From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Earth Overshoot Day reminds us how far we are from sustainability   
   By Jane O’Sullivan, August 1, 2023, The Overpopulation Project   
      
   Earth Overshoot Day falls on 2 August this year. This is the day on which,   
   according to the Global Footprint Network (GFN), humanity has used up the   
   whole year’s worth of Earth’s biocapacity. After this date, we are living   
   in overshoot, using    
   biocapacity beyond the level that the Earth can renew. According to this   
   analysis, we would need 1.7 Earths for current human consumption to be   
   sustainable.   
      
   The world’s richest countries use up their fair share much earlier in the   
   year. Qatar, thanks largely to water desalination, air-con and a lot of oil   
   wealth, reached overshoot day on 10 February (Figure 1). If everyone consumed   
   like Qataris, we would    
   need nearly 10 Earths. In North America, the date was 13 March, and 3 April in   
   Sweden. To be sustainable, everyone would have to consume at the level of   
   people in Kyrgystan or Nicaragua.   
      
   [Figure 1: Country Overshoot Days: the date at which countries have used their   
   sustainable share of world biocapacity for the year, according to the Global   
   Footprint Network.]   
      
   Human consumption of natural resources went into overshoot around 1970. As GFN   
   emphasises, world population increased 121% since 1970. If we all consumed   
   like we did in 1970, we should need 2.21 Earths now. But so far, it’s   
   “only” 1.7, partly    
   because agricultural improvements have increased Earth’s total biocapacity,   
   but largely because most of those additional people live in abject poverty.   
   Not an ideal solution to overshoot.   
      
   GFN does not emphasise the role population growth plays in overshoot on their   
   website. Promoted solutions include all the usual measures: renewable energy,   
   eating less meat, reducing food waste, etc.   
      
   A 2021 study by Lucia Tamburino and Giangiacomo Bravo usefully compared   
   countries’ ecological footprints and population densities (using biocapacity   
   rather than land area to assess density on a comparable basis), to see   
   “whether changes in    
   consumption patterns and technological improvements may alone bring back   
   humanity’s footprint below planetary limits without reducing human   
   well-being to unacceptable levels, or whether the population lever needs to be   
   used as well, at least in the    
   long run.”   
      
   They found the vast majority of countries consume more than their national   
   biocapacity. Almost half of these need to increase consumption per person to   
   achieve adequate living standards. Only a handful of countries were achieving   
   decent living standards    
   without exceeding their biocapacity. A few rich countries, like USA and   
   Denmark, could restore sustainability by lowering consumption per person and   
   still afford decent living standards. Most of them, including most of Europe,   
   Japan and China, have    
   insufficient biocapacity to provide adequate living standards for all their   
   people and would have to reduce population as well as per capita consumption   
   to achieve sustainable wellbeing.   
      
   [Figure 2: A sprawling slum in Mumbai, India.]   
      
   By focusing on Ecological Footprint per person, Earth Overshoot Day emphasises   
   each person’s relative level of consumption, which is important. But it   
   de-emphasises how population growth reduces the available biocapacity per   
   person, which is equally    
   important.   
      
   A country with a stable population living sustainably from the resources   
   within its borders might still be classed as driving overshoot in the current   
   GNF approach, if its per capita consumption was higher than Earth could   
   support for all people    
   everywhere. In contrast, a country like Nigeria is seen as a victim of   
   overconsumption elsewhere, despite quadrupling its population since 1970 and   
   therefore disproportionately contributing to reducing the sustainable standard   
   of living for everyone.   
      
   The different perspectives of per capita consumption and population density   
   were explored in our 2020 blog “Earth overshoot day and population.” It   
   would take five Earths if everyone had the ecological footprint of USA   
   residents, but only 2.2 Earths    
   if they also had the same population density as USA. In contrast, the   
   ecological footprint of the average Indian resident is below Earth’s   
   biocapacity of 1.6 global hectares per person, but if all countries had   
   India’s population density, we would    
   need 2.7 Earths even if we all lived like Indians.   
      
   [Table 1. How many Earths would it take if the whole world had both the per   
   capita ecological footprint and the population density of each country? From   
   Tamburino and Cafaro]   
      
   These are salutary findings, but how well does Ecological Footprint   
   methodology describe the conditions needed for sustainability? It has been   
   widely criticised for not considering a sufficiently wide range of human   
   impacts (e.g. here and here). For    
   instance, the impression is given that a surplus of national biocapacity over   
   national consumption makes a country ecologically sustainable. There are many   
   countries which have more biocapacity than their population currently uses,   
   but which are    
   nonetheless degrading their ecosystems. Brazil and Australia are two that   
   stand out.   
      
   GFN focuses very heavily on the carbon cycle, neglecting most other   
   “planetary boundaries” for sustainable use of the biosphere. GFN places no   
   value on biodiversity or ecosystem functions, and gives virtually no attention   
   to environmental pollutants    
   other than carbon dioxide. It makes no judgement about the conversion of   
   tropical rainforests into oil-palm plantations, other than to assess this as   
   an increase in biocapacity. It does not judge the biodiversity repercussions   
   of fresh water diversions    
   for human use. Soil degradation is only indirectly reflected if it reduces the   
   measured productivity of land.   
      
   Misunderstandings arise from the way GFN incorporates fossil fuel use into   
   footprint, by estimating the land needed to draw down the carbon dioxide   
   emitted. As GFN says, 60% of humanity’s Ecological Footprint comes from   
   carbon emissions. This means    
   that most countries are not actually drawing on their own biocapacity to   
   supply the resources they consume to anything like the extent implied by their   
   ecological footprint. They are not even using biocapacity from elsewhere in   
   the world – they are    
   drawing on the stored biocapacity in fossil fuels.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)