Everywhere we look, the news this weekend is that the world moved into “ecological overdraft” on Saturday, the point at which human consumption exceeds the ability of the earth to sustain it in any year and goes into the red, The New Economics Foundation think-tank said.
From today, Saturday 6 October, the world as a whole goes into ecological debt driven by over-consumption. ‘Ecological debt day’ is the date when, in effect, humanity uses-up the resources the earth has available for the year, and begins eating into its stock of natural resources. World ecological debt day has crept ever earlier in the year since humanity first began living beyond its environmental means in the 1980’s. The latest available data reveals that the overuse of the earth’s resources is much more extreme in rich countries. For example, if everyone in the world wanted to live like people in the UK, on a very conservative estimate, we would need more than three planets like Earth.
NEWS HEADLINES:
[06.10.06] NEF : Ecological Debt Day
[06.10.06] Environmental News Network
Filed under: Ecology | Tagged: debt, ecological overdraft, ecological red, Ecology, human consumption, humanity, New Economics, world
