Today is Earth Overshoot Day.

What does that mean?

Jannik Waidner

Editor in business

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From January 1st to July 29th, mankind consumed as much of nature as the earth can regenerate in the whole year.

This is an accounting.

As with money, do we want to know how much do we take in, how much do we spend?

Why is it a problem that Earth Overshoot Day is in the middle of the year?

The most materially limiting factor for humanity is the earth's regenerative capacity.

Here, too, it is like dealing with money: overuse works for a certain time, but it weakens us.

Signs of this are climate change, deforestation, loss of biodiversity or food and water scarcity.

These are all symptoms of the real problem: overshoot.

And that is primarily an economic problem.

In what way?

All economic activities depend on the regenerative capacity of the earth.

What Earth Overshoot Day shows is that the resource security of fewer and fewer countries is guaranteed.

That means we are weakening the system.

It's like a pyramid scheme: we pay for the present with the future.

Economic pyramid schemes are banned in most countries, but the ecological pyramid scheme is even larger.

Does Earth Overshoot Day only consider renewable raw materials?

We look at all resources - through the lens of the ability to regenerate.

This means that oil, gas and coal are more limited than by the underground reserves: we cannot burn more than the biosphere can absorb in terms of CO2 if we do not want severe climate change.

Whether minerals, fossil energy, ores, wood, potatoes, stones, we ask: How much regenerative ability do we give up in order to use these materials?

The regenerative capacity of the ecosystems thus becomes the reference currency of our resource accounting.

Because the ability to regenerate is mankind's eye of the needle.

What does regeneration mean in concrete terms?

If we need more than is regenerated, an ecological debt builds up.

For example, if we use more groundwater than replenishes, if we cut down trees faster than they grow back, or if we fill the atmosphere with CO2 faster than can be broken down again.

How many earths would we need this year if everyone in the world lived like in Germany?

If everyone lived like the Germans, consumption would be three times the earth's capacity.

The entire human race currently needed 1.7 earths with their consumption.

If we wanted to maintain 85 percent of biodiversity, we could only use half of the earth's capacity annually.

What are your main focuses this year?

We are in the “super year”, which should have taken place last year with the biodiversity conference, the UN climate conference and the sustainability goals. That is why we came up with the “100 Days of Possibility”. Similar to an advent calendar, we will show a different possibility every day until the climate conference in Glasgow from October 31st, which postpones the earth overload day. These proposals will also be beneficial financially. My question is: why is this not seen as an advantage? Why companies, cities and countries do not integrate resource security into their competitive strategy, even though we actually know so much about the future, is astonishing to us. Because with that they cut their own flesh. In fact, the future has never been clearer than it is today. There are the technical possibilitiesit is financially beneficial - what is holding us back?