As of August 2, humanity has expended all the natural resources that the earth can regenerate within a year. This is what the nature conservation organization World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) said in Berlin. This means that Earth Overshoot Day has slipped six days ahead, since the resources were still sufficient until August 8th. In 2015 this day was "first" reached on 13 August. For the rest of the year, mankind lives from the hidden reserves of the earth.
The calculations of the Global Footprint Network research project on "Overshoot Day" are based on the concept of the "Ecological Footprint", which shows how much space is needed to ensure all resource requirements, including energy supply. If humanity continues to live as before, we need two planets by the year 2030 to cover our demand for food and renewable resources. By the year 2050 it would be scarcely three. In 1961, on the other hand, mankind needed only two-thirds of the world's resources available.
CO2 emissions alone have more than doubled since 1970. The decline in biodiversity is also clear. For example, the "Living Planet Index" shows a decline in biological diversity by 52 percent over the past four decades. On average the number of examined mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish has halved.
According to the Global Footprint Network, this time falls to the earliest date since the onset of the earth's overload in the 1970s. But it is not too late: "We can reverse the trend", says the network.
For WWF CEO Eberhard Brandes is the "the greatest challenge of our time." "For more than 30 years, we have been taking away more of the earth than it is able to provide us with." The ecosystems that supply us with water, food, or energy are collapsing We must finally find a way to live and operate in the natural limits of our planet. "
In this context, he particularly criticizes the German car industry, which is currently heading into the headlines - not working consistently on sustainable mobility, but also by making short-term profit over the health of man and nature by means of agreements and software manipulations Future as an automobile location, but also endangers the health of the earth and its inhabitants. "
The effects are already noticeable according to the WWF: drought and extreme weather events, starvation or starvation are becoming more and more dramatic. Entire ecosystems such as coral reefs, rain forests or river systems threaten to disappear. In total, four out of nine environmental stress limits, which define the stability of planetary habitats, are exceeded: climate change, the loss of biodiversity, land use and the biogeochemical cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus.
Please help with recycling, reduce your energy consumption, begin to reuse things, use less water and paper to protect our planet and us humans.
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