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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.
where is the link?
Fuck Ajit Pai
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
Note I said "as it continues", and not 'if it continues' -- because 7,000,000,000 people aren't going to do anything any different tomorrow than they're doing today, not at least until it's impossible for them to do so.
There will be an extinction-level event -- in the form of WARS. Wars have very often been waged over resources. Over time, as there are more and more humans alive at the same time (see above: "people aren't going to do anything any different tomorrow.."; they'll keep breeding), available resources dwindle, and effects from global warming puts more environmental stress on all life, countries with a standing military won't just sit still and wait to starve to death or die of dehydration, they'll attack their neighbors to secure their resources. When will this happen? Could start tomorrow, could be anytime within the next, say, 50 to 100 years. But it'll happen unless something else happens to stop it.
This article set my BS detector on fire and they don't seem to care about all of that smoke.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Its another lazy clickbait that the msmash/BeauHD duumvirate decided to post on their blog formerly known as the once popular tech website Slashdot.
What did they ever do for us?
We don't use more than the earth can provide, we use more than the earth can replenish in one year. In other words: We consume all of what the earth produced in one year, plus almost as much of what resources were already there. Therefore, available resources become fewer and fewer year after year; We are not exploiting earth's resources in a sustainable way and will eventually exhaust them all.
But most people don't care. As long at it doesn't happen during their lifetime, they don't give a rat's ass. Screw the children, screw the grandchildren. Let THEM deal with the mess we'll have left them.
I'll use a whole Earth myself if I want. Fuck you!
That's not a thing. How about some news for nerds, stuff that matters.
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I'd assume the pre-human animals (and probably a good portion of past humans), stayed below using 1 earths worth of stuff, and thus we're eating into the surplus from past generations.
I don't understand. How can we possibly use more than the Earth can provide? Where's the extra coming from? Mars?
More than sustainable. For example if there are a million fish in the ocean, you could technically harvest all 1 million of them in a single year but then you wouldn't have any the next year. This makes sense for renewable resources like fish and even water tables but not sure how this relates to gold or oil. Both are fixed quanities. In the case of gold, very little of it is really consumed. In the case of oil, once it is gone, it is gone. In both gold and oil, there isn't a sustainable level that we can extract either resource. We can keep extracting as little or as much as we want and there will still be a day when there is no more. For stuff like fish, this is a very real number as if we continue to extract fish faster than they can repopulate then we are creating a disaster.
Using that logic though -- the earth is what... 4.x billion years old (Okay, some of the resources we're overusing have first started appearing much later on, say 250m years ago) ... and has only been in 'overshoot' mode for ~50? I think we've got some time to figure things out.
Conservation is great, but bullshit like this is not the way to encourage it.
it means in a few generations humans will starts to starve due to over population. just like any other animal that overpopulates. of course with animals natural selection would take effect with humans the very rich will have all the resources and the very poor will be left to die.
The article says that we're consuming 1.7x what the earth can provide in a year, so if there are 1 million fish in the ocean, we're consuming 1.7 million fish? I don't understand either. How can we be consuming more than 100%?
Djeez. 1000000 fish make 100000 new fish every year. We eat 170000, so leaves 930000 fish. Ans so on
How is that different to natural selection?
There's some randomness thrown in there but those that have adapted best to the current environment stand the highest chances of surviving and reproducing.
"Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill." -- CEO Nwabudike Morgan
Everything you need to know about this calculation is summed up in the infographic. To maximize the time until Earth Overshoot day, we should all live like people in Cuba, Columbia, Jamaica, and Vietnam.
Jokes about the US population voting to live more like Jamaicans aside, resource shortages are irrelevant in an economically free society because free people solve issues faster than they become serious, leading to ever-cheaper resources. Even of limited ones and "low hanging fruit", thanks to substitutions and further invention.
E.g. Peak Oil. Well, here's giant oil rigs. No, let's replace them with big computer-stabilized robot ships that can sink drills through two miles of water, then drill down another mile, then make a right turn and drill two more miles. No, let's take a lot of load off with natural gas from fracking, and shale oil, a "high hanging fruit" now cheaper than low hanging fruit used to be.
There's a reason they are sneaking in pollution, which has nothing to do with it -- the panic has literally been disproven over and over again all last century, and this.
Oh, by the way. The most industrious and free societies are the only ones who can afford the pollution controls necessary to keep the environment becoming cleaner and cleaner without poverty, which is nobody's friend.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
You're under the assumption that fish don't reproduce. I've got some news for you.
If we consumed *all* the fish in the ocean in one year, as the GP stated, which fish in said ocean would be left to reproduce?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It's not different. That's the problem - if we were more self-regulating our extinction won't be the final solution.
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.
The "overshoot day" calculation is rather fuzzy, but the general idea is to determine the date at which each country uses up a year's worth of the planet's resources. According to the breakdown by country, the countries that do the best job of living within their ecological means are Vietnam (Dec 21), Jamaica (Dec 13), Cuba (Nov 19) and Colombia (Nov 17). Feel like moving to any of those paradises?
The US and Canada both poop out, resource-wise in mid-March, while Australia and most Scandinavian countries hold out until late March to early April. The rest of Europe goes resource-negative in May (May 2 for Germany, which has plowed most of its national budget into running on renewables). And what is it that makes little Luxembourg go negative on Feb 19?
I don't understand. How can we possibly use more than the Earth can provide? Where's the extra coming from? Mars?
There's buffers/reserves, eg. reservoirs of water.
Their water level can go down if we use more than the rainfall can replenish in a year.
Same for forests, etc. We can easily cut more trees than can regrow in a year.
It's not difficult.
No sig today...
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?
so .... oil is just long term solar storage, and is continuously being renewed....just not as fast as we're using it .... probably.
this sig is deprecated
worlds population was 3.762 billion in 1971 and is now 7.442 billion, that half calculation might not be far off
Not entirely true... it will just take several million more years to reform back into oil.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"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
Or maybe there is a bug in their calculations which directly equates the Unix timestamp to world resource consumption!
(negative values prior to 1970, positive values after... bad joke, i'll see myself out)
Did Paul R. Ehrlich right this article
We just have to kill 1/2 the population of the Earth.
That should fix it!
Borrowing from the future, going into debt. Essentially more people go hungry, we cut down more forests, use more non-renewable resources, and so forth.
Pretty much. Oil does get made, it's just that the pace of the process is glacially slow (think millenia) whereas our rate of extraction is frighteningly fast (think decades).
Maybe...or maybe not. The total earth production (consumption) of oil was supposed to have peaked already several times yet we keep finding more. I don't know if we even know the correct exponents to describe current remaining oil. There a lot of unknowns in this arena and new technology keeps changing the game
this sig is deprecated
Actually, your carbon impact and resource impact has much much more to do with where you live, where you work, and where your energy comes from.
If you live and work within 1-2 miles and rarely drive or fly long distances (high speed rail has minimal impact), and live in an efficient city like Seattle which has 98.5 percent green energy (same holds for Vancouver BC or Nelson BC or, surprisingly, even Calgary AB or much of Texas), you have very very little resource impact on the world.
If your electric car uses solar panels on your home and at work, and the battery helps load balance the grid so it has a higher level of renewables, your impact is very small.
If you're a millenial, you may not own a suburban house or have a lawn or even a fireplace and you may not own a car and tend to walk, bike, or use transit. If you eat low on the food chain, especially if you eat mussels and clams and shellfish grown in mixed kelp or seagrass beds, you're actually carbon negative on food.
If you use native shrubberies and water that would have gone to waste to water them, especially using no fertilizers or composting your food waste, then your impact is very small. If you reuse things, use less packaging (or use it to replace other purchases, such as cardboard instead of pizza trays), and recycle what can be recycled after, then you have very little impact.
On average, a modern city dwelling Millenial on the coasts (except the South, but including Texas) has about 1/10th the impact that the average American does.
That's science. Use the online calculators to see where you use things.
Plus I bet the Prius you drive only emits smug ... not unlike your post.
All the paper and water needed for toilets, all the mining, iron, steel plastics, and asphalt for the pipes and infrastructure, and we're missing the big die-offs from the regular cholera and typhoid outbreaks. It's all the toilet's fault!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
We have real issues such as AGW, or hastened Extinction of species but then we have groups like this that turn minor issues into disasters. Running out of gold? Ah nope. Likewise , we have plenty of timber, water, air, etc.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Impossible to consume more than the Earth has to offer, premise is stupid. Nor will we run out of water or gold, that stuff doesn't disappear.
Fossil fuels? Sorry, we'll ruin the oceans if we keep this crap up but we have decades of oil and centuries of coal supply.
You are correct, to some degree, but this is like saying that the invisible hand of the market will always find the right level. It will, but on occasion it causes a bit of discomfort to the silly little monkeys before it does.
I think the point that you are missing is that, rather than wait for everything to correct itself, perhaps we should be aware of the system we live in and proactively try to avoid painting ourselves into a corner in the first place. Because, accidentally causing a biosphere collapse or something similar can cause us a * few * inconveniences while mother nature figures out how to fill the vacuum.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
https://aeon.co/ideas/the-eart...
Food for thought.
We've found very little oil since the 60s, and the stuff we're adding to production now is very expensive to extract. Most oil today comes from large reservoirs that were found more than 40 years ago. Once those run dry oil production will certainly decline.
Having said that, things like shale oil and the tar sands have definitely extended the time until that happens. Perhaps all the way until 2030.
Virgin forest etc... The overshoot day is calculated by looking at the ground resource we use, then comparing to a set measurement sustainable (e.g. we consume as much forest as we replant and let top soil regenerate, e.g. by fallow and similar methods, and the ratio give a number. For example if we destroy 2500 Hectare forest, but replant 1250 we are effectively not sustainable long term and the overshoot for this measurement point is 2.0 meaning by half the year we overshoot sustaining point - there are various factors they take into accounts but this is the basic principle). I disagree with that publicity stunt for various reason, but if it brings people to inform themselves on sustainability , why not.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
That is how they come to such number, assume every soil is transformed into agricultural soil, protein comes from algae and insects (assume no meat), ignore the phosphorus and other similar elements problems, then assume everybody will agree to dump their way of life to a minimum. And that's not counting the one relying on magic technology not yet there. Basically that earth can support more people is true, but the hidden detail is that our way of life would be *significantly* lower than the western standard. Looking at the detail I would say that would be highly dystopian at best.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
natural selection the strong would survive. the weak and sick would not make it. when this happens to humans those with the most money will live. your now purging out the weak and sick its why we have so many problems with diseases.
Think of it this way:
Every year your dad buys 365 twinkies.
You are eating two twinkies per day.
On July 2nd of July you have consumed more twinkies than your father put in the cupboard.
But here's the thing. You father has been putting twinkies in that cupboard for the past 50 years. Yet you only discovered the wonders of smoking weed and getting the munchies a few years ago. Now the supply of twinkies is going down faster than the replacement rate and one day when you're high as a kite you're going to be super pissed when you find the cupboard empty.
natural selection is not about the strongest.
Its about the best adapted to the current environment
Comment removed based on user account deletion
./
We can extract water from the oceans and it eventually ends up back there
You might find that's only a theoretical possibility.
eg. How much water-extraction and transportation capacity does the USA currently have? How much will it cost to build more? How expensive will the resulting water be?
Isn't it a better idea that people's lawns could be a little less lush in exchange for not having to do all that?
No sig today...
You need a citation that there are no dinosaurs? You must not get out much. And why is slashdot now filled with anti-science dumbasses modding me down?
A meteor struck the earth, clouded out the sun. Plants and other animals disappeared, and dinosaurs died from not having those resources. A meteor did not hit each dinosaur on the head directly. Instead of a meteor we now have humans destroying all the resources. We are heading for another mass extinction. https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Right?
Look at the chart on just your first link. The shortage was not sudden, it was easily predictable many, many years ago, and what is the case that the water management for those cities was totally incompetent.
The links provides don't say anything about water use other than you had better be careful who you hire to manage water for your cities.
Do you seriously think those cities are the only ones who have had to deal with long droughts?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
the idea that is it OK to exhaust all of our resources here on Earth because we will just mine off-world planets is pretty violently stupid.
That sure would be! Luckily that's nothing like what I said. Thinking that's anything like what I said would be, well, pretty lethargically stupid. Because it's not putting any effort into considering the discussion at hand.
I'll let you have the last response since I don't have the time to deal with low energy binidiots.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Do not bash this thing for the obvious flaws ANY estimate has losing sight of the real point of the whole thing. Putting some effort into THINKING before bitching about the obvious problem of how we can use > 100% of anything and when you figure that out THEN discuss it because you're not doing any good beyond fishing for help for yourself. Yes, it's easy to just hide your mental laziness or lack of time by framing "I'm confused" as a form of a criticism (or critical tone to hide your honest expression of confusion.)
Think of what Peak Oil is; if you understand that, then you have an idea of how these estimates can be done. Remember when Peak Oil happened? I do and there were people doing the same thing out of ignorance and confusion back then (but fewer people.)
People like to blab about the Drake equation for life in the universe too; which is a total waste of time. This at least can serve a purpose of making people think about a real problem.
To mean anything, this has to be a more complex equation and no matter how good it is, most people will not put in the effort to understand it and only rely upon somebody else's summation of it. Their own biases will give the result they would like to hear. This is the SAME kind of problem we have with FACTS today.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
How can we use "1.7 Earths" worth of resources in a single year, or at all? I can guarantee that we did not use up all of the resources on Earth, much less ".7 Earths" worth of resources coming from some other place.
I am all for reducing climate change, emissions, pollution, and lowering the resource footprint; but this kind of sentimentalization helps exactly nobody.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
IIRC oil and coal formed because there were no bacteria to break down some plant and animal life. Now the bacteria exist so I don't think we will get new oil or coal deposits.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
Yeah.
I live in Colorado. I am far more aware of water esp. clean water than likely what you are. We have a saying here: whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting. In our neck of the woods, we have clean air, clean land, Vista that most of the world will never see. BUT, the single most important thing when buying land/buildings, is water access.
It is why I am pushing my CONgress critters to push a law that requires anybody that lives within 50 miles of the ocean to get their water via desalinated sea water (ideally, 100 miles for southern California). Right now, we have Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California all feeding off water that rightly belongs to Colorado. At the same time, I am pushing Perry to address our energy/water needs. Basically, we need clean baseload energy. We need to quickly develop 4th gen nuclear SMRs, along with using the waste heat to desalinate sea water. We can easily put these every 100 miles along the coasts, and we have cheap energy, along with reasonably priced water.
The problem is getting CONgress to do anything, let alone the right thing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No, I hate running out of water. Basically, those by the coast already have access to water. They just want Colorado water. Nice thing about desalinating with thermal based electricity nearby, is waste heat is used.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.