According to the Global Footprint Network, September 23 is Global Overshoot Day. Meaning, today is the day when humans have used up all the resources that Earth will produce this year. “Beyond Tuesday, we move into the ecological equivalent of deficit spending, utilizing resources at a rate faster than what the planet can regenerate in a calendar year,” the organization said in a press release.
This is just what you wanted to hear as America is about to incur a reported $1 trillion dollars of debt courtesy of Wall Street, right?
So what’s more of a problem: The potential collapse of the economy, or climate change, biodiversity loss, shrinking forest cover and rapidly rising food prices? Never mind, don’t answer that. I’d just like to point out that the government is racing to save Wall Street by the end of the week, but has dragged its feet about climate change since the late eighties.
Global Overshoot Day is scooting further up the calendar every year. In 2007, it fell on October 6, and it was called Ecological Debt Day. I spoke with Mathis Wackernagel, the executive director of GFN about this sad holiday last year. He said then that we need to account for our ecological assets the same way that bankers keep account of their financial assets. That analogy is not too effective this time around.
Commemorate Global Overshoot Day by listening to a Clear Voices podcast with Mathis Wackernagel. And remember, you can’t do anything about greed on Wall Street, but you can choose have a less resource-intensive lifestyle.
There are plenty of resources left. The problem is that central banking, fiat currency, government spending and borrowing have smashed our economy. The answer? More spending of course. Won’t work.
Socialism is a dead end street. It cannot be paid for and the resources taht everyone seems to be worring about will be there, we just will not have the economic means to exploit them. Hunger and want will result. Not because the earth gave us up, because we tried to violoate the laws of supply and demand. Because we thought there might be free ride somewhere. Because we thought that some bureaucrat in Washington could and would take care of us.
There is nothing new under the sun.
I think it’s kind of funny that this form of socialism is coming from the Republican administration. Is there such a thing as an orderly political spectrum anymore?
Benjamin is both right and wrong. There are resources, but not the ones he implies. The sun’s radiation can supply us with all the energy we need, we just need to expend the resources to capture it and send it to the people who need it. The resources for energy that are fossil fuels must be phased out or global warming will make the Earth uninhabitable for humans and many other species. Even if you think that we can spend our scarce resources to dyke against rising sea levels and build stronger buildings to survive hurricanes and tornados, are you going to want to provide all mammals with oxygen tanks to prevent the CO2 poisoning, with effects like emphysema, when the CO2 level rises to the 700 ppm level that it will if we do not drastically lower the current level (and growth of that level) of CO2. It has risen from around 250 ppm in 1950 to 385 ppm today. And the linear rate that it has been rising at may be ramping up, so that predictions that the 700 ppm would not happen until 2100 or so may be sadly overoptimistic.
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