August 13th was Earth Overshoot Day this year. That’s the day when our annual demand for the goods and services that our land and seas can provide goes beyond what the Earth’s ecosystems can renew in a year.
Overshoot means we are drawing down the planet’s principal rather than living off its annual interest and leads to a depletion of Earth’s life-supporting natural capital and a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The NAEE team was, like everyone else, so busy consuming that we forgot to mark the day when it arrived.
The overshoot website is worth an exploration as it contains a range of features. We particularly like this graphic which is on the education page, and a number of activities can be found here.
The news page has some particularly fine pictures of the planet, and the problems that we have created, all linked to news items.