Earth Overshoot Day 2010

John Elkington

August 21, 2010

Sadly, not a day to celebrate. It has taken our species less than nine months to exhaust our entire ecological budget for 2010, according to one of our favourite social enterprises, the Global Footprint Network. As a result, today is Earth Overshoot Day, the day of the year in which our collective demands on the biosphere exceed what the biosphere can regenerate. For the rest of the year, we will meet our ecological demand by depleting resource stocks and accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

“If you spent your entire annual income in nine months, you would probably be extremely concerned,” explains GFN President Mathis Wackernagel. “The situation is no less dire when it comes to our ecological budget. Climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, water and food shortages are all clear signs: We can no longer finance our consumption on credit. Nature is foreclosing.”

At Volans, this an agenda we are helping define and tackle through our evolving Biosphere Economy program.