We Seem To Have Overshot the Earths Resources on July 29

With humanity at a dangerous ecological precipice, several organisations are working towards educating the masses about climate change. One of these bodies is the Global Footprint Network (GFN), a non-profit research organisation. In a long-running campaign supported by several nonprofits, GFN has calculated an &lsquoEarth Overshoot Day&rsquo since 1969. But it&rsquos only recently made international headlines. Why Because this year, we&rsquove apparently used up all of our planet&rsquos resources by July 29. 

In a simple economic nutshell, this is a cautionary day that shows how humanity&rsquos demand for ecological resources and services in a given year can surpass the Earth&rsquos regenerative limits. Given industry, modernisation and lax environmental regulations, it&rsquos no surprise that we&rsquove been overshooting the boundary for decades.

&ldquoOver the past 20 years, it (Earth Overshoot Day) has moved up two months to July 29, the earliest ever. This means that humanity is currently using nature 1.75 times faster than our planet&rsquos ecosystems can regenerate, equivalent to 1.75 Earths,&rdquo said the organisation in a statement.

While the study is unable to cover every aspect of living conditions (courtesy global lifestyle variations, and the lack of vast public data archives), the fact that even a baseline assessment resulted in a July 29 cutoff is alarming. India, being an agrarian economy with lower per-capita emissions, hasn&rsquot fared as badly as some developed countries, but there&rsquos always room for improvement.

This does beg the question&mdash-when would Earth Overshoot Day be, if everyone lived like you After a look at GFN&rsquos dating formula, we tried their official footprint calculator to see how we&rsquod hold up. 

As a landmark UN report found this year, humanity has only 11 years to prevent irreversible damage to the Earth before climate change takes its course. While efforts like waste-to-energy generation and airlines adopting green measures help, citizen efforts do make their mark. 

To understand the impact of your lifestyle habits and find your own ecological footprint, take the quiz at footprintcalculator.org