Monday, October 09, 2006

Start eating your planet today...

...somewhat earlier than 19 December which was when the Earth meal began in 1987. The ecological debt day is the measure of our global environmental footprint. Britain's day already fell on 16 April which shows how much the UK is consuming the world's resources. NEF says that "new calculations released today show that from now until the end of the year we will be living beyond our global environmental means. Research by the US-based Global Footprint Network in partnership with nef and Best Foot Forward reveals that as of today, humanity has used up what nature can renew this year and is now eating into its ‘ecological capital’.
Each year, the day that the global economy starts to operate with an ecological deficit is designated as ‘ecological debt day’ (known internationally as ‘overshoot day’). This marks the date that the planet’s environmental resource flow goes into the red and we begin operating on a non-existent environmental overdraft." Bon appetit!

1 comment:

Rigmor said...

Yes, it is absolutely revolting. The worst thing is that I am sure we could improve things still, if we only took it seriously enough. But we don't. And I am too scared to start wondering about whether we ever will because, no, I don't think so. (Not today, anyway)