(NewsNation) — Humans’ use of renewable resources has historically outpaced what the Earth can regenerate each year. That trend is flattening, but not fast enough, researchers say.
Wednesday is Earth Overshoot Day, the time when humanity’s demand for renewable resources and services exceeds what the Earth can restore in a year. Currently, humanity worldwide is using about 1.7 Earth’s worth of renewable resources each year. That’s three Earths by 2050, following that trajectory, according to the Global Footprint Network.
The overuse of renewable resources has crept up sooner over the past 10 years, albeit at a slower pace. It’s unclear how much economic factors have contributed to that slowed pace and how much decarbonization efforts are responsible.
Even the stabilization seen in recent years isn’t enough for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to meet its goal of reducing carbon emissions by 43% worldwide by 2030. Earth Overshoot Day would need to move 19 days every year for the next seven years to hit that target, according to the Global Footprint Network.
“That’s the challenge for us in the future: How to reduce our ecological footprint to a level… so all the materials and sustenance that we derived from the planet’s lands and waters will be enough to sustain us in the course of that year,” said Eric Miller, director of the Ecological Footprint Initiative at York University in Toronto, Canada.
Resource extraction has more than tripled since 1970, according to the UN. The agency pinpointed significant infrastructure investments and rising material living standards in developing and transitioning countries as some of the main drivers behind that growth since the 2000s.
The average person in the United States requires about 7.5 hectares (one hectare is about the size of a football field) of the planet’s land and water for food, clothing, and other basics in a single year, he said.
“The ecological footprint of production is about twice as much as what can be regenerated within the lands and waters within the United States of America,” he said.
Over time, that excess consumption has led to land and soil degradation, fish stock depletion, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and greenhouse gas accumulation.
Those impacts are becoming harder to ignore as parts of the planet experience extreme weather events like unusual heat waves, flooding, and worsening competition for food and energy.
But seemingly small-scale efforts like being mindful of how you heat and air condition your home or commute to work do add up, Miller said.
They tend to be more cost-efficient, too. On a larger scale, a practice called carbon pricing — placing a fee on emissions — could make those savings more obvious.
Several countries including Canada use some form of carbon pricing, as well as a handful of states within the U.S. Those include California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia, according to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.
“The more that we can have the prices aligned with the costs, the better off it is for making decisions that work for me, individually and for the group as a whole,” Miller said.
That’s just one piece of the puzzle. Moving forward, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, and combined management of food, water and energy are paramount, according to the UN.
All three of the latter are intertwined and demand for each is increasing.
Agriculture, for example, is the largest consumer of the world’s freshwater resources, and water is used to produce most forms of energy, according to the United Nations.
With about 800 million people currently going hungry, global food production by 2050 would need to increase by 50% to feed the growing population, according to the UN.
