Earth overload day
The Erdüberlastungstag ( English Earth Overshoot Day , increasingly rarely, "Ecological Debt Day", "Overshoot day", "Weltüberlastungstag" or "Ökoschuldentag") is an annual campaign of the organization Global Footprint Network , the day of the current year, where the human demand according to renewable raw materials, the supply and the capacity of the earth to reproduce these resources will exceed this year. The earth overload day is an action day .
The respective date is calculated by putting the global ecological footprint (the human demand for biological resources within the respective year) in relation to the total global biocapacity (the amount of worldwide regeneration of biological resources within the same year); analogously, the respective annual resource consumption is extrapolated to a corresponding number of soils. The aim of the campaign is to make people aware of the finiteness and finiteness of natural resources and the earth and to show how the date can be pushed into the future.
Data and concept
From an economic perspective, from the earth overload day onwards, mankind is in a resource deficit because it has already used up its entire annual resource income and therefore has to borrow "money from the bank" - that is, the earth. This condition is called "overshoot".
The concept of Earth Congestion Day was originally developed by Andrew Simms , a member of the British think tank New Economics Foundation . The Global Footprint Network measures human demand for and global supply of natural resources and ecological services . Global Footprint Network notes that now all renewable resources and CO 2 emissions for a whole year have been used up after just seven months . The organization uses economics terms in the hope of appealing not just to academics but to a wider audience.
In 2019, the day was July 29th. The trend over the past 25 years shows a clear move forward to an earlier date. In 2003 the day was calculated for September 22nd, in 1993 for October 21st. B. comes due to weather-related different emissions .
year | Overload day | Consumption in earth units |
---|---|---|
1961 | 0.73 (This year was the global annual resource - utilization as reserves left) |
|
... | ||
1970 | December 29th | 1.01 (Since then the annual consumption has exceeded the globally available resources) |
1971 | 20th of December | 1.03 |
1972 | 10th of December | 1.06 |
1973 | November 26th | 1.10 |
1974 | November 27th | 1.10 |
1975 | 30th of November | 1.09 |
1976 | November 16 | 1.14 |
1977 | November 11th | 1.16 |
1978 | November 7th | 1.17 |
1979 | October 29th | 1.21 |
1980 | November 4th | 1.18 |
1981 | November 11th | 1.16 |
1982 | 15th of November | 1.14 |
1983 | 14th November | 1.15 |
1984 | November 6th | 1.18 |
1985 | November 4th | 1.19 |
1986 | 30th of October | 1.20 |
1987 | 23rd October | 1.23 |
1988 | 15th October | 1.27 |
1989 | October 11th | 1.29 |
1990 | October 11th | 1.29 |
1991 | October 10th | 1.29 |
1992 | October 12th | 1.28 |
1993 | October 12th | 1.28 |
1994 | October 10th | 1.29 |
1995 | 4th of October | 1.32 |
1996 | October 2nd | 1.33 |
1997 | September 29th | 1.34 |
1998 | September 29th | 1.34 |
1999 | September 29th | 1.34 |
2000 | September 23rd | 1.38 |
2001 | September 22 | 1.38 |
2002 | September 19th | 1.39 |
2003 | the 9th of September | 1.45 |
2004 | September 1 | 1.49 |
2005 | August 25 | 1.54 |
2006 | August 19th | 1.58 |
2007 | August 14th | 1.62 |
2008 | August 14th | 1.62 |
2009 | 18th of August | 1.59 |
2010 | August 7th | 1.67 |
2011 | 4th of August | 1.69 |
2012 | 4th of August | 1.69 |
2013 | 3rd August | 1.70 |
2014 | 4th of August | 1.69 |
2015 | 5th of August | 1.68 |
2016 | 5th of August | 1.68 |
2017 | August 1st | 1.71 |
2018 | 29th of July | 1.74 |
2019 | 29th of July | 1.74 |
2020 | August 22nd | 1.56 |
2021 | 29th of July |
National differences
Qatar and Luxembourg
Qatar and Luxembourg occupied the top positions worldwide in 2020. Qatar already used up its resources for this year on February 11th. In Luxembourg, the last earth congestion day fell on February 19, 2019 and February 16, 2020.
United States
In the United States of America , on March 14, the resources for 2021 were exhausted. That is, by that date, nature's annual needs have exceeded what the United States' ecosystem can regenerate all year round.
European Union
If all the inhabitants of the world lived as they do in the European Union , global resources would have been used up by May 10th in 2019.
Germany
In 2017, April 24th was calculated as the date for Germany's resource depletion; his way of life claims three earths. For 2018, May 2nd was named here, due to weather-related fluctuations a little later than 2017. Deficits are seen as a result of the lack of ecological change with regard to an energy transition and the transport turnaround in mobility as well as in the areas of agriculture and climate policy with high CO 2 emissions; land use due to the externalized cultivation of feed in South America for meat production contributes to this; the industrialized cultivation - in contrast to traditional forms of agriculture - together with sealing of the soil favor floods. The Federal Republic of Germany overflows the global ecological resources on the national earth congestion day, however, a little later than the United States, which extrapolated to the earth's population would claim five planets. In 2019, earth overload day for Germany fell on May 3, 2021 on May 5.
Austria
For Austria, April 9 was determined to be the earth overload day in 2019. In 2021 it fell on April 7th.
Switzerland
In 2018 and 2019, May 7 was calculated as the date for resource depletion in Switzerland; their way of life claims three earths. In 2020, Earth Congestion Day in Switzerland fell on May 8th, and in 2021 on May 11th.
Background: Development of human resource consumption
People have always used natural resources to build cities and roads, to extract food or to manufacture other products. In the mid-1970s, according to the Global Footprint Network, humanity exceeded a critical limit: the demand for natural resources exceeded the global capacity to reproduce and offer new resources. The human demand for renewable ecological resources and services corresponds to the capacity of an earth and a half. With constant development, resources on two planets would be used annually until 2050. Corresponding indicators of this phenomenon include: greenhouse effects that are generated faster than they are absorbed and degraded by forests and oceans, deforestation of forests, decline in biodiversity , overfishing .
2020: Delay due to corona lockdowns
Due to global mass quarantines ("lockdown") to combat and contain the COVID-19 pandemic from February 2020 and the associated economic, air traffic, tourism, etc. (see also economic crisis 2020 ), World Exhaustion Day 2020 was postponed from July 29th in The year before on August 22nd. The aim of the lockdown to combat and contain the COVID-19 pandemic was to restrict contacts in order to reduce the spread of the virus. Shutting down factories, canceling trips, cutting down on consumption, and more all helped reduce the consumption of resources.
judgement
The problematization of the global consumption of resources is welcomed by other environmental organizations: "Mankind takes more from the earth than it can annually renew in terms of natural resources and absorb greenhouse gases", according to the environmental organizations WWF , GLOBAL 2000 and Greenpeace .
See also
- Anthropocene
- The limits of growth
- Planetary boundaries ( "Planetary Boundaries")
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Earth Overshoot Day ( memento of September 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) at www.footprintnetwork.org, accessed on September 26, 2013
- ↑ Open Data Platform. Retrieved May 1, 2018 .
- ↑ a b "World Creation Day" falls on August 22 this year . In: Der Standard , August 21, 2012. Retrieved August 25, 2012.
- ↑ Earth Overshoot Day. Starting today, it's down to the substance. In: TAZ , August 23, 2012. Retrieved August 25, 2012.
- ↑ stuttgarter-nachrichten.de: The earth is at its limit
- ↑ a b Anna Parrisius: "Earth Overshoot Day 2017": Raw materials from now on on credit . In: The daily newspaper: taz . August 2, 2017, ISSN 0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed November 20, 2017]).
- ↑ Earth overload day: the rest of the year mankind lives on credit. July 28, 2019, accessed July 28, 2019 .
- ^ Past Earth Overshoot Days. In: Earth Overshoot Day. Retrieved June 21, 2019 (American English).
- ↑ a b David Lin, Leopold Wambersie, Mathis Wackernagel, Pat Hanscom: Calculating Earth Overshoot Day 2020 . Ed .: Global Footprint Network. June 5, 2020, p. 10 (English, overshootday.org [PDF]).
- ↑ https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/past-earth-overshoot-days/
- ↑ 2021 How the Date of Earth Overshoot Day Was Calculated. In: Earth Overshoot Day. Retrieved July 11, 2021 (American English).
- ↑ Resources / After us the flood: “Overshoot Day” in Luxembourg was reached on Sunday. February 17, 2020, accessed April 14, 2020 .
- ↑ Calculation on overshootday.org
- ↑ Europe is done. In: wwf.de . May 9, 2019, accessed October 21, 2019 .
- ↑ Germany lives on credit from Wednesday. deutschlandfunk.de, May 1, 2018, accessed on May 2, 2018.
- ↑ Ecological footprint: all resources used for 2018. zdf.de , May 1, 2018.
- ↑ May 3rd, 2019: From today we are living on credit. In: solarify.eu. May 3, 2019, accessed May 3, 2019 .
- ↑ Country Overshoot Days 2019. Retrieved July 28, 2019 .
- ↑ World Exhaustion Day shows a dramatic need for action. July 28, 2019, accessed July 28, 2019 .
- ↑ WWF Switzerland : Earth Overshoot Day: On August 1st, all earth resources are used up. wwf.ch, July 30, 2018, accessed on July 31, 2018.
- ↑ Overuse of the environment - “In an international comparison, Switzerland ranks 38th”. In: srf.ch . May 7, 2019, accessed May 7, 2019 .
- ↑ WWF Switzerland: Swiss Overshoot Day: We live as if there were no tomorrow wwf.ch, May 7, 2020, accessed on August 23, 2020.
- ↑ Earth Overshoot Day. In: Uponmylife. August 22, 2020, accessed on September 9, 2020 (German).