I was driving up Main Avenue, listening to a book and looking for the eye doctor’s office where I had an appointment. I glanced at the clock and realized that I was almost late – then I realized that I had overshot my destination and made a “U” turn.
Not all types of overshoot are so easily corrected with a “U” turn. We are in ecological overshoot, which is much more complex than driving past that office. Ecological overshoot occurs when the demands made on a natural ecosystem exceed its regenerative capacity. We have exceeded our planet’s ability to support us by about 80%. To put it simply, we are using more of the planet’s resources than are available.
Ecological overshoot is a little like overspending your credit card. You can get away with overspending for a while, and many people do. The average per capita debt in the USA is over $100,000, and more than $6,000 of that debt is owed to credit cards. You can be assured that the card company or the bank will eventually get their money, however. Unfortunately, it is our progeny who will need to pay for our ecological overshoot. We have overpopulated the planet, and are consuming too much “stuff.”
How can global overshoot be measured? You must know the resources of the planet, and how much of those resources we, humanity, are using. The Global Footprint Network, footprintnetwork.org, does those complicated measurements on a routine basis. It is relatively easy for that organization to calculate our excess use of resources. It has an interesting way of expressing overshoot.
One might think of measuring overshoot as megatons of carbon emissions or perhaps global debt; however, both of these concepts are difficult to understand intuitively. Instead, they use information from every country to determine nature’s “budget,” what our planet can supply. Then they estimate the day when we have used up all of that budget. Back in the early 1970s, we fit in that budget. There were enough resources to supply all human needs, although they were distributed very inequitably. Since then, however, we have increasingly overspent that budget. Global population has more than doubled, and consumption has quadrupled, plus. We are too many people, consuming too much.
This year Earth Overshoot Day came the earliest ever – on July 24. That marked the date when humanity exhausted nature’s budget for the year. It was Aug. 1 last year, and next year will probably be earlier in July. We are overshooting nature’s budget as fast as we’re racking up our national debt.
There are ways to decrease, and perhaps eventually reverse, overshoot. I’m sure you are aware of some; but let’s look at what the experts are saying. The Footprint Network took advantage of the work done by Project Drawdown and came up with a list of solutions for overshoot. If we took full advantage of all 76 items on the list, we could move Overshoot Day more than a month later. Two of the most effective solutions, “Educating Girls” and “Family Planning,” are similar in the way they have their effect – by reducing population growth. Their combined effect is far greater than any other solution.
Voluntary family planning is probably the most effective, least expensive and most humane way to slow population growth. Although World Contraception Day was on Sept. 26, let’s keep this year’s theme in mind: “Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges – Contraceptive Access for All.”
Richard Grossman, M.D., is a retired obstetrics-gynecology physician who lives in the Bayfield area. Read his blog at population-matters.org.
