(Mirror Daily, United States) Earth runs out of its natural resources, and this is a cry for help. Also, this is no news for us since we have been living here, consuming all of the planet’s energy. Now the time has come for us to repay Mother Nature as soon as possible, or else the ones to suffer will be us.
Every year there is a special day meant to remind us of our recklessness towards our planet, on how we are overusing its natural resources. This day is called Earth Overshoot Day, and it was declared to be August 8. Why? Because by August 8 we have managed to use up the natural resources of the Earth that were meant to last by the end of the year.
Statistics show that each year, Earth Overshoot Day comes earlier than expected, and this has been happening for ten years now since the environmental problems started to increase drastically.
Global Footprint Network is a nonprofit organization in charge with calculating when the next Earth Overshoot Day is due. Science World Report provides with the way in which Global Footprint Network establishes the date:
“The nonprofit research group takes the amount of natural resources available, i.e. the planet’s biocapacity, and divides it by our ecological footprint which basically implies the amount of the planet’s resources we consume, and then the result is multiplied by the days in a year.”
The ideal situation is that this day should always be the last day of the year (December 31), which would mean that we have been wisely using the natural resources throughout the year. Efforts from every person living on Earth should be made so that the date would come at least somewhere near December. The situation is critical since we used Earth’s natural resources at about double speed.
Global Footprint Network reports on the current situation:
“We use more ecological resources and services than nature can regenerate through overfishing, overharvesting forests and emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than forests can sequester.”
It would be a good thing if more people started thinking of ways of helping the planet and using these alternative methods. Doing this would allow the Earth’s natural resources to regenerate. This way, both the Earth’s population and the planet would be happier.
Image courtesy of: Wikipedia