Spending what we cannot afford
Today is the Earth Overshoot Day that means that the renewable natural resources produced annually globally have been spent, and for the rest of the year, we’ll be growing our ecological footprint to unsustainable proportions.
Photo: zebble / Flickr.com (Creative Commons).
The ecological footprint calculated by the Global Footprint Network reveals how much land and sea acreage is needed to sustain the current standard of living on the globe and to absorb greenhouse gas emissions.
On Earth Overshoot Day, the needs of the humanity has exhausted nature’s budget to produce natural resources as well as to manage waste and emissions for the year. And today is that day.
As for the rest four months and ten days of this year, we will be overspending, and we’d need 1.5 Earths to carry on this way.
The sustainable usage of natural resources is the base of global welfare. The sustainability can be measured by comparing the ecological footprint that shows the consumption to biocapacity that reveals the capacity to provide resources and absorb wastes.
“The current way of consumption and production drives species and their habitats into extinction especially in tropical countries where most of the goods and their raw materials for Western markets are produced”, says Liisa Rohweder, the Secretary General of WWF Finland.
At the same time, many species are doing better in Western countries thanks to legislative acts and conservation areas, but the other side to the matter is not very bright.
“The Western consumption is more and more visible in the ecosystems of developing countries. In a way we have outsourced the exploitation of the nature,” Rohweder says.
In Finland, the biocapacity is among the highest in Europe and the seventh highest in the world. On the other hand, the carbon footprint of Finns is very big. Carbon footprint can form over a half of the ecological footprint that is the most comprehensive way to measure the human demand on the Earth’s ecosystems.
At present, the ecological footprint of the all humankind is 2,7 global hectares per person whereas the the biocapasity is only 1.8 hectares.
In Finland, the ecological footprint is 6.2 hectares per person and out of it the proportion of carbon footprint is 4.2 hectares.
Elisa Lautala works as web editor for University of Helsinki's Faculty of Science. Elisa likes all kinds of cultural events, good books, warm weather, and aqua-jogging.