Today We Ran Out of Natural Resources

Welcome to the dark side. Today, 2nd of August 2017, marks the annual Earth Overshoot Day. It is not a cause for celebration. Quite the contrary, today we have run out of the resources that the Earth can generate this year.

Let that sink in. It’s barely August, and we have already used up everything that nature is able to give us this year. In just seven months, we have emitted more carbon than our oceans and forests can absorb, we have caught more fish, harvested more crops, felled more trees and consumed more water than the planet is able to produce during the entire year.

From here on until New Year’s fireworks, we will be living by borrowing from our future selves. Borrowing from future generations.

The Earth Overshoot Day is calculated annually by WWF and the Global Footprint Network. Last year’s date was August 3. Twenty years ago in 1997, we ran out of renewable resources on September 30. The overall speed of change is quite terrifying. Soon we might need two Earths to sustain ourselves. But we only have one.

What can we do? We need to think greener. The Overshoot Day’s #movethedate campaign offers many suggestions how to lower both your personal and society-wide ecological footprints. It is a good starting point. If we moved the Earth Overshoot Day back just 4.5 days every year, we would return to sustainability by 2050. It is doable.

And what will Tales by Trees do? We too are thinking greener. We want to make sure that our impact on the environment is overwhelmingly positive, that we increase rather than deplete natural resources. If you are interested in learning more about our net positive initiative, head over to the net positivity page.