Our earth is facing its biggest challenge ever, climate change. Recently, we see more and more wildfires, floods, species going extinct and extreme weather conditions causing refugee crises. All these conditions are consequences of a common cause, overshoot.
What?
At the moment we are consuming so much that we are exhausting all our natural resources. This phenomenon is represented by Earth Overshoot Day. Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year.
Last year’s Earth overshoot day landed on July 29. This means that we would need 1.7 earths to sustain our consumption behaviour. That is why we have to reduce our ecological footprint and push back the date. This way we make sure our beloved planet gets the time to regenerate her resources.
At this day and age, 138 different countries have their own overshoot days. This represents the date overshoot day would fall if everybody consumed like the population of this particular country. However, it is not too late to save ourselves.
Solutions: 100 days of possibilities
The organization emphasizes that although the earth's resources are finite, human possibilities are not. It is not too late to turn around our natural resources consumption trend. To do so, 100 days of possibilities were created. The project started at last year's overshoot day (July 29) to COP26, which is an international climate change conference. This initiative shows an innovation or a way to use existing technology every day to displace business as usual practices we can no longer afford.
In these solutions several topics like: Planet, cities, energy, food and population are discussed. Nevertheless, the most powerful solution was saved for the last day. YOU! There is no need to wait, everybody has the power to make a difference and shape the future.
