natural resources for the whole of 2017.?

For the whole of 2017 -- this is the important bit. We're only at the second day of August, and we've consumed more resources than the Earth can renew through its natural processes -- for the whole of 2017. That's the scary part!

"This means that in seven months, we emitted more carbon than the oceans and forests can absorb in a year, we caught more fish, felled more trees, harvested more, and consumed more water than the Earth was able to produce in the same period," read a statement from The Global Footprint Network and World Wildlife Fund, who observe the ignominious day.?

If the Earth was a bank, and all of us humans its customers, today we've finished removing all the money we had in the bank to fund our overindulgence. The rest of the year we'll be living on money borrowed from the bank, purely on credit. And every year, the bank's reserves are diminishing.?

The Earth Overshoot Day is marked by The Global Footprint Network, with partners like World Wildlife Fund, to create awareness about humanity's adverse impact on the Earth's sensitive ecosystem.?

The overshoot day is falling early with each passing year

Since calculations began in 1986, the Earth Overshoot Day has never fallen so early in a year -- August 2 -- until now.?It's calculated looking at various parameters, for e.g. how are humans consuming earth's resources and the planet's total biocapacity, which not only produces useful things for all of us (food, air, water, etc) but also the capacity to absorb waste and recycle it into favourable resources again.

According to one report from The Independent, the Earth Overshoot Day fell in November in the 1980s, shifting to October from 1993 onwards, and coming as early as September by year 2000. Last year, in 2016, the day fell on 8 August. This year it's fallen early by six days.

We all need to eat more veggies! (REUTERS)

How can we reverse the trend??

According to the Global Footprint Network if humanity cuts its food waste in half, consumed less protein-intensive foods, ate more fruit and vegetables, the impact of food-related activities on our global footprint can reduce from the existing 26% to 16%.?

Also, if the entire world started living like countries like Cuba and Honduras, we can be able to push the Earth Overshoot Day back towards the end of the year -- where it rightfully belongs.?