Overshoot Day. The day the Earth's resources are depleted for this year

• Agreement on climate and energy.

  Cingolani: "Opens the way to Cop26"

• The climatologist: extreme events due to global warming

Share

July 29, 2021 Today is Earth Overshoot Day, the day of the overexploitation of the Earth, which indicates the official exhaustion of the renewable resources that our Planet is able to offer in the space of a year. With the exception of 2020 due to the pandemic, over the years the days of exhaustion are anticipated more and more. A figure not to be underestimated, reports the WWF, because we are consuming the equivalent of 1.6 planets per year, a figure that could rise to two planets by 2030 if we proceed in this way.

Among the solutions, for a sustainable future, there is a 50% carbon reduction, but what we eat is also very important. WWF has already reported that 80% of species and habitat extinctions globally depend on current food systems. A reversal from a growth economy to an economy of well-being is needed.

This year Italy ran out of budget on May 13, and has since been in debt for food, energy and various imported products. In the US, the '100 Days of Chance' campaign starts to encourage the adoption of solutions to the problem 100 days before COP26 in Glasgow, the summit of national governments considered the last chance for global action against climate change. First, in October, we will have COP15 on biodiversity in Kunming, China.

“The global overconsumption documented by ecological footprint calculations began in the early 1970s. “Now - says Gianfranco Bologna, honorary president of the Scientific Committee of WWF Italy - the accumulated ecological debt is equal to the production of 18 years of the Earth. The global ecological deficit is much higher than the economic one and concerns the very basis of our life, because without a healthy and vital nature we do not have the fundamental elements that allow us, first and foremost, to breathe, drink and eat ”.