World footprint: do we fit on the planet?
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Today humanity uses the equivalent of 1.5 planets to provide the resources we use and absorb our waste. This means it now takes the Earth one year and six months to regenerate what we use in a year.
Moderate UN scenarios suggest that if current population and consumption trends continue, by the 2030s, we will need the equivalent of two Earths to support us. And of course, we only have one.
Turning resources into waste faster than waste can be turned back into resources puts us in global ecological overshoot, depleting the very resources on which human life and biodiversity depend.
The result is collapsing fisheries, diminishing forest cover, depletion of freshwater systems, and the build up of carbon dioxide emissions, which creates problems like global climate change. These are just a few of the most noticeable effects of overshoot.
Overshoot also contributes to resource conflicts and wars, mass migrations, famine, disease and other human tragedies – and tends to have a disproporti...
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