Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year. It means that for the rest of the year, we are expanding our ecological deficit by using up local resources and pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This year, Earth Overshoot Day falls on 1 August.
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Today marks the day when humanity’s resource consumption exceeds the Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources for the year, a reminder of how unsustainable modern consumption patterns are and how these are adding immense pressure to our planet’s ecosystems.
This year, it falls on 1 August, one day earlier than last year. Overall, however, Earth Overshoot Day has been getting earlier since the 1970s. Experts estimate that at the current rate of consumption, it would take 1.7 Earths to produce and regenerate all the resources we use today.
Overshoot days are calculated for individual countries, too. If the whole planet consumed in the same way as the UK does, overshoot would occur on 3 June. Qatar has the earliest overshoot day (11 February), followed by Luxembourg (20 February), the United Arab Emirates (4 March) and Kuwait (5 March). In the United States, Earth Overshoot Day fell on March 14 this year. Kyrgyzstan has the latest one (30 December).
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