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Earth Overshoot Day Came Early This Year. That's a Bad Thing. (popsci.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Earth's resources are limited. We only have so much water and food, let alone oil and gold. But humans are using more than Earth has to offer, and have been since 1970. In 2018, it's predicted we will use the equivalent of 1.7 Earths worth of resources -- which is, oh, almost a whole Earth more than we have. And the date at which we've consumed more than one Earth in a given year is called... Earth Overshoot Day.
In the 1960s, our consumption was almost perfectly synched to the Earth's resources, with humanity consuming one year's worth of Earth's resources in one year. But by 1971, that number slid backward, and has been sliding ever since. This year, 2018, saw the earliest Earth Overshoot Day yet: one Earth's worth of resources gobbled up by Aug. 1. (Last year, it happened on Aug. 2.) This doesn't mean that we've run out of clean water or timber today, and will have to live on scraps until New Year; it's that by exceeding the Earth's resources in August, we're bankrupting our future by consuming materials that are better off preserved for days to come.
In the 1960s, our consumption was almost perfectly synched to the Earth's resources, with humanity consuming one year's worth of Earth's resources in one year. But by 1971, that number slid backward, and has been sliding ever since. This year, 2018, saw the earliest Earth Overshoot Day yet: one Earth's worth of resources gobbled up by Aug. 1. (Last year, it happened on Aug. 2.) This doesn't mean that we've run out of clean water or timber today, and will have to live on scraps until New Year; it's that by exceeding the Earth's resources in August, we're bankrupting our future by consuming materials that are better off preserved for days to come.
What are we really using more of that the Earth produces?
The one thing MAY be oil, but we have hundreds of years worth (thanks to technical advancements) even if we were not converting to solar at a rapid clip.
Speaking of technical advancements, we can easily produce food for the estimated 10 billion or so that is the steady state for the Earth's population - as long as we don't listen to anti-GMO activist luddites.
Even if were were using "1.7 Earths" worth of any one resource, we could simply switch to mining them off-planet eventually as needed.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, which this seems to have none of.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What did they ever do for us?
And there you have it. Homo Sapiens does not deserve to survive. Not ethically, and certainly not because of their "intelligence".
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
This is one of those non-story stories, like that stupid "doomsday clock at midnight" things. Just some stupid number crunching, nothing to see here.
Earth is a recycling planet. It will never not be a recycling planet. One guy once did a calculation for the biomass of all the dinosaurs, times the millions of years the dinosaurs have ever existed, times the water usage of a typical large reptile we see today, divided by all the water on earth. He determined that dinosaurs drank and pissed out all the water on earth 14 times during a 250 million year reign on earth. Yet look! We still have water.
Earth will never run out of resources. Why? Supply and demand. We will always make more when more is in demand. That's free market economics for you. Today, we have more wood than we consume. If that changes, it will be profitable to plant trees and grow more wood. There are trees that take 100 years to come to market. Those trees are worth planting, even if the farmer doesnt realize his crop. Why? Because the tree at 10 years old is worth more than the tree at 0 years old.
If we need more water than all the rain on earth, we will desalinate. Too expensive? We will innovate. Same thing goes for just about every natural resource. If you think there are things we can't innovate around and will perish without, I present to you the miracle of intelligence, the ingenuity of our species, and the enduring spirit of mankind. We don't need to worry and save. If it gets to a point that rarity will cause a shortage, prices will adjust and we will slow down our consumption when the market tells us to. The market will also signal that it is time for new entrants, or innovation to make more, make alternatives, or improve efficiency. That's what R&D is for. Why don't we build more coal plants? Because solar is getting cheap, and democratizing energy production. That's what the market does.
Tell these bozos to buzz the fuck off.
Or we all starve until the shortage is fixed.
We will always make more when more is in demand.
Yes, because land area, and area suitable for growing trees, is infinite -- and everything else wrong with your poorly-reasoned argument, that started with the phrase, "Just some stupid number crunching", that you apparently did yourself.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Because populations aren't static. Fish fuck and produce baby fish which grows the population, and then predators consume fish which shrinks the population. What it means when someone says we are consuming 1.7x what the earth can provide in a year, is that for every 1 fish born, we consume 1.7 fish. Or if you don't like fractions, then for every 10 fish born, we eat 10 fish plus 7 more.
If you don't like fish, then lets look at trees. Also lets look at a smaller population than 1 million. Lets say we start with a population of 100 trees, that no matter how much empty land there is we can only grow 10 trees per year, and it takes 1 year for a tree to reach harvesting size.
So we begin our year having planted 10 trees, and throughout the year we harvest 17 trees. And at the end of the year, we have 93 trees standing. After 2 years we have 86 trees. After 3, 79 trees. And so on, because we are harvesting the trees faster than we can replenish them.
Whether or not those numbers are right I don't know and not the point of my post. My point is simply that consuming more in a year than earth can provide in a year does make sense.
Getting real sick of this appearing in so many headlines. Granted, here it is objectively bad, but I see it used constantly in politics and opinion articles.
"That's a bad thing"
"And that's a good thing!"
Isn't that up to the reader to decide instead of this handholding, condescending attitude?
Move out of California retard
"Using up groundwater" is meaningless long term, since in the end it can easily be piped inland from the oceans. Once you have enough solar power why not desalination plants all along the coast? Or are you worried about dropping the sea level HA HA HA.
If water overuse were actually a problem anywhere in a first world country it would cost 10x what it does today and laws would be frowned upon. Until ANYONE acts like there is actually a problem there is obviously not a real problem, just made up scenarios from alarmists who are not running the water works for a major city.
Saying that technological advancements will fix the problem places the burden on our children and grandchildren to solve it.
It doesn't place a burden on anyone, it recognizes a simple truth that technology advances improve life, and will inevitably address pain points that come up if for no other reason than greed. I mean, if you can't rely on people as a general group to be greedy is some regard, what can you rely on?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But even trees need an environment to grow in, and good ecology is a web that evolved over hundreds of millions of years, and was destroyed beyond repair within decades. Remove the wild land, lose the wild animals and plants. Trees don't grow in a vacuum. Fish the last fish, trap the last fur, kill the last bear for sport, or cut down the last wild tree and there will be no more wild things, ever. How are the trees doing on Easter Island or in Ireland?
I don't believe it is the human mass at large that is depleting resources. It is a handful of individuals and corporations driven by greed to package everything under the sun without restraint and offer it to sale to the human mass that is killing life on Earth.
Unless big changes happen, like immediately, yesterday not tomorrow, and this involves regulating big business whose business it is to rape the Earth as efficiently as possible, we are fucked. I hate to be negative. But I think we are rightly fucked.