Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when we have reached a point where we've consumed more natural resources for the year than the planet can replenish. So from now until the end of the year, every resource we use is 'borrowed' from the future.
This is, literally, not sustainable.
In 2021, Earth Overshoot Day landed
on July 29th.
If everyone lived like the UK this date would have been back in May.
The Earth Overshoot Day web site can be accessed from the link below, and is a great resource for the geography classroom. It is an interesting tool to open discussion about different rates of resource use across the world, and includes a number of resources specific for lessons. It also provides a good opportunity to discuss with students how the overshoot dates could be put back - what can we do as citizens to influence this?
Link: https://www.overshootday.org/
Example from the lesson resources:
The site includes a section called 100 Days of Possibility, where it highlights ways for each country, city, or business to ready themselves for a world increasingly defined by overshoot. These responses also #MoveTheDate of Earth Overshoot Day. Check out the solution-of-the-day, or explore solutions from 100 Days of Possibility that have already been unveiled in the grid shown below.
To determine the date of Earth Overshoot Day for each year, Global Footprint Network calculates the number of days of that year that Earth's biocapacity suffices to provide for humanity's Ecological Footprint. The remainder of the year corresponds to global overshoot. Earth Overshoot Day is computed by dividing the planet's biocapacity (the amount of ecological resources Earth is able to generate that year), by humanity's Ecological Footprint (humanity's demand for that year), and multiplying by 365, the number of days in a year:
(Earth's Biocapacity / Humanity's Ecological Footprint) x 365 = Earth Overshoot Day)
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