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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
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.
What did they ever do for us?
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.
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.
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.
Huh?
If the reservoirs of drinking water are going down and there's no rain then we have a problem. Period.
It's not a "non-story story" when things like that happen.
If we need more water than all the rain on earth, we will desalinate. Too expensive? We will innovate.
Yep, we'll just push a few buttons and it'll all happen overnight.
Trump's golf courses are important enough that we should spend a few trillion tax dollars to build an artificial water supply for the country.
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?
You have wonderfully highlighted the difference between serious scientific measurement, where the method is provided and error in measurements is quantified, and pure blathering, which is what you are doing.
See, if you looked into this at all, which is what this wonderful technology called the internet allows with minimal effort, you'd see that there is real data backing the Earth Overshoot Day estimate. In fact, their data is covered by a creative commons license so you can go over it with a fine-toothed comb and make constructive criticisms or contribute improvements.
But you didn't do that. Instead, you just called it "Pure Propaganda" without bothering to back up your statement. Your statements, sir, are much closer to propaganda.
To be fair, the most accessible parts of their material are dumbed down for a general audience, and I don't like that a bit of digging finds Schneider Electric as a prominent sponsor of the project's data source, but the message is completely fair: Mankind is running up against resource limits.
The problem with TFA is that is conflating many unrelated issues into one made up number.
Are we cutting down too many trees? Yes. We shouldn't cut them down faster than they regrow.
Are we mining too much coal? Yes, but there is NO sustainable level, since no new coal is being made.
Are we using too much iron ore? No, not really. Dig deep enough, and there is an essentially infinite source of iron, and most other metals.
So are stories like this helpful in "raising awareness"? NO, they are not. Stupid alarmism with no specific practical steps just make people roll their eyes, and leads to empathy fatigue.
Also, I have a hard time believing that people in Luxembourg are really as horrible as they claim. I have been there, and there are plenty of thriving forests, efficient vehicles, and recycling bins by every home. If Luxembourg is the "worst of the worst", then I think there is something seriously wrong with their methodology.
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.